what nothing means shit means

I think the faith they are talking about is something more inward, not a faith in the people who run the churches, but just feeling the presence of god, like the warm breath of spring I suppose.  There is kind of a disconnect there, ok god is in your heart, got that, but what does that have to do with the Rev Billy Bob and what he is preaching, and whether he represents god anymore than the Rev Bob Billy down the street?  And of course I always wonder, how do you know that that guy in your heart isn't the antichrist?  Isn't the antichrist supposed to be a smooth talking devil that an ordinary mortal can't tell between him and the son of god, so how do you know that that warm breath of spring is just a distant breeze from the fiery lake?

I think the problem is the good book, I mean it is just a book after all, just a bunch of books written back in the bronze age by a bunch of guys who didn't know very much, and then added to by some other guys, and nobody is exactly sure of who they were and the whole matter looked over by the descendents of the empire and picked over and, well a whole ragbag.

To me the odd thing about protestantism is the way the book is so revered, like this is the whole religion in a book of about the size of Gone with the Wind.  Why don't they instead of calling it the good book, call it a pretty good book, but there is more to the religion than that? 

But you know i still don't understand why you questioned Christianity.  If people claim to believe in it when they don't know what's in it, and don't seem to be trying to find out, how is that any skin off Beagle's nose?  What does what other people are doing have to do with your faith?

How did you come about your faith?  Well I imagine you just grew up on it, and everybody around you believed so you believed it in the same way that you believed in Santa Claus and that Wanzer on milk is like sterling on silver.  And you know as a kid you realize that you don't know much and that adults know a lot and you figure you can trust them because they keep you fed and roofed and from being run over by a truck.  So even when what they are doing seems a little screwy, you figure they most know what they are doing. 

But the older you get and the more you learn, you realize they don't really know all the much and often they are guessing.  You know even as I was ranting and railing in my hippie days, I kind of felt like all those grey haired guys in suits maybe really knew what they were doing, but now that I am a grey haired guy I realize they don't know anymore than I do.

So was it something like that for you, that you realized the church elders didn't know as much as they claimed to know?


Maybe some things can be more meaningful than other things.  That Italian beef has meaning enough as a meal, and it has the added bonus of it is all good, maybe the only bad thing is that you eventually become full and you can't eat anymore.  But I guess art is more meaningful to me, stays with me longer than just mealtime.

The Italian beef is a part of the world of the senses, but that art thing is not quite, it has elements of well I don't know what, but it seems like it's more than the pieces, yes I like the sound of that, more than its parts, more than the sum of its parts, that's the way you normally hear the phrase.  Ok, if I break down my art experience, Lucinda singing Pineola, everything in it is from the world of the senses, the sound, the words, Lucinda herself, but when I consider each one of the parts separately there is something missing, so that part of it must be from somewhere outside of the world of the senses.

That's what I think people want, particularly the questers, something outside of the world of the senses, something more than what they see when they look out the window.  In a way science can do that.  You can't see microbes, atoms, gluons, the speed of light.  But this is kind of like just more of the same, what people want to see are other people, maybe not people exactly, but things that are alive, god, devils, angels, spirits, something we can relate to, because don't we relate to animals by pretending they are people?

I don't think there is anything living out there, or anything living that we can ever know about, which is the same thing.  There is just matter and energy and the laws of both, and none of that cares about what we do.  That's what I mean by nothing means shit.

But that seems a little bleak, even to a committed atheist like myself.  I like to think there is something.  I don't know what I want that something to be, but I get a little bit of it listening to Lucinda, and dreaming a bit I suppose, even though if I had to go down to the place where I would be betting money, I would bet that nothing means shit.  So deep down I know it is an illusion of meaning but I like it anyway.