Intent?

Been a while since my last post, so I suppose it's time to once again sort through my thoughts via written language. Isn't it funny that it isn't until it's down on a paper (screen) that I can see how skewed and nuts I am.

What about intentions?

In an earthly world, all a person can care about is results, outcome. For example, I try my very best to teach my children to swim, but drown them in the process. Obviously, I will be in very much trouble for essentially killing my kids, because the result was death, aside from whatever I may have meant. However, it certainly seems that judgment based solely on results and outcome can't be the most effective method. If it were, we would have no leniency towards criminals who didn't intend for a certain outcome. For example:

I saw an episode of Law and Order a few years ago where that weird socially awkward investigator is interrogating a man suspected of murdering two women by drilling holes in their head and pouring hot water on their brains. Yes, it sounds horrific. During the process of interrogation, he gets enough information to put the man on death row. The investigator, however, knows that this man didn't intentionally kill these women; his attempt was to render them brain damaged enough that they needed him to take care of him. In a sense, the entire murder aspect of the crime, which was what would put him on death row, wasn't accurate. Despite his superior's orders, the investigator went back into the room and continued asking questions until finally the man confessed to not trying to kill the women, but trying to keep them brain damaged and alive. This was the man's intent, and because of the investigator's actions, he was sentenced to life in prison, instead of death row.

What does this mean? It means that people believe, inherently, that intent is what decides morality. The problem is, we live in a world that we can only perceive through cause and effect, so therefore to us, only cause and effect exists. And, because we see only cause and effect, we only see the effects of our actions. The intent does us little to no good, because results are what effect us. Essentially we live in a state of existence that wants desperately to be just by judging intent, but has no choice but to judge results.

What if there were a way to judge intent? Like a machine that could tell automatically whether a person intended harm or good in an action, despite what the result was? Would this be an effective way of sentencing criminals?

God sees the intent of our actions. He is not effected by the results of anything we do, and he can see the honesty or the lack thereof in everything we do. The bible says that god judges a person's heart, which we are incapable of doing. It's a good thing too; if we could judge a person by their heart, I don't know if we would use it right. Imagine trying to explain to the family whose children were just run over by a semi that it was an accident and that there will be no consequence for the driver.

As a person, not as a government official or anything, I think it's easier to just not judge people at all. BUT it's nearly impossible to not judge! Everything I do is shaped around what I think about everyone else. Sometimes it's frustrating.

~wes~

Poetry

I'm not a huge fan of free verse. I usually feel like it's cheating, because if you don't have to think about it hard enough to make it fit into a rhyme scheme and meter, then you aren't thinking hard enough about it. However, I gave it a try this time. I couldn't get the idea into a standard Spencerian Sonnet...>_< style="font-weight: bold;">

The Strings

The strings fill her.

Keys strike steel, and resonate with lonely temperance,
Infecting her unreasonable ears.
Broken chords heal festering loves
Buried beneath flesh and above soul

The strings fill her

Rusted brass violates the silence
Protesting her cowardice and her patience.
The sound that reaches it’s way inside
Without remorse, and static is all she hears

The strings fill her

Clawing at wood and ivory
She is struck by hammers and impaled by bows
Waves that take everything secret she has
And leave it dead on the carpet

The strings fill her

With anticipation that debilitates
With despair that oppresses
With warmth that nauseates
As the music climaxes, and collapses

The strings fill her

The sound rapes her ears
Mercilessly deflowers her,
Until she is spent past salvation.
The music, never hesitant, leaves her there

The strings fill her

And leave her empty again.

Belief

There is a big difference between knowledge and belief. In fact, they have little to do with each other. However, people, or at least I, naturally put them together unconsciously. The problem is that quite often, what we believe has little to do with what we know, and what we know has little to do with what we believe.

I often have trouble believing in god. Is this my fault? Should I be ashamed of this? Or worse, is my disbelief a failing on my behalf because I didn't go to church enough of because I watched too many movies with violence and sex scenes? If that is the god of the christian faith, I renounce my faith right now.

Can a person even have any control over what they believe in at all? Sure, you can have an influence. I can make myself more apt to believing in god by surrounding myself with people who do, and by immersing myself in christian ideology. But what I believe seems to go a little deeper than that.

Take a kid, abused by his dad when he was little. He believes dad's are evil. That's irrational; there are good dads everywhere. He's seen good dads, his friends' dads have been nice to him, but he still believes, despite all the evidence on the contrary, that dads are evil. Can this child be blamed for this? Is it his fault he doesn't believe dads are good? And can this child, by learning that dads aren't all bad, change this viewpoint?

I don't know. I think it's perfectly possible for the kid to see his friends dad being nice and say "wow, dads are cool" just like that. Apparently that wasn't a very well fortified belief. Also, it's perfectly possible for the kid to spend the rest of his life with foster fathers or friends' fathers who are fantastic, and believe his whole life that dads are still evil. So it's like this.

Knowledge does not warrant belief.

I also think suspicion is a premature form of belief. If you suspect something, you have already come to the belief that it is possible, and have decided that unless evidence for the contrary appears, that it is the most likely outcome.

I often suspect that the old testament is a load of bullshit.

I often suspect that christianity is a gimmick to make people live right.

I suspect that there are ulterior motives behind many of jesus's teachings.

I suspect that there is no hope for anything changing ever.

I suspect that religion is so filled with self fulfilling prophecies that it makes it impossible to distinguish between the will of god and the will of man.

I suspect that the world of revelation in the bible and heaven and hell are just ploys to make living a fulfilling life appear worthwhile.

I suspect that elements of religion are fully aware that there are huge gaps in the logic of religion, and choose to glaze over it for fear of "rebellion"

I suspect that it's impossible to gauge whether a person is getting "better" or "worse," which makes it impossible to gauge whether the world is getting better or worse.

I suspect that prayer is a form of self-help, similar to talking to a therapist, except god never says "how does that make you feel?"

I suspect that people find god where they are looking for him. Like in church, the bible, prayer, polygamy, adulatory, pornography, etc.

I suspect god is silent and inactive.

I suspect our "relationship with god" is highly dictated by how we feel at the time.

I suspect that there are too many contradictions to comprehend or to justify in the bible.

I suspect that I am very afraid that I may believe these things already.


I am very ashamed for thinking these things and very afraid of them. But the problem is, I can't help it. These are conclusions I have drawn through processes of elimination during my pursuit of knowledge. Please! Give me more knowledge. Fix the inconsistencies that I have developed through accident. And don't try to remind me that the pursuit of knowledge of futile, because I'll never gain it all. So is the pursuit of world peace.

Where are you god, when I ask questions that make people angry with me? Why don't you step in and answer my questions? Why would you let your servant wander hopelessly in the desert with no will to call out? Am I not good enough for your time? Can you not set my mind at rest? You tell us to cry out when we are weary, that you will take our yokes upon you. Well here it is! Take it! Why is it still here? I would love nothing more than to be satisfied with the answers to my questions.