Meandering Thoughts on Life and Dating

I write a lot of negative material on this blog. It's usually argumentative and unfriendly. I'm not happy about it really. The posts are honest, but I seem to like to look at things from an adversarial point of view most of the time. For example, my long post about Valentine's Day being awful. It was honest, and I think it holds value, but it's very negative, and makes me seem an unpleasant person. Maybe I am an unpleasant person.

I read a friend's blog post today which is about what romance is to them. It even mentions Valentine's Day, and it even agrees with me about how if the love is real, it won't need a day each year to prompt the shows of affection. But that friend is much better at conveying the important message than I am. I ended up with a diatribe against a holiday that really only has as much meaning as you allow it to have. I should have written about love instead. Tracy (that friend who wrote the above linked blog post) made me think with her writing. I really appreciate it.

So here I am thinking. What kind of person am I? What have I turned into? Am I really that negative all the time?

I know that I'm lonely.

I joined eHarmony a while back, and have been moderately active in reading profiles and sending messages. Just a short while ago, I got a message from some one named Rebecca. And we seemed to get along well in our messages. And I was really excited about going to have dinner with her. We made plans to meet. And she cancelled them. I was left wondering if something was going on with her or if I had said something that turned her off.

Earlier today, I noticed an article on the eHarmony site called "7 Signs of a Desperate Dater". It lists some things that I'm afraid I might be doing. Regardless of the specifics, I'm sure that I'm coming across as desperate. I'm desperate to find someone. I'd like to find someone that I connect with in a strong way. But I think I might be at the point where I'm not really being myself. Not in the understood social norm of not being yourself entirely when you first meet someone, but in the way where my state of mind is preventing me from being myself. What Rebecca must have seen... and what people see in general is the unappealing desperation. It's a horrible first impression.

Now I wonder how I fix that. I think I need to stop wanting so hard. I need to stop needing that connection. I'm not sure how to do that. I've been told on many occasions that "you'll find what you're looking for when you stop looking". I hate that saying. It basically means that I have no power in the situation. I'm unhappy about situations where I have no power at all. I'm not looking to control everything, but knowing that my fate is in my hands is something I cherish. In this case, my fate is entirely out of my control. At least it seems that way.

And maybe I'm taking the whole thing too seriously. I seem to want to jump straight into a serious relationship. Maybe I should be looking to just date... maybe I should be open to the possibility that things don't have to be serious. It can just be two people enjoying spending some time together, and maybe it won't lead to anything.

This is turning into a negative post again. I wanted to write that I had come to some sort of revelation, but it's not working out that way. I guess I'll wrap it up.

I need to learn how to focus on the positive matters in life. And I need to learn how to relax. I really don't think I've been able to do that before.

Atheism: some more thoughts about it

A friend posted something about how atheism is not a religion. And he's right. It's not. But I immediately thought about how certain levels of atheism can require a level of faith similar to that required by believing what a religion teaches. You can read all about atheism and its meanings on the wiki page. It's a really good read.

I consider myself an "explicit weak atheist" according to the article, and also an agnostic (which is very similar to a "weak atheist" anyway). Just wanted to be clear.

So I said in the first paragraph that certain levels of atheism require faith like religions do. According to the wiki article, this level I'm thinking of would be "strong atheism". It is the specific belief that there is no god or set of gods. This type of atheism requires faith though, because no one can prove that a god or set of gods does not exist. It simply can't be done. Just because we can't perceive something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Of course, on the other hand, it can never be proven that a god or gods does exist either. Even if a powerful being appeared before you, walked on water, transmuted water to wine, brought a dead animal back to life, cured a person of terminal cancer, teleported right in front of you, and/or conceived a human child without touching the woman... it still wouldn't prove the existence of a god or gods. It would just show you that really powerful beings can exist. Or maybe just a REALLY technologically advanced one. Doesn't matter what the explanation is... it's still not proof of a god or set of gods.

What I'm trying to get to I think is that I don't understand how anyone can be anything but a "weak atheist". No event in my life or any event I've ever heard of has even remotely suggested the existence of a god. Sure, I've heard religious folks speak and say there is a god. But what do they know? They don't know anything. They only believe. They have faith. But that faith is based on absolutely nothing. Some coincidence in their life that seemed too good to be true, or too unlikely to have happened without "divine intervention" is still not even evidence of a god, let alone proof. Surviving a crash that should have killed you is not proof of a god. It's a coincidence. Things just happened that way because that's how physics works. The circumstances were such that you survived. That's all.

It's nearly 1 AM, and I'm swiftly losing my focus. I think I just wanted to write about how religious people are wrong, and about how even some atheists are wrong.

If you think I'm wrong... prove that there's a god. Or prove that there isn't one. I'd be mighty impressed either way. In the meantime, I'm going to go on with my lack of belief in any god or set of gods, because I haven't seen anything to suggest their existence. There's no reason to waste time on them.