 |
| She's dead because she believed a lie. Stupid world. |
A 12-year-old girl named Maria Kislo was found hanged in her bedroom with a note saying she wanted to be with her dad in heaven. Her father, Arek, had died after suffering a sudden heart attack in 2009.
She was found by her mother, Monika, 35, who had gone upstairs to read her a bedtime story. Maria, from Leszno in Poland, had left a short note, which read: "Dear Mum. Please don't be sad. I just miss daddy so much, I want to see him again."
The body was retrieved by her 13-year-old brother Michal, but she was already dead.So yeah, that's a pretty shitty situation all around. I mean, we have a 13-year-old retrieving the dead body of his 12-year-old sister. That simply should not have to happen in this world.
Monika said: "Five years ago I lost my husband Arek, this year my daughter. I don’t know if I can go on, and I wouldn't if it was not for my son... She didn't seem unhappy. She didn't have problems at school and she seemed a happy little girl. I had no idea she missed her father so much, she never really spoke about it."
And it totally would not have happened if the ridiculous and stupid dream of heaven didn't exist.
I understand why heaven exists. Death is a scary thing, both for those actually dying, and for the loved ones of the dying. In the moment, heaven is incredibly comforting. It makes death less scary. I loved the movie The Invention of Lying, and how the main character (I've forgotten his name), the only man who has the ability to lie in a world where everyone always tells the truth, makes up heaven as he's speaking to his terrified, dying mother.
To me, it's so clear that that is all heaven is. It's a fairytale, helping us feel a little less scared about death. But it's just so ridiculous and, frankly, stupid. It should be clear to anyone with half a brain that heaven is not real. Nearly everything about the idea is ridiculous.
First it rests on the belief that we have some sort of soul that will continue to exist after death. Unfortunately, this a silly fairytale as well. The only reason a thing such as a soul would exist would be for heaven. And heaven exists for souls to go to... is sort of circular. Neither are real. Come on.
Secondly, heaven is portrayed as, quite literally, the greatest thing ever in every single way imaginable and then more. It is the accumulation of all awesomeness in every way, shape and form. Doesn't that sound, I don't know, a tad... unrealistic? Doesn't it sound sort of like a quick way to get to a "and they lived happily ever after" for every single situation? Doesn't it just sound totally made up? Maybe, just maybe, it's because it is.
Nothing exists that even hints at the fact that everyone lives on forever in some way. The only reason we assume this is because we're scared. We don't want to stop existing.
The idea of heaven pisses me off a lot. It's one of the most fairytale-esque aspects of religion in general, and really its pretty ridiculous that a society as advanced and awesome as ours still holds it as a wide spread belief. Just sit there and think about. Think about it from an atheist perspective. Try and remove all the religious training, all the rhetoric from your mind. This isn't easy, as I learned in middle school (thankfully, the ridiculousness of many of the beliefs of the Catholic Church were enough for me to push past the religious phase of my life), but if you can do it, you should be able to see how weird the idea of heaven is, and many of the other ideas and customs of the church.
Just today during mass (yes, I still go to mass because I'm a good son. Well, sort of), I realized how odd the whole Communion/Eucharist thing is. It's a large room full of people solemnly getting in line to eat bread and drink wine, but we're supposed to believe it's literally human flesh and blood (I got asked the question "Does the bread actually become the body of christ?" at my first communion retreat in, like, second grade, and even back then, I said no. Of course it doesn't. And of course, that wasn't the answer the creepy old lady was looking for). Meanwhile, people are singing a soft, slightly eerie song praising an all powerful man in the sky who created himself as his son and then killed himself as his son but then made himself as his son alive again and took him to heaven so he could be with himself as his son. And this isn't just adults. There are kids here. Watching all of this happen, being indoctrinated into it.
Imagine that from, say, the view of aliens. It looks like a freaking cult. It's creepy. It really is. I felt uncomfortable, I felt like I was watching a cult of serial killers performing some sort of ritual. It felt like something out of Fox's The Following (not a great show, but whatever).
Recently I was speaking with one of my newer friends and the topic of religion came up. Usually I avoid this topic with newer friends because normally my beliefs just piss them off. But he brought it up, and before I could even mention my beliefs, he stated his. They were the same as mine. That was one of the most glorious moments in my entire life. Seeing another kid grow up in the Catholic Church and make the conscious decision to not be a part of it, for the same exact reasons I had, was just amazing. It sort of validated me in a way. I can't explain how incredibly happy that made me. It was... fantastic, wonderful, amazing. I wanted to shout and hug him and run around telling everyone, but instead I just smiled and said something cool and deep like "Yes. So many times yes." Just.... man, it was easily one of the coolest moments of my life. It was just great, man.
But anyways, my friend and I discussed the creepy, cult-likeness of the Catholic Church. There are so many examples, the prayers memorized and basically chanted in unison, the large buildings with pretty statues... it's all just cult like. Creepy. And flawed, deeply.
Wow, I got off track here. Let's try to bring it back.
Just try removing the religious rhetoric, beliefs, and history from your brain for a while and give a long, hard look at your beliefs. If you do it right, you should feel silly (assuming you're religious).
Just to be clear, I'm not calling you an idiot if you are religious. A good, I'd say, 80% of my friends are religious. Sure, that's just like, eight people, but I accept the fact that religious people can be intelligent. Many of them are. You aren't an idiot for believing, just ignorant in this one manner.
So, as a non-believer in heaven, do I live in constant fear of death? Knowing that I'll simply vanish? No, not really. Death is still scary. I don't want to die (though if I believed in heaven, I would. Again, this is illogical. Why would you hold a belief that encourages you to die?), it still scares me, but I don't fear it so much that I cower in the dark, avoiding all human interaction (I do that because I like the dark and dislike most people). To me, death isn't entering an endless void of pain and suffering, it's literally nothing. Birth was waking up without ever having gone to sleep. Death is going to sleep without ever waking up. Before you were born you didn't live in a dark world, alone and scared. And you won't after you die. You just stop being. And I'm okay with that. Make the most of the time you do have, I say. Make it count. It's all you've got.
Love one another. Get shit done. Do something. Kiss a girl. Or a guy. Live a little. More motivational words.
Okay, I'm done. I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. Over and out.
No comments:
Post a Comment