Heavy Thoughts

I just read an article online. It can be found at http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/25/iraq.soldier.story.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories. Death surrounds us daily. The stories in the article are nothing new. Maybe I am just tired. Maybe I am just lonely. For whatever reason, tonight these stories reminded me that something about this life isn’t right. Something is out of place. Something is not as it should be. I long to throw off pain, evil, suffering, death–things that are as much a part of life as birth, breathing, and a beating heart. So why should I assume these things to be wrong while assuming love, happiness, and all the desirable elements of life to be right? If I am the current state of chance plus time (secular evolution), then who is to say that to breath is better than to suffocate? To love is better than to hate? To live is better than to die? If I am just a ball of meaningless subatomic particles then what I am just is. It can be assigned no value or lack of value. It just is.

However, I can’t live with this. I can’t treat death the same as life, hate the same as love, suffering the same as non-suffering. It just is not in me. It is not in anyone that I have ever met. Though I have heard of it in theory, I have never encountered it. And this fact presents a major challenge to any philosophical system or worldview that logically proceeds to this conclusion, i.e. Atheism and much Eastern thought.

I know this is a heavy tangent, but it was on my mind. What do you think?