The Adventures of Lolo 2: Electric Boogaloo

I won't lie, it's a pretty rough day.  It's grey, hot and moist outside - a quintessential summer day in Brooklyn.  It's the perfect day for a novice debate!

I'm blessed.  I think it's taken me this long to seriously consider the existence of something "behind the scenes" of  what we can see with the tele- and microscope because I have a hard time believing that a Greater Force could grant somebody like me so much while others are given so little.  It's a truth of life that some people are born with the deck stacked against them and others are born on third base and assume they hit a triple.  I feel like I was born on second and have spent my life trying to figure out how the hell I got there.

I've never had to want for money.  Since I've stopped going to school I've had to ask my parents for some money to get by a few times, and I always know I can ask if i have to.  Most people, I imagine, don't know what that kind of security feels like.  It feels like a miracle.

So.  If I want to believe in something greater than myself ("The Universe", "God", etc.), I have to find a way to pay back the miracle of a situation into which I, apparently by no choice of my own, have been born.

Or, maybe there is nothing behind everything.  There's no Soul, we're just animals endlessly reproducing with an insatiable appetite for perceived  improvement.  My sense of "calling" is nothing more than a series of neurons wired together, connecting the concepts of  "playing music" (an umbrella for the summation of certain muscle movements tied to satisfaction of learning, the rush of entertaining, and a history of repeated positive reinforcement for doing so) and "guilt" (related to the aforementioned history of familial, financial, and health-related stability).

Digression: Probably a stupid question, but is faith really  necessary to "get into" Heaven?  Like it's a club.

Since the Bible's been rewritten a few times and a religion that espouses the sanctity of human life can be bastardized to convince people to murder their countrymen in the street, I feel like I can make my own calls in the deity arena.

Maybe I will never have utter, unshakable faith in the existence of a Great Hereafter or a Heavenly Ruler or even an unknowable Master Plan.

But I'd never completely throw my weight behind a solely empirical world, either.  I don't think I'd be in any way satisfied if we learned tomorrow that yes, the Rules Of The Universe are guided by science alone,  Randomness prevails, and when you die it's eternal sleep without dreams and nothing else.

So what's wrong with hedging your bets?  What religion includes accepting a higher power into your life to help while allowing for the possibility that every idol is bunk?  If religion is an eternal debate, at least I'm doing something right.