I was raised in a Roman Catholic household, with a decon as a father.  I was very religious, I didn't question anything, and I tried to be a good little boy.

Eventually, I started sleeping through homilies (I was now getting up at 6 AM for middle school and was very sleep deprived), but my parents didn't like that and would whack me upside the head for it. So instead, I I would sit awake and do a half daydream, half pondering about life.

There were always things that bugged me, but I was never before able to pin them down with words. The foremost of all was why an omnipotant being cared about anything. Why would he make earth and humans? Was he bored? Why did he care if we commited adultery or killed or worshiped other gods or didn't kep holy the day he rested? It never made sense.  Another concern was a fundamental human question: what was the point of life? I used to think that life was a test to determine if you were going to go to heaven or hell. However, this explanation has many flaws, the formost of which is that god should already know who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. I mean, he is supposed to know all things. Speaking of hell, that sounds like a strange concept to me. I eventually learned that, by definiton, punishment is any introduction or removal of  stimuli in a way designed to decrease the probability of a certain behavior from reocurring. If we are not going to get another shot at life, hell is just cruel. And god is supposed to be kind and loving.

Eventually I started thinking about humanity as a whole. One of the most common thins about humanity is a fear of the unknown. And another fundamental human wonder is what happens to us after we die. No one really knows. Humanity strives to explain the unknown (probably because of our fear of it), by any means necessary. In the "old days," we would explain thunderstorms as Zeus getting angry. Eventually we were able to figure out that thunderstorms were actually caused by air pressure and temperture differences, rather than divine wrath. But we still do not know what happens to us when we die. From there, it was an easy step that religion makes something up to make people feel better. "You are going to die, and there is nothing you can do about it...but if you are a good little boy you get to live forever in heaven with god!!!" People who are afraid of the former are comforted by the latter. I realized that religion is (in part) an answer to our fear of the unknown. Throughout history, it "explains" what we don't know, and comforts us about what we do. But I also realized that if we do not need it for comfort or answers....there is no need to waste time with it. Simply put,
Religion provides
1)"Answers" and comfort
2) A form of social control ("don't do xyz or you will burn in hell/never see god in heaven")

I find 1) is provided well by science, for the most part. As for social control, I believe that the person who does good things without hope for reward (heavenly or otherwise) is a better person than the person who is only doing it for the reward. I know that a religious person would respond, "That's not why we do it!" However, if you think carefully, you notice a large flaw. Why tell anyone about heaven, god, hell, any of it? If religious people don't do the good things they do (ignore jihads for now, we'll come back to it later) in hope of heaven/meeting god or in fear of hell, what's the point of knowing about the existence of these things? Wouldn't NOT telling anyone about heaven/hell really weed out the good people from the bad? Of course this takes us back to "Doesn't god already know who is evil or good?" and "why are we here?!" Why are we on earth if god could just whisk the good people to heaven?  The answer, of course, is because god is like santa claus for adults. A semi-useful illusion.

A few month ago, my father asked me why I haven't killed myself if I don't believe there is a point to life or any consequences to my actions. (I am arrogent to religious people because of my father. Blame him for why I think you are all stupid.) The answer is simple: I don't need some magical deity to bring purpose to my life or consequences to my actions.  Life is a complex, ever adapting, diverse game. Why wouldn't I want to try my hand in it? A simple analogy would be to playing poker with pretzels instead of money. There aren't REAL consequences, and there is no obvious purpose. But some people still play low risk poker, because it's still fun. And I bet you more people would play if it was the only game we had.
All we (as the occupants of the planet) have is eachother. Our relationships. Our understanding of our environment. Our survival. Maybe we should stop adding layers of imaginary consequence and meaning, and instead focus on what we actually have. In a world where violence often claims religious motivation, it seems like it might be a good idea. Human compassion instead of divine worship might be the way we finally unite as a species.

All i ask is that you give it ~3000 years. If it doesn't work by then, we can go back to car bombing the mosques of rivel sects, I promise.

Today I realized something.

Do you know what the first sign of getting old is? You start having crushes on celebrities younger than you, and who have accomplished more.

Hear me out. When you are young, as we all were, all of your celeb crushes were on older people. I can't describe how many middle school girls fell in love with Leo DiCaprio after Titanic, or how many young boys were enamored by Carmen Electra or one of her counterparts. The sex icons (or whatever you want to call them) you looked up to were adults, for the most part.

But, eventually, the day comes when you are looking up a crush on IMDb, and you notice their birthday is after yours. It's so surprising the first few times it happens. It shatters your schema of the celebrity crowd as a whole, which used to be made of two subtypes: the child actors and the adults (aka all other famous people). Child actors could either be cute or annoying. Only the adults could be hot. This is the day you realize that you are growing up. Obviously, you noticed the hair growing in weird places, the change in your social setting, the new feelings, etc., but now it is REALLY dawning on you.  

It's strange how you can simultaneously know something, and still not believe it. It's like a sexually transmitted infection; you know you can get it if you engage in unprotected sexual activity...but you still don't believe you will. Of course, this is more of a personal fable attribution or availability heuristic, making it an imperfect analogy, but I think you understand my point.

And if you think this experience is bad, wait until you realize that the daydream you had the other day about dating that hottie you're crushing on may be illegal in 43 states. Which brings me to my next point: high schools should have classes that teach essential life skills, like if what you are longing to do with you-know-who is illegal in your state. And how to do your taxes, for crying out loud. The average college graduate can't fill out the W2 for that career he/she has been preparing for for the past four years. Furthermore, high schools need to teach how to understand dense "legal-ese" before they accumulate a mountain for debt with their first credit card in college because they didn't understand the terms and conditions they had agreed to. Seriously, no one understands that crap. I have a friend applying to law school who can't explain to me the terms of use of tv.com (on second thought, maybe it's better she doesn't get into law school. she really isn't that bright). Well, since I have totally forgotten my original topic, I'm going to go now.

Tune in next time for: "My political ramblings: Diary of a Mad White Man" if you are crazy enough to give a baker's **** what I think.

****Disclaimer
In this blog post, I used a lot of slang, and much less political correctness than I usually allow in my online posts, considering the low likely hood of anyone reading it. If you found it offensive, I apologize. I would like to state for the record that I am most certainly NOT a pedophile or a rapist (statutorily or otherwise) in any way. I have yet to even have a relationship with anyone younger than me (I skipped a grade in elementary school, making my high school peers older than me). And, in case anyone was wondering, I was quoting Zoolander in my blog topic.