God

The Scapegoat

published by Taran Rampersad on Thu, 08/11/2011 - 12:57

"...and if I do something wrong or say something wrong to you, God will judge me and my karma will be affected...", she says to the atheist - as if this is to mean something to someone who truly doesn't believe in God, religions and their ilk.

I

published by Taran Rampersad on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 00:07

This writing started off in a bookstore in Gulf City, Trinidad where I had picked up a copy of The God Delusion. The young woman there who is cashing me out looks at me and says, "I never thought you were a Richard Dawkins fan?"

No judgement. It just didn't compute for her. So I told her to turn to page 42-43 of the book (it's a silver cover edition). When I picked up the book I thought, 'this could be interesting.' In leafing through it, I had come across this quote of Douglas Adams and that tipped me over to the purchase. Not that Douglas Adams said it, or that it was what was said. No, it was that I agreed with what he said from the center of my being¹.

So I responded to the young lady that she should open the book to page 42-43 and read the quote by Douglas Adams. She stared at me as if I had a second head, probably because she'd never had someone suggest she look in a book on a specific page for something a specific person wrote². After a stunned pause and, for some reason, a swallow, she dutifully opened the book and read what Douglas Adams was quoted as saying. And she said, "You know, that makes sense."

And I said, "That's why I'm buying the book."

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God's Dreaming: Thoughts On God, Religion And Everything So Accused (Part IV)

published by Taran Rampersad on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 20:34

continued from here, and started here.

The years after the Navy - counting about 13 years at this point - involved some more varied experiences but little with religion itself. During this time, I read philosophy - as much as I could stand, and then some. I even read along the fringes.

Aside from the Blood Bank work, where just about every donor considered themselves a saint for their pint of blood (something I will revisit later), the majority of work I did was technical. For the most part, that remains so though I've continuously striven to break out of that into other things.

Truth. And Not Truth.

So with the technical comes science. And with science comes all manner of prejudices. For example, [w:Fuzzy Logic] - which I advocate - still lags in adaptation in Western technology. My theory as to 'why' is that it breaks the Boolean myth that everything is either true or not true; instead it permits one to say that something is true and false by degree. For example, if someone were to call me insane, a poll might show a certain percentage agreed with them. If, however, you asked them how true it was on a scale of 1 to 10, then asked them how false it was on a scale of 1 to 10, you'd get some more interesting data.

III

published by Taran Rampersad on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 14:39

continued from here, started here

In a move hastened by being a young man in want of a better situation, as subjective as 'better' is and was, I left Trinidad and Tobago and dived into Irving, Texas. The college application to DeVry Institute of Technology asked for my religion, and I remembered wondering about that. As I recall, the cop-out was "Other". So I used that. This was to become my standard response to race and religion. "Other". And when they asked for an explanation I wrote in, "None of the above".

The first few years back in the United States were almost completely clean of religion, though there were some interesting points. One friend claimed to be an atheist but it was apparent that he was a poorly adjusted Christian.... living in a Christian dominated society. The parents of some friends who were around sometimes queried me on religion and I came up with some very creative answers - but most of the answers were answers of conformity rather than answers.

A few incidents stand out. One was where someone in one of my classes started thumping his Bible. So in a very serious way, I asked him if in his discussions with God that he could mention the dumpster in our living area (an apartment complex) that was overflowing. Maybe God could take care of it since DeVry administration and the apartment complex seemed powerless in dealing with this chronic problem.

That very night, as luck would have it, the dumpster appeared to spontaneously combust. Well, really, no one knew whether it had combusted. My roommate and I watched the fire department show up. The next day, I told the Christian fellow that God had certainly taken care of that dumpster. He didn't know what to say. I laughed, and I don't think we ever spoke again.