Sunday 26 August 2012

N00bs must suffer

I've been caught up in this whole Youtube thing. For a long time i tried to stay away from "watching videos" because i thought it was stupid, and went to youtube just to see clips of George Carlin, Chris Rock and the likes, and listen to music. But then i've found Ray William Johnson's channel and has been watching it for like six months now, and recently discovered a few other channels, mainly The Young Turks, The Amazing Atheist, MrRepzion, undertakerfreak and a few others.

My negative opinion towards youtube culture as a whole has shifted a bit because of these guys. I discovered that there actually are genuine people on youtube, people that have an opinion worth thinking about and that make discussion videos that are interesting to watch. Of course i'm a bit biased because turns out that a lot of beliefs they hold i agree with already, but it's still refreshing. Hell, these guys almost inspired me to make my own channel, and maybe at some point that's what i'll do.

Anyway, today imma talk about one of those videos. For those not in the know, not in the care or not giving a shit, there's this guy, MrRepzion, who was a Christian when he started making videos, but since then he slowly slided towards deism and a few weeks ago a tragedy happened - he publicly announced that he's leaving religion and is now deist. Naturally, this caused a lot of butthurt in the youtube christian community because he's a popular christian vlogger (atheist bloggers tend to be far more popular). Anyways, he made this video about how he's leaving religion, and got a few video responses, to which he made another video, in which he asked The Question - how does MrRepzion being sexually molested in church corresponds to a god that is benevolent and has a plan?

Now, i'm an atheist so for me the answer is obvious - there's no god, hence there's no plan. But since i'm such an asshole and love to argue with both sides, i'll play a bit of a devil's (or god's) advocate here and answer his question.

You see, people don't get to take all the good stuff without giving something up beforehand. That's just not how it works. In a sense, christfags got that somewhat right that this is the test that god gives you, only it's not given by god. We all have some kind of struggles in life. The question is, what do you take out of it. This is the real test. The test is not going through hell, the test is not breaking in two while you do that.

In order to get to an upper level, you have to struggle. You have to beat the boss. You have to get hit multiple times, struck down to the ground, go through hell and back, get eaten, defecated out of the predator's body and eaten by ants. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. If you're weak, you'll come out of it as a villain. If you're strong, you'll come out even stronger. It's a chance, an opportunity that can either lead you to darkness, or get some hair on your chest.

You can see that throughout the human history. The self-sacrifices of people. The struggle for the cause. The nazi death camps. Hell, you could argue that Hitler was doing god's work in a sense that he screwed up so badly and made so many people struggle that the world ended up better overall just because of how many people have struggled, and how many got through and became better people.

So i say n00bs must suffer. It's the only way.