before being blocked (I will start saying banned if I'm not unblocked soon!) was a reply to someone who asked in the nyczeitgeist thread if I really believe in god. Here's my answer to them:

Let me assume you doubt that I do? I've actually thought quite a bit about this and for a long time was quite agnostic in part because of how poorly the concept of god and spirituality generally is approached in society. Who could not be turned off the notion of god by seeing how it is routinely abused and has been since the dawn of civilization? While I don't believe in a personalized god as described in the OT I do believe in a fundamental unity of existence that I think one could think of as god, or maybe "godness". I think that we are each as individuals part of a single whole and that that actually means something and has consequences for how we should approach life, by which I mean our lives, i.e. human life, which is unique on earth and perhaps in the entire universe. I think that our capacity for awareness not just of our individuality which I think is an illusion but of the very existence of ourselves as part of the universe, of something as opposed to nothingness, coupled with our seemingly inherent inability to grasp its fundamental nature except by non-verbal experience and reflection is a great mystery and exploring it is one of the most worthwhile aspects of being alive. I think that throughout history many individuals have lived their lives quite mindfully in the spirit of this quest and I believe that the figure of Jesus could be traced back to such an individual who by virtue of his (or her, you never know!) strength and wisdom and maybe most importantly courage brought the results of this kind of reflection to bear on those around him, on his society and government, because this spirit of oneness compels those who embrace it to manifest the positive, or light, as opposed to the negative, or dark nature of itself. I happen to think that the bible, at least the new testament, needs to be read critically with an eye to filtering out that which was piled on to the original and powerful message that lies at its core. Too many people who believe themselves to be religious or pious do not go beyond the words, which is a shame because I think one of the key messages in the NT is in fact that the holy spirit is to be found within and requires no earthly intermediary. I think the truly revolutionary message of whoever Jesus was has been lost to most, as Jesus most surely believed of his contemporaries who lost touch with the true "godness" by settling instead into a shadow of the true spirit promulgated by priests and other charlatans using the idea of god for their own personal gain. To worship idols like the cross or the crucifixion or the virgin mary or the korasn or the talmud or the star of david--to make the mistake of equating any of these with the true spirit is perhaps the worst sin and biggest folly and that all the greats like Jesus and Buddha were originally saying as much, and because inevitably over time and space the message is corrupted there are endless opportunities to remind people and ourselves of what is truly important and genuine about our spiritual experience as humans.

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Real Truther

"Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed."

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)