I'm a little over 1/5 of the way through with my novel!  Things are still going well, albeit slowly.  At least they're going, though.  Here's another excerpt:

After receiving his instructions, Xed began dreaming again, this time, completely on his own.  He dreamt of falling through the sky and crashing into a primitive ocean.  As he sank to the bottom, he continued looking up
at the sky.  It was bright, but he couldn't make out anything.  It all became an imcomprehensible blur as he sank even lower.  The light slowly began to dim, and before long, he found himself on the ocean floor, his fall
gently cushioned by the fine sand.  The pressure should have killed him, but in his dream, he had nothing to worry about, unless of course, he wanted to worry.  Cold, lost, and completely alone, he righted himself and stood on the bottom of the ocean.  He began walking, but the intense pressure and the frigid temperature soon began to sap his remaining energy.  As he fell once again to the soft, sandy surface beneath him, he suddenly felt as if his body was being ripped apart.  His mind felt as though it had exploded, and then, as if by a miracle, reassembled to a state of perfection.  The shock had woken him up, but he was no longer in the saline tank.  He blinked his eyes a few times and looked around.  To his horror, he found himself alone in the woods, completely naked and terribly pruny.

For those of you who know a little about me, you'll know that as far as religion is concerned, I'm of the opinion that I don't know anything for certain, and as of now, I can't really prove much of anything, either.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster could be the real creator of the universe for all I know.

Reading the arguments on Xanga can be fairly interesting, although most of the time, the debaters end up agreeing to disagree.  It's highly unlikely that you can convince someone to make a complete about face just by citing the same arguments we've all heard since the beginning of the Interwebz.  Amazing testimonies are matched up with sound scientific theories, biological explanations of the mechanics of the mind are pitted against personal revelations, ad nauseum.  To me, it simply comes down to a matter of faith.  What did you feel?  What did you experience?  How could it be explained, if it could be explained at all?

I don't know how people answer those questions, since I'd have to get in their heads to find out.  I don't mean "get in their heads" like a psychologist might, but I mean "really get in there and see what synapses were going off."  Until I can do that, I'll never know exactly what you or your aunt or your brother experienced, so I'm not qualified to make any judgements.

What I do know is that a lot of religions seem pretty ridiculous.  From a detached point of view, there aren't many out there that seem completely reasonable in their development or current incarnations, but then again, nature itself is pretty strange, too.  I'll admit, the strangeness and abstract ideas in many religions are a little unsettling to me, considering many people use them as a basis for how they live, but in many cases, I can't disprove a lot of the deeper assumptions.  Namely, issues like the existence of a supreme being, a collective human psyche, the afterlife, or final judgement.  There are so many different incarnations of those ideas, and they're so abstract it's difficult to say "Myth Busted" about any particular one since the proof would be impossible to formulate.

Given certain assumptions, we might be able to rule things out.  For example, if a religion stated that a certain Thomas W. Wesker of Liverpool was the one true God, and that in His glory, He will run naked through the streets next Tuesday, no exceptions, we have a few things to watch out for.  If in fact there is no Thomas W. Wesker, or for that matter, anyone running through the streets naked at all next Tuesday, then all we can say is that Thomas W. Wesker isn't the one true God.  We can't say there isn't a god at all, since the idea is so abstract that we can't even begin to answer it.

For my own spiritual development, I choose not to make many assumptions.  I tend to view things skeptically before I assume they automatically work.  I know people who take Ouija boards very seriously (owing in part, I think, to the movie Paranormal Activity), but I'm a little less convinced.  I know a few people who believe in auras, but since those are things I can't measure, I'm less inclined to have an opinion one way or the other.  If I cannot measure it, then I treat it neutrally.

But anyway, I'm going to shift gears here and rag on my atheist buddies for a while.  I know a few folks who are atheists, and for the most part, they're pretty good people.  They're kind, respectful, and usually quite intelligent.  However, there are a few who make me wonder why they chose to be atheists, considering the subject of their most vitriolic verbal attacks.  To clarify, I'm writing about the atheists who have it out for one particular religion.

That religion could be Christianity, or any of its many derivatives.  It could be Judaism, it could be Islam, it could be anything.  But more often than not, these atheists will generally pick on one particular religion without mercy.  Of course, there are a few who opt for equal opportunity, i.e., no one is safe, but I don't see many of them.  I even know a couple who will extol the benefits of certain religions over their particularly hated target.  Why is this?  Why do so many atheists almost exclusively pick on one religion versus the thousands of others in the world?

I can't speak for everyone, but I felt this way for a while.  As I became more agnostic, I was repulsed by some of the more unsavory elements of my old Christian ways.  The power structures, the dogma, the televangelists... they sickened me.  Other religions still seemed to become increasingly unbelievable, but I still had it out for Christianity.  I felt angry that I had spent so much time on it as a kid, that so much of my personality had been developed around its scripture and its teachings.  Where was my input in this?  I couldn't believe what I wanted to believe, and I felt as though the first 20 years of my life were spent in a brainwashed stupor.  Damn it!  Why did it happen this way?  What did they do to me?

I began discrediting Christianity as though it were my own personal blood vendetta.  I resented having no say in my religion as a child, and I resented having my spirituality prepackaged for me.  Then, something happened.  I remember listening to one of my colleagues in my old research group talk about religion.  He lambasted Christianity, and for a moment, I felt sorry for it.  Strange thing, to feel sorry for an idea, but I did, even though I harbored a lot of the same feelings.  His attacks were well-prepared and well-executed, but I couldn't help pointing out flaws whenever they surfaced.  The thing I noticed later was that his whole argument was about religion, not just Christianity, but it was the latter that got all the flak.

What I'm trying to say here is that I realized I was missing the point of being an agnostic.  It wasn't about hating Christianity.  It wasn't about hating religion.  No, to do that would just be immature.  It wouldn't be the way I saw the universe - it would just be a rebellion against my upbringing.  At least, that's how I was treating it.  To be an agnostic, what I really needed to do was be a skeptic.  I needed to demand proof before passing judgement, and that went for everything, not just one particular belief.

I've definitely been less confrontational about religion lately, and frankly, I like it.  Being an agnostic is to be a free man.  I'm not tied down by anything, and I'm free to explore and investigate to my heart's content.  The investigation is what keeps me going, and the fact that I'm able to float freely through this universe is one of the best feelings I can describe.