• Funny People
• The Time Traveler's Wife
• (500 Days) of Summer
• The Jackson 5
• The constructs of family (continued)
• Generational Gaps
• Black Christmas (the orig. vs. new)
• Unbreakable
• The Hazards of Love
• Disney Factory
• The State of Horror
• I want to do something..
• A case for slashers.
• Violence in...
• Sex in...
• Violence and Sex, one in the same?
• The Beatles
• Online and unknown, privacy and security

But first, a response to our newest contributor, Evan. By the way, my recent post in which I responded to "Max" was actually Evan, as I suspected but had he been under a pseudonym, I didn't want to take away that security blanket that Internet anonymity brings.

So I'm in class right now and we're supposed to be doing lab work, but I think I'll save it for this weekend because I'm quite tired and I feel like doing this. I recruited Evan very strongly, then I disappeared which was kind a of a dick move I'm pretty good at. I've been busy and preoccupied with a lot of things, but as I always promise - I'll try to be better. Key word is try, as in fail. Anyways, onto the response and maybe I can bust out a few more posts tonight yet.

I haven't spoken much of 9/11. I remember, about six months after the attack, I was on a field trip with some people from school, none of whom I would consider friends and one of them said, as a means of starting up a conversation - 'what is everyone's thoughts on 9/11?' I responded, lethargically, with no comment and I'd likely do the same today. I remember the day itself very clearly, as I know everyone who was alive at the time does. I stayed home from school that day and I woke up late, and walked out into the living room. I sat down on the couch and the TV was already on. All I saw was one of the tower's smoking badly, I thought it was a strange and morbid daytime movie or something, when all of a sudden, the second plane came in. I hadn't been sitting for more than five minutes when it happened and that's when it dawned on me - this looks like a scene from a movie, but this is real, unbelievable it seemed, but real nonetheless. Obviously, we all remember the next week of media coverage as well - the TV became a source of hope, or discouraging news, stories of heroism and stories of great loss.

Evan brought up the concept of religious motivation for the attacks and that does seem to be the principle reason for what happened. I've heard the conspiracy theories that we (America) was behind one or more of the attacks, money to gain or war to initiate. I don't know, either way you look at it - there's no rational justification for the attacks, for that amount of loss of life. In context, however, we as Americans really need to be more aware of the world around us. In our attempt to become this world power, policing the nation, we still maintain the separatist thinking that served us well between the Civil War and WWI. We think we're the best at everything, although in truth we really aren't at anything. The same goes for loss of life - while it is a great tragedy that 5000+ people, just doing their daily thing, were killed that day - the same happens all over the world, usually in greater numbers, and it gets no press coverage and nobody remembers it. In context, for America it was a great loss, but if we really strive to be this world presence, we should have the place of mind to realize that.

Jumping back to religion, I've never truly understand the blind following of the church. I was raised Methodist and at a certain point in my early teens, I decided I wanted to strengthen my faith. I began questioning things I hadn't questioned before and assumed that my church had these answers, I just had never asked. However, every question that I got answered, it raised ten more questions. Eventually, the questions started raising the questions that they had originally answered. The deeper I got into it, the less logic I saw in the whole thing. Nothing made sense at that point. I got desperate, I went out and bought a bunch of 'faith through logic' books which theoretically proved the truths in the Bible through historical evidence, but every supposed point they had seemed to prove them more wrong in my mind. Perhaps I had just gone into it already doubting the existence of God, but by the end of this I realized, there very likely isn't a God. Since then, I've realized that there's possibly a chance there is a greater power out there, but the likelihood that it is in any form related to the deities we call Gods is almost completely impossible. The biggest problem I had in this time of life when I was questioning everything is, when I questioned I was scolded. Only one religious figure (I should say quasi-religious figure, he was a preacher in training who worked at Taco Bell as he went to night school), who accepted me questioning his beliefs and actually tried to argue, with quite a bit of logical reasoning, the existence of God. It was one of the best conversations I've ever had, truthfully. Obviously, one cannot argue for the existence of God without first assuming the existence of God and vice versa. And truthfully, there is no argument either way, but the concept that questioning is wrong...how can any society be built on that? Questioning every aspect of society is how society gets improved. Questioning if the Earth is round leads to the discovery of America for the Europeans. Everything should be questioned. I'm not saying we should do away with religion as a whole, or the concept of faith or morals, but to take these to the extremes that most of these religious nut-jobs...it makes no sense, because they clearly aren't questioning anything and what's more, is they rarely question their own reasoning. They'll misinterpret, or takes things too literally, and all of a sudden they are crashing planes into buildings. Frankly, I'm not going to do anything rash in this life for anything in the afterlife, you know why? I'm guaranteed this life - I'm already here, but there is nothing promised to me in the afterlife that I know I'll get for sure.

I do accept the reasoning that there are three greater parts of the human life - body, soul and mind (as oppose to just mind and body), but the concept of the soul living on beyond the body or mind seems improbable at best. Then again, it could just be beyond our comprehension.

I've kind of lost focus now, I'm afraid, and honestly I don't know if any of that was comprehensible. I know it wasn't coherent. Anyways, respond and we'll see where we go from here - I have a lot more to say on religion, it's a great topic...and just as a disclaimer, nobody here is attacking anyone else's beliefs (and don't do so), just good conversation. Don't take anything personally. Ta.