well you can ride, ride, ride on down with your head in the dark

right, a post that isn't motivated by my own unhappiness. well not really. something a little more universal.

it's strange how people are able to believe in an omnipotent god that is good. now i'm sure all these religions that are based on such a belief have plenty of explanations for what i'm about to say, but let's just set that aside for now. based on a belief that there is a universal being who has unlimited control over our lives (whether or not he/she chooses to exercise that control is not important), and that this being sets a certain standard of goodness which we must conform to, then shouldn't those who are good be rewarded?

this is a difficult conundrum. if we take happiness to be the reward for "good" actions, then there is no evidence to believe that "good" is a universal standard. plenty of horrible people are happy, whereas many who are good are not. hence, either happiness isn't the reward of goodness, or goodness is a standard that we cannot comprehend. i think both possible explanations are used by the various religions, but in any case, all of these are clear affronts to occam's razor. the simplest explanation is that no such being exist, that no entity serves as a final tribunal for human actions.

now i'm all for believing in religion from a pascal's wager perspective. i mean, why not? besides, especially in countries with relative freedom of worship, or where you are content to be in the religious majority, believing in something already brings a lot of perks in this life. in so many ways, it is people like me who have very vague beliefs that suffer the most. but i guess my point is, religion isn't particularly convincing given the actual facts of the world, and where is the comfort in that?

i'm much more comfortable thinking of the world as some strange illusion, or a product of our consciousness. then we can think of it as a very long and crazy movie, and that at the end of the day, nothing really matters that much, and if happiness isn't in the cards for your character, perhaps you'll have better luck next time.

oh by the way, this isn't a way of railing against my own unhappiness. however you choose to see it, my unhappiness is well-justified. i've been quite a terrible person, and on top of that, i've chosen to do stupid and inappropriate things. hence my unhappiness. now if everything was this simple....

and in a totally unrelated note about music: 'evil urges' really is a terrific album. now that i'm off my pandora.com phase and listening to my own music library again, i've rediscovered (it really wasn't that long ago) how terrific it is. also, china should be very grateful to axl rose. when you search for chinese democracy now, you get information on the semi-mythical new album from guns n' roses, and not some kind of diatribe against the chinese government. it's amusing how silly the album title sounds now, but i'm sure it was very ironic in the 90s.