Good vs. Evil and my thoughts on God

I was discussing religion with my Dad yesterday. This is something I've tried to avoid for the last several years, ever since I stopped believing in God. You see, I don't want my family to worry that they won't see me in heaven if I don't believe. However, now that they know I don't really believe, I think it might be better to let them know (if they want to) why I feel the way I do. Besides, as I elude to below, and will blog about in more detail sometime, I do believe there is a Higher Power - I just don't know what it is yet. And I also believe that if my family is right about God, then he's not going to keep me out of heaven just because I didn't blindly believe in him.

I mentioned to my Dad that I had blogged some time ago about one of my theories on God - however when I pulled up this blog to send him the link it wasn't there. Apparently I only posted it to my myspace blog - so here it is for this one:

Sometimes Bad is really Good. Doing something that is considered bad or naughty is much more exciting than staying within the strict moral guidelines of society and religion. How can something be "bad" if it feels so good and doesn't hurt anyone?

Some say selfishness is bad, I say that is crap. If you don't take care of yourself first, how are you ever going to take care of anyone else? Yes we need to take care of others, but not at the expense of us. And there are a lot of people out there who expect us to take care of them when they are absolutely capable of taking care of themselves. We need to take care of our children, but we also need to teach them to take care of themselves. If we do too much for them, they will never learn to do anything on their own and we are depriving them of a productive adulthood. We need to take care of our elders, because some of them are no longer able to do so themselves and they are the ones who took care of us when we were children. We need to take care of the sick, but not to the point where we lose our health in doing so. If more people would take care of themselves first and be more selfish, there wouldn't be as many people that need to be taken care of!

I was raised to believe in God. I was also taught to never question God. When I started questioning, I felt very guilty. When I continued to question and started to see so many contradictions, I came up with my theory that God and the Devil were reversed. The one that we think of as God is truly the devil and vice versa. I'm not trying to convert, convince or offend. It's just a theory I had. First of all, why would God give us the ability to question and reason, but forbid us to use it to question him? If he's everything they say he is, he would welcome the questions because he would know they would lead to the truth. I don't trust anyone who tries to stop me from thinking. I don't really believe in God or the devil. If there is a God and he isn't forgiving enough to accept me because I used my brain and logic and refused to blindly believe then I'm not so sure I would even want to live in eternity with him. I do believe in the possibility that there is a higher power, but that's another blog topic! Just because I don't believe in God does not mean I am not a good person. My personal morals did not change one bit when I became a non-believer.

My daughter has a very logical mind, and when she was little and I would tell her bible stories she would ask me how I knew that they were true if they were only stories. Do we have any proof? This coming from a very small child is actually what caused me to start questioning and eventually stop believing. We've always allowed her to make her own decisions about religion. Our families are believers, and my daughter has even attended bible study with a friend because she was curious and wanted to share this with her friend. She still doesn't believe but is respectful of her friends beliefs. Unfortunately, she has faced condemnation from some of her friends because she doesn't believe in God. Conversion through pressure and coercion - another example of why I think organized religion can be bad. However, do not think my friends are bad because they believe. I think churches can be a good place for people to come together and help one another, and I still believe in the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

We all have to decide what is best for us personally. I love to discuss religion with my friends. I want to hear why they believe and I have a very open mind. I guess some would say I'm paranoid about conspiracy - but I think any time that society warns us not to discuss something it is because they don't want us to Discover something. I think both religion and politics should be encouraged as topics among friends.

Just because someone tells you something is bad, doesn't mean it is. I'm sure there are many things that are truly bad, no matter how you think of them (like abuse and crimes against children). However, I also think there are many things out there that we "think" are bad because that is how we've been programmed, but if we were to allow ourselves to really think about it, we might find that they could actually be good things.

As I continue to focus on the things I like, the things I have, the things I can have, and the good things in my life, I need to re-evaluate what I think is bad and figure out why I think that and if it is really true!