Why is there something instead of nothing?

The short answer: because there is something.

The long answer: I don't give a shit.

I love the irony of some self-assured asshole coming at me with a big "bet you don't know, your atheism can't explain this" argument not realizing he's shooting his own fucking feet off. I don't disbelieve in god because the atheistic worldview provides me with answers.

I disbelieve in god because there isn't one.

That much should be obvious. Religions make truth-claims about the natural world. Those truth claims are not supported by evidence. In fact, they're often contradicted. Thus, if Religion A claims some dude rose from the dead, or that demonic possession is a real phenomena, or that a piece of cracker is magically transformed into the connective tissue of an unemployed Bronze Age carpenter, and those claims are unsupported by any physical evidence, direct or indirect, it is completely reasonable to reject all of Religion A's truth claims.

The apologist says "maybe some of Religion A's tenets are not meant to be taken literally, but what about the ultimate question? Maybe Religion A truly provides some insight?" Am I throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Yes. I am. Especially when the baby is totally indistinguishable from the bathwater.

Basically, my conclusion is that for the Abrahamic faiths, the largest of the world's religions, the question is not whether or not god exists. That 'ultimate question' seems to be rather buried under theological scat-sculpting and moral authoritarianism. I could give the lie to the idea that there is some omniscient intelligence guiding the physical universe and still have nothing to do with Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. The fact is, for those religions, their real focus is on all the crap that they argue stems from their supposed relationships with the one true god. Their baby is the fucking bathwater.

It's not god who takes center stage, it's Mohamed and Jesus and Moses and all the stories, scriptures, apocryphal tales, canonical beliefs, and faith-defining tenets. And none of that stuff is true. It's all bogus. Christianity can't even get the story straight on the life of their founding sociopath.

And when you throw out all of those scriptures and tales and beliefs, what are you left with?

You're left with maybe there's an omniscient creator, maybe there's not, and where did this notion that there should be one even come from in the first place?

You're not even left with the same fucking question that our smug religious apologist came at me with in the first place, "why is there stuff?"

Just strip away the superficial narrow-mindedness of that question, and its failure of perspective is revealed: Why is it so important that if stuff exists, that something or someone created it? Is that really the only explanation that can be fathomed by some people? Or is it that if we're forced to explore other possibilities, the apologists have to admit that 'god done it' is only one of many answers (and likely not counted among the plausible ones) and the privileged position they have come to expect from their membership in a kooky semi-literate deathcult is no longer a guarantee?

Atheism doesn't provide me with answers. It is just a rejection of the answers that have been given to me by pretend know-it-alls. It's a rejection of notions that are unsupported by evidence and a rejection of the notion that it's virtuous to believe ridiculous truth-claims without supporting evidence. It is not a set of answers.

Anything that provides you with a set of answers about the whole universe is a religion. Anything that provides you with facts, theories, questions, and the tools to seek more facts, test those theories, generate new ones, and directly or indirectly get answers to questions--that's thinking. Maybe it also sounds an awful lot like science.

Probably not a coincidence.

One other objection, though. Agnostic apologists will often whine that while atheism may be valid in addressing organized religion, it can't address more personal beliefs or notions about the universe. I might be able to deny the existence of Jehovah or Allah, but I can't say anything about the personal god of Thomas Jefferson.

Problem is, stripped of all the rule-mongering and praying and truth-claims that make an organized religion, those personal beliefs are rather worthless to argue over. Sure, I can't say anything about your very very personal conception of an omniscient creator, but...you can't really say anything valuable about him/her/it either.

If it has to abide by the laws of the physical universe as we understand them, if your god or anyone else's has to fit the facts as we so far know them, if he cannot cause miracles or respond to prayer or suck your soul out of your body, then all we have is a god of the gaps--a do-nothing god.

I don't think any special consideration needs to be given to human flights of fancy about what we don't know. Sure, you can fill in the gaps in our knowledge with wishful thinking and garbage, but that doesn't mean I have to give a fuck.

Further, there is no special privilege that a divine creator deserves over any other supernatural crap that a person can invent. The idea of a giant anthropomorphic ruler of the universe itself is a human invention, and when considering things that 'could exist but we have no evidence for' that particular human concept is no more valid than fairies, unicorns, He-Man, or the Predator.

My point is, I don't have to disprove every ridiculous truth-claim made about the universe. Anyone can have a personal belief in a beneficent omniscient universal intelligence that loves them personally but has no actual effects on the world--I don't have to address their claims with my atheism because it's perfectly reasonable to withhold provisional assent to such ideas.

I can make-believe about a fungus that turns people into zombies. That doesn't mean my fictional notion fits into our cosmic understanding somewhere, or should even be considered.

Too many agnostics shy away from atheism because of its certainty. They get all huffy because they think that we think that we have the all answers.

I'm not an atheist because I have all the answers. I am an atheist because religion has none of the answers and doesn't even know the real questions. I am an atheist because your personal belief in an all-knowing creator is still unintelligible at the end of the day, no matter how beautiful it sounds and how reassured it makes you feel.

Maybe I am also an atheist because I don't think it really matters whether we find answers or not. It's cool to just look.

Less than failure.

Every day seems fraught with possibilities that dissolve on contact. I see a pattern of never being able to fail, even spectacularly, because I never get into the running. Not even considered a competitor.

I suppose I just want a chance to lose big, or get rejected hard, on my own merits. Rather than having to accept the artificial barriers that keep me stuck in my own rut. I don't mind being blown to bits if I'm the one who pulls the pin.

I'm frustrated with this day to day sterility. I want to set something on fire.

You won't burn. You're encased in ice. So am I.

I guess I have to do this with a sledgehammer instead of a plan.

Temporal Terminus

Inescapable suspicion that there is no future. Yawning blank waiting for me. Ready to swallow me whole.

I think I'm more afraid of growing old than dying. Dying is bad enough. Growing old and then dying sounds worse.

I can't imagine time stretching out in front of me. I'm drawing a blank trying to imagine my life. A total blank.

Edit:

Can't see myself having kids or starting a family. Unless a girl comes along who can change my mind irreversibly. Otherwise, I don't see it. Not because 'the fun will be over' or because it means 'growing up.' I think I'm doing a lot of that as it is.

I don't see it happening because the thought of marrying, starting a family, raising children, building a life reminds me rather painfully that I don't really know what I want out of my life. I have no real reason to want a family. But I don't know what I really want or what I'm supposed to do.

Summer blues, I guess. Some people are down in the winter. I get it in the summer.

Blood. Beer. Blastbeats. Bullets. Bruised brains.

So I've given myself a week to sort of process all of the illicit motherandfatherfucking awesomeness that was Maryland Deathfest.

I think, like all epic events, this one is still coloring my perceptions to some degree. My proverbial ears are still ringing with the din.

I tweeted pretty heavily in terms of describing my reactions to the various bands I saw, so I'm probably not going to spend a lot of time here recounting live performances. A few highlights stand out that I want to mention, though, because they tie in to an over-arching point.

First of all, I have to talk a little about Portal's set. Mainly to gush. Freakishly.

I guess the thing that hits me hardest about that band is the totally original imagery and approach they've developed. Love them or hate them, there really is not another band like them. They come closest to giving one a tangible feeling of otherworldliness. Something about their music actually sounds like what a rip in the fabric of reality might be expected to sound like.

Anyway, as I was standing there, in almost complete darkness; bathed in stuffy, humid air; breathed on and smothered by sweaty, smelly strangers; watching the Curator gesticulate and inhumanly pontificate on whatever arcane and outre knowledge he had to expound on, I realized I was seeing and hearing something pretty damn incredible.

I probably won't soon forget that.

Next, Gridlink. Oh man. I could probably type a couple million characters about how awesome it was to just be in the same room as ex-Discordance Axis and Human Remains personnel, I could gush like a quivering fanboy at my physical proximity to the yowling, manic form of Jon Chang, or about how I was actually watching Steve Procopio manhandle his guitar with my own eyes; but that's not really what I was most conscious of while I was watching Gridlink tear through their set.

All I was thinking about was how FUCKING. AWESOME. THEY. WERE.

Also...HOW. FUCKING. FAST. THEIR. DRUMMER. IS.

Those blastbeats...they were...they were...beautiful.

Finally, Eyehategod. Of all the bands that I think just nailed both their live performance and live sound, Eyehategod were the fucking standouts. They sounded exactly like they should sound. They played with all the fucking oily, pissed off, ugly, bluesy sleaze with which they should play. It was not disappointing. I probably punched the most air for them, and that's saying a lot. There's something to be said for taking 20 years to really hone your fucking craft.

The point that these bands make for me, the conclusion I've come to after almost sixteen years of listening to heavy/extreme music (more than half my life) is that music itself seems more rewarding when it's heavy. I can't escape the conclusion.

At one point we're all hanging out in the hotel room after just arriving in Baltimore, taking a little time out to rest up before we headed up to the Pre-Fest Party. We're watching Brian Posehn on Comedy Central and he's going through his bits about being ugly and being married and having a dog lick his wife's vagina, and then he starts talking about metal. He says "you never hear fans of other music walking around growling "R AND B!!!! FUCKIN R AND B!!!!!"

It's true. You don't. You don't get that sense of an almost fanatical religious devotion to a musical form. Maybe we've just had to work harder for it, so getting to hear the music we want, or see the bands we love is more rewarding. Maybe it goes along with being a social misfit, so the music ties us together, binds us in our own special subculture. But I think it's more than that. I think it's the structure of the underground music scene. It's safe to say that in punk and metal, the majority of people aren't just spectators. They are involved in one way or another. They're in bands, they promote shows, they run labels, they do artwork, whatever. Most of us are involved as musicians.

I think that separates underground extreme music from every other musical genre out there. All other forms of music attract largely non-participant fans. But with metal and punk...that's just not the case. The point I'm getting at is that, with the possible exception of jazz, no other genre comes with the same almost ubiquitously musically educated fanbase. And unlike jazz, where an obsessive academic dissection has left it a rather static and sterile relic for music historians and snivelling snobs to paw over, metal and punk are still dynamic, still evolving, still living, breathing, fighting, fucking, and eating.

And yet, even the past is still alive with underground music. Old legends only seem to grow in stature as the years go by. A classic record remains a classic record no matter what trends come and go, and most underground music fans are reverent towards the classics.

So when you hear some metal fan start pontificating over a band, you can bet his opinion is a little more informed--he's not only aware of the technical aspects of the music from his own experience, but there's also a sense of history to his perception. Basically anyone listening to grindcore, hardcore punk, or metal understands that the music is inescapably colored by, and compared to, Slayer's Reign in Blood. Anyone listening to modern grindcore knows the music is inescapably influenced by and linked back to Napalm Death, Repulsion, and Siege in the 1980's. A lot of historical allusion is in the music, and there's a real feeling of messy, unpredictable evolution.

I don't get that sense from other forms of music. I don't get that sense from other music fans. I do get snobbery but without much substance to back it up.

Worse though, I get shallow, uninformed 'music criticism' (particularly of what I listen to) from people who can't even play Mary Had a Little Lamb on a guitar. It's hard not to feel that people who can't play music don't really know how to listen to music. And not knowing how to listen to music, they certainly can't form valuable insights about music. And as such, I usually feel it's safe to discount their opinion.

That's my big point. All of this discussion has just been to say: shut up. You can't play. You're not in a band. You've never written a song yourself. You don't even know how to listen to music without being totally distracted by the rhythm and the vocals. So, I honestly cannot force myself to give a shit about your opinion. Stop trying to tell me what's good or bad or 'easy' or 'dumb' about the music I listen to. Stop trying to tell me what's good or bad about any music, because you don't really know. You're like a tongueless, noseless troglodyte trying to describe the experience of eating Thai food. You can only describe it by your limited senses, but you're missing the real deal, you're missing ninety-percent of the experience.

It makes me wonder sometimes how such people can even consider themselves music fans. It really is like being a food connoisseur without a sense of taste. What do you focus on? The texture? That is to say, what are you listening for, exactly, when you can't draw any real inferences about the performance, when you can't separate the various melodies and see how they were arranged, when you can't appreciate timing, a well-placed hook, a particularly badass riff, or a paint-stripping blastbeat played to perfection?

I could go on, but I'll leave it with this: why is most modern popular music mostly composed of a drum beat and a person singing? I propose that those are the two easiest components for non-musicians to understand. They can't really appreciate much else, so most popular music consists solely of that. Think about it.