I got some really nice feedback from yesterday's entry, which means that I got people thinking... that's good, I guess. However, it's frustrating to not come up with any answers.

I like answers. Negative, positive, whatever... I don't like unanswered or unanswerable questions. Almost all of those questions are about how people think. Damned near everything else is easy.

Why questions: Why are people so stupid? Why are people afraid to face reality? Why am I so sure that I'm right and they're wrong? Why are they so sure that I'm wrong and they're right? Why do people kill other people that aren't hurting them?

Why can't we all just get along?

I read recently somewhere that preachers/priests are the most unethical group of people in existence, because they are willing to subvert everything to what they believe is the truth. The lives of others, certainly, and in many cases, their own lives.

For their truth.

Is that good, bad or indifferent? And more importantly, where am I in all of this? For I believe that I know the truth too.

I am an atheist. And I think that's a fine way to be. And I think that religion in all of its varied forms is at least silly and always, always potentially harmful. Yet 89% of the people in the world believe that there is a god.

Should I just get all smug and think that I'm one of the "top" eleven percent? The smartest of the bunch? The cream of the crop?

Or should I believe that my inability to suspend disbelief is an aberration? That I'm maybe missing a gene somewhere, or that I was scarred by something like the event I recounted yesterday and rendered incapable of behaving normally?

I like to think that I seek the truth... that I will someday know the truth. I like to think that wisdom is my goal... and I realize how far I am from the realization of that goal, that lofty height to which I aspire.

I do feel that I know the truth... that I know the reality. It's there, in my head, waiting to be enunciated. And I can't quite articulate what it is. Almost... it's on the tip of my tongue.

When I can... it will change the world. The truth will be so strong, so simple, so clear... that no matter how stupid you are, you will be able to understand. No matter how firm your belief is contradictory to the truth, you will have to admit that it is the truth. No matter where your lifetime habits of thinking have brought you, you will be drawn to and absorbed by the truth.

That is what I want to do.

I ain't there yet.