BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Atheist Random Thoughts

Just catching up on this thread. Les, I did not know you left the Agnostic/Atheist site.

I am glad you will still be around here with us on your Mexico site. I wish you all the best.

Thank you Phyllis,

As for a new "random thought"...

As a free thinking agnostic, the only universal reality that I am absolutely sure about is that there is no reality in tv reality shows. If you think that I am mistaken and overly dogmatic in my belief, please prove me wrong.

I so totally agree with you, Les. The "reality" shows are the furthest thing from reality as we (normal people) know it.

However, it will be fun to see an amiable debate here on the subject. What is reality to some may be a way of life for others -- I sincerely doubt it, but anxiously await with you for some proof that we are wrong.

Here is what some famous "thinkers" thought about "reality."

Everything you can imagine is real. ~Pablo Picasso

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. ~Francis Bacon

Few people have the imagination for reality. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
Hermann Hesse

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
Garrison Keillor

Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
Alex Haley

Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet. ~Edward Abbey

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him? ~Calvin and Hobbes

Humankind cannot bear very much reality. ~T.S. Eliot

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. ~John Lennon

There are no facts, only interpretations. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values. ~David G. Myers, Social Psychology

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lao Tzu

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.
Chuck Palahniuk

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
Virginia Woolf

Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.
Thomas Aquinas

Which one of these quotes do you most like or relate to?
Which one do you most dislike or least relate to?

There is a poem that I read when I was a junior in high school that has been with me ever since. It spoke of a "reality" that despite superficial appearances remains in our cultures to this day. That poem was instrumental in the forming of my this wordly view.

As I am an ex-chef and an ex-social worker, I am nothing if not arrogant so I am not going to look up this poem but just "recite" it from memory (I hope).

Once riding in old Baltimore
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean staring straight at me.

Now, I was eight and very small
and he was no whit bigger.
So I smiled at him
but he poked out his tongue and called me n_ _ _ _ r.

I saw the whole of Baltimore
from May until December.
Of all that happened there,
That's all that I can remember.

Countee Cullen

Is there anything that you have read or seen (like a movie)
that has impacted your world view/belief system?

Another "reality-based" impactful quotation from many decades ago that has guided me on the road Les traveled... (apologies to Robert Frost)

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

William Shakespeare (or was it that Francis Bacon guy?- NAA that is not something that I am agnostic about)

What does that quote mean to you?
To me it is extremely naturalistic, humanistic, and agnostic.

Yet another "reality-based" imppactful quotation that was formatively instrumental in developing a world view My interpretation of it is definitely not mainstream.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther � And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

F. SCott Fitzgerald

What meaning does the quote and specifically "the orgiastic future" have for you?

Insider joke about a "plz repent" across the system spamming post that BellaOnline judgetifiably and justifiably deleted.

I have seen the light and have repented as I will no longer suffer fools gladly.

As for all of this END OF THE WORLD stuff? Who hasn't felt this at least once in their this worldly life?

Why does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don't they know it's the end of the world
'Cause you don't love me any more

Why do the birds go on singing
Why do the stars glow above
Don't they know it's the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was
I can't understand, no, I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does

Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don't they know it's the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

Skeeter Davis

"Is there anything that you have read or seen (like a movie)
that has impacted your world view/belief system?"

So much Les that a single answer is not possible for me but I do remember thinking long and hard about organised religion after I had seen the movie Queen Margot.

Enough said. If you have seen the movie then you will know why I say this, and if you haven't then see it. It is a magnificent presentation of a piece of French/English Catholic/Protestant history, well acted, well documented, well researched, costumed, spoken, written, cast---the list just goes on.

And now for something completely different!
Am off to plant a Poppy!

Cheers

Hi there

Les wrote and quoted above ...

I saw the whole of Baltimore
from May until December.
Of all that happened there,
That's all that I can remember.

Countee Cullen

... and to that I say

That last verse is the smartest on a life lived I think I have ever read. Succinct. Stark. And sad, really sad.

Didn't know this poem at all.

Of course it can be transported anywhere in the world. This person just happened to be living in Baltimore.