Heresy from a Heretic

A long time ago, I had this weird idea for all the stories that I'd written before - that they were in an alternate reality, trapped with in the computer. They were about as aware of us on Earth as we are of the deities we worship to. The adventure was one of flight and fancy, and dealt a lot with believing in things you could never prove were real, very akin to how I view religion. I'd always been fascinated with religion, never feeling I fully believed a set of words someone else penned and never going to a service apart from weddings and funerals, and the occasional accidental invitation with friends. I never felt I belonged, the heretic in sheep's clothing. 

Sure, I could follow along with any "be a good soul" concepts - the ones that transcend one religion and bleed into many. But the roots, the stories that were spun are the parts I couldn't figure out. 

The song "One Tin Soldier" was something we'd listen to quite a bit at home. Go ahead and hate your neighbours, go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end. 

They were talking about how people claimed to be doing things in the name of their gods, and therefore felt justified in all the pain and suffering they caused. Like the terrorists we've see splattered across the news for years, fighting full wars in the name of their beliefs. Just get along, peace on earth - it's what they were all meant to be. A person does not need to martyr themselves for me, I should never need to expect that of someone else, I should be accountable for my actions and hold others accountable for theirs. 

But despite never growing up with belief systems engrained into my house, I started to build my own, one that fit into what I could accept as true. I'm based in science, logic, and the observable, calculable world. I know that we're not at the point yet where things can be explained fully. And sometimes I don't want things to be explained fully - sometimes I'm content in thinking that the odds, so disproportionally minimal, could only manifest from something I'll never begin to comprehend. Science is, after all, magic tied in pretty bows for people to understand, according to Julie Kagawa, author. 

So in short, am I religious? No, but yes. I won't do anything in the name of a god or a deity if it defies my core beliefs. Be a good soul, make sure that whatever I do, I can live with in the future and look back, knowing I made a decent decision. 

I'm just a sentence, it's somewhat of a metaphor for how small, how insignificant I can be, compared to the thousands of thousands of tomes in existence and those that are still to be written. I get to choose what my sentence says, whether it be inherently insignificant or something that can change the course of the world. I get to choose whether it can do good things or bad, or nothing at all. I have the ability to be anything with my sentence, but I don't have a lot of time.