important, but not urgent.

first off, let's give my marketing manager, fanny, some credit for this wonderful if not completely all-encompassing system of classification :s no, it's not SWOT (as in, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), although i believe it does come in a similar format of a big square cut into smaller quarters.
important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important and not urgent and not important ("then don't do la", says cynthia)

while that was totally pointless, i just had to put it up, for in itself is a tongue twister. important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, not important and not urgent.
just like "les chausettes d'archi-duchesse sont seches et archi-seches." seriously, must try. it's worse than peter piper and the pickled pepper. literally, the socks of the arch duchess are dry and extra dry :s which reminds me of nature brut, extra brut, brut, sec, demi sec, doux..

that's it for the rambling. today's incendiary post was instigated by Anna (yes, the ac arts anna wang) after she stole my quote from the god delusion - it's got nothing directly related to the justifiability of the existence of religion; rather, the irritating nature of what we can safely term "lazy christians". Notice, then, that lazy christians are a subset (proper subset, actually) of christians in general, so if there's any one group to blame for the existence of the following incendiary opinion, please, hunt down those particular lazy people.

Lazy - the entire idea encapsulated in this fable of sorts I heard:
once, there was this farmer who was immensely pious, details of such behavior I have no ability to describe. one day, there came a flood in his village, and the government ordered an evacuation due to the threat to villagers' lives. Rescue vehicles went to pick villagers up but when one stopped in front of the house of this particular farmer, he goes "no, don't worry. God will save me". Despite the pleadings of the rescuers, he desisted. Days later, flood waters covered the entire first floor of his house. A rescue boat came along outside his second floor window where he was hiding from the waters and offered to rescue him - again, "My god will save me - don't worry!"; a week later, he's found taking refuge on the roof of his house, with everything below submerged. A rescue helicopter comes along and offers to pick him up "Sir, you have to leave or you'll die!" again, "Don't worry about me - God will save me!" Eventually, of course, he dies (causes of which are irrelevant), and assuming, for fictional purposes, the existence of spirits, he turns into a very angry ghost. One day, he meets God, and questions him "I believed so firmly in you, but when I was in need, WHY DIDN'T YOU COME AND SAVE ME?!"
God tells him "I tried to save you, but you refused. First, I sent the rescue vehicles; then I sent the boat; then, I sent the helicopter. All three times, you refused my help. How can you say, then, that I didn't save you?"

the point, essentially, is that there're so many incidents where people do have the chance to take control of their lives; instead, making a false claim to "faith" and in an occurrence of divine intervention in a self-conceived stereotypical form (i.e. light from the sky, angels coming down and picking you up vs. angels in blue riding in cars, boats and helicopters) as a reason to be effectively (rather, ineffectively) lazy and wait for things to happen.

If anything, I'd think that the central purpose of religion associates itself with the human mentality - in times of difficulty, we have the ability to go against natural circumstances and be proactive against the conditions that prevent us from progressing. It's what makes us human, and even objectively, based on the idea that religion in itself is a human construct, there can be no benefits from believing in the existence of divine beings who set standards of morality and performance for us to meet. It's all in the process of raising the bar for human evolution and progress - while the actual bar may not exist, believing that it does lets us know that we've failed when we hit it (supposedly) and we've succeeded when we've crossed it - hence the idea that the sky's the limit.

here's my take on religion and belief - it should be our impetus for further, accelerated progress; divine purpose is very well the intangible manifestation of the cumulative effect of long periods of rumination into a seemingly illogical but emotionally acceptable decision. After all, people make emotional decisions and fill it up with logical substantiations; logic is secondary, and when we find that no logic can explain what we've decided on, at least we've got the entire notion of divine purpose/calling to back it up. and it's perfectly fine. for them, at least.

damn you lazy christians. you give the entire bunch a bad name - god gave you an existence so that you could make the most out of it in a allocatively, if not socially, efficient manner. by being lazy and waiting for things to happen, you throw nothing but insult back at the hand that fed you. thankfully, you're a minority. better remain that way.

whee - finally got this off my chest. feels good :) sounds familiar? think prison break.