Talk

A blurb on my philosophical growth

I first confronted my first philosophical issue when I asked myself "what if I was praying to the wrong God". I had'nt accepted Jesus as my savior and I had no intention of doing that. I resolved this issue by claiming that if I lived a good life and remained true in the practice of my religion it would be hard for God to find me at fault, given the lack of information on God's part. The next step was reconciling what I knew of religion with what I knew of Science. The duality of living a religious life while accepting the scientific tradition seemed apocryphal. I decided that the religious works could not cover all thats known to man now since it would not appeal to the lay person. That delusion lasted only a brief time. I soon discovered Joseph Smith's Mormonism and the Carribean Rastafarism. Given the vigor of the followers of these two religions it soon occurred to me that I could be totally off course in my religion as well. The best thing was to start from the beginning and question everything. This Cartesian methodology also had no desired answer in store. I drifted into deism with a mixture of agnosticism. While I couldnt say for sure if God existed or not I believed God was no longer involved in our day-to-day lives. I used Objectivism to bolster my reason for living. My greatness in it self seemed enough. God didnt matter. Through all this the question of "whats the meaning of life" nagged me to no end. Finally I discovered buddhism and zen and I was liberated. No longer did I care if God existed or what came first 'the chicken or the egg'. Enough time with Zen just made life better and better. Then my zen life took on a bit of a existentialist flair. Where zen promulgates living a 'good' life I began to question what is good and bad? It is what I make of it (existence before essence) and by choosing I choose for all of humanity. So thats where I am. A Zen existentialist with Objectivist leanings.