More on faith.

The most productive thing I did today was to put a turkey in the brine so I can cook it tomorrow.
The most obvious symptom of getting older for me seems to be the inability to recover from all nighters. I can still do them, but it seems to take a couple days now to get over it, rather than one full night of sleep.

I slept through breakfast, watched Seattle completely dominate Minnesota, ate a boxed lunch that was intended for attendees at the event I worked but was left behind and given tome by an employee who didn't want to throw it out, ordered donuts and pizza, and slept off and on.

But I did think a little bit about the even again, and realized I talked some about how I felt like it was a calculated attempt to take advantage of people's faith, but didn't really talk about what that meant to me or even why I cared, not being religious myself.

First, faith means different things to different people, and for me faith and atheism aren't necessarily incompatible. My faith lies more with people and systems rather than with god, spirits, or whatever else a religion might posit. I could try to be superior and say I believe in things that have science backing them, and this is sort of true, but I don't think that is the same as having faith in something, faith, to me, implies trusting without proof, and so I am pretty sure the scientific method doesn't qualify as a belief system really.
And I don't really have any proof that people are worth my faith, not really. Every day in fact there is news of someone fucking things up for others in the worst way and for the worst reasons, murder and mayhem, and possibly worse, the calculated(there's that word again) way others take advantage of that mayhem for their own gain.
Yet despite all that, I still have faith that things will get better, that people in large part are either good or, at worst, neutral, and that the good is continually getting the upper hand over the bad. I feel like that is supported by looking at history, and perhaps even could be argued from an evolutionary perspective, but if I said I had absolute proof of it I would be lying.

In the end, it isn't so different than what others believe when informed by religion, we get there from different angles, but the end result is the same in a lot of ways.

So shit like the event yesterday sort of pushes my buttons, the people who attended came because they wanted to see their faith reinforced, or possibly because they were looking for something to believe in, or maybe even because they really love Christian rock(this is unlikely). But they are there honestly, and having seen the set up, listened to some of the rehearsals, and looked at all the ways the event is set up to remove attendees from as much of their money as possible, hell being involved in that part myself, I just don't see how the organizers and performers are coming from a place of holiness, or, I don't know, charity I guess?

It's a religious circus, but a real circus doesn't lie to you, the games are rigged sure, but they aren't promising you anything more than an amusing night out in return for as much of your money as they can get. This place is promising salvation with its spectacle, and more or less offering it in return for your money. Now I know they aren't literally saying "buy our crap or go to hell" but they don't have to, all they have to do is create an atmosphere where the customer tells that to themselves, it's pretty basic advertising and when used on the religious by someone they view with authority, it's really effective.
I don't look down on the attendees for any of this, they were all very nice to me while I worked, and they are not to be blamed for falling victim to marketing tricks, especially by me, who has spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on cardboard rectangles with an arbitrary value attached to them.

I blame the organizers, and the system that encourages this crap, if they really gave a damn about Jesus they wouldn't be charging a hundred bucks a ticket, pretty sure the man himself had something to say about money in churches, also about public expressions of faith too.

At its heart it is less honest than the Amway events I have worked, and they are basically a cult centered around buying garbage.

That's all I got.