Ice age heat wave can't complain

I'm in PHX right now. And still sick with something. Today I went through the Black Friday ads looking for something worth buying. I couldn't find anything. I wonder how much money advertisers have spent trying to convince me that I needed to buy something tomorrow. $12? $20? I wish they would have just sent it to me directly instead of trying to persuade me.

Speaking of which, the school gave every employee $500 as a bonus for this year. I'm grateful for that. Some old ladies in the meeting where they announced it were crying. As though it would save their life or something. I didn't cry.

Apparently I'm a little Holden Caufield right now.

I finished Stephen Prothero's American Jesus today. It made me think a lot about Christianity today and what it means to me. I started questioning my faith and how I knew I was right.

I assumed that since we don't know what's going to happen after we die, we can't use that as compelling evidence to me. I just won't be convinced by that. I need proof that any religion I select will be the best life here and now and that its precepts, if accepted by anyone, will make that person's life better too.

Any religion that has reincarnation built into it doesn't work for me, because it allows for a hierarchy of people. If I do bad things in this life, I will be reincarnated as something lesser, therefore in my next life I should be treated as something lesser. Therefore, because this life is someone's next life, they should be treated as something lesser. I think this is why the caste system works so well in a Hindu context: "those people deserve their treatment." That sucks if you're one of those people, so that religious system is out.

(Now I know that all of these arguments are far too simplistic and I'm pretty sure I started the inner monologue with my end outcome predetermined, but this is just the beginning of my rationale.)

(Also, this discussion is irrelevant to anyone who is postmodern. I, as I learned by the end of the conversation with myself, am a very modern thinker.)

Atheism (or humanism) doesn't work for me because it says that everything is left chance. Which is fine for some things (the scientific realm), but it doesn't do a lot for the non-scientific things (love, beauty, community, etc.) If those things are random, then all I'm left to pursue are my animalistic impulses. If I follow that rationale, I should only search out those things which further my cause and that sucks if you're not me because I'm a fairly selfish person. That religious system doesn't allow for equal treatment of everyone. I think that equal treatment is better than inequitable treatment, so atheism doesn't work for me.

I don't know enough about Islam's tenets to say if that would or wouldn't work for me. I have rhetoric I could repeat, but since it's only been gleaned from magazines, I can't say that I know enough about it.

That's all the further I got on my walk, so my thoughts tapered off. I hope it doesn't sound to argumentative, it's just how I processed things. I want to do what's right, and so far, it seems that following Christ is the way to do that. I'd like to learn more about other religions though, because I don't think God is offended when we look for Him.

Bye for now.