Abstract-Expressionist Painting Philosophy

More paintings will be posted shortly. I’ve been thinking too much - again - and find it more difficult as a result to find meaning in my art or even care.

Everyone with an IQ above a houseplant wonders about the meaning of life at least occasionally. I’ve made a career out of it.

But having studied religion, gone to Bible college and become an “expert” in the subject, I can tell you that there are no answers that will satisfy… at least, not real answers. Lovely and wonderful fantasy answers abound.

Religion is the human way to explain instincts and give comforting answers to uncomfortable questions. However, it is important to remember that religion stories are no more real than Harry Potter or Bilbo Baggins. They all come from the same place in that humans have a desire to feel like there is something more to life than the struggle for existence and to reproduce - yet they are all based in fantasy and illusion rather than reality.

What happens when you die? THat’s the question all religion is created to answer. All the moral stuff is thrown in to justify human instinctive behavior and to control it. Really, religion is always about death …and fear.

So what is death really about? Unless you have an insatiable need for the truth, you probably should stop reading here.

I’m an expert in religion, not biology, but I can tell you a few things. Here’s a thing about death: We all have a taste of this in dreamless sleep. Consciousness actually exists on a low level because people who are asleep still have some sense of passing of time. And of course dreamless sleep is periodically broken up by REM dreaming, but in between is a lot of nothing.

A better example would be that of deep anesthesia. Here, consciousness is reduced to a point where even the passing of time is lost. Remember that these events happen with a fully functioning brain, but somehow people would like to think when the brain ceases to function completely that all of a sudden we will be more conscious than deep sleep. UH-huh …we all wish!

Some people put their faith in near death experiences to support the otherwise completely unsupported fantasies of religion but those experiences always take place with a functioning brain deprived of oxygen. That’s the same state, by the way, people get by huffing spray paint and glue.

Sometimes people tell me that near death experiences have happened to people who are brain dead, but there are at least two problems with that.
1) I don’t believe that anyone has ever come back from being brain dead. As far as I know, that’s not possible. What I think they are really talking about is people who are in such deep comas that brain activity drops below measurable levels. But the brain is still ALIVE at this time. And this is only one phase of a deep coma.
2) If a person is unconscious for hours, days or weeks they really don’t have a concept of time passing so who is to say exactly when they had their experiences? In other phases, as they are coming out of a coma, they are closer to sleep like states, which include rapid eye movement.

Well, I don’t want to go on and on about this right now. I understand how millions of people desperately need to believe in their religion, to the point where they will threaten your life when you point out that they have built their lives on stories and myths instead of reality. That’s a very strong need, isn’t it?

But needing to believe something doesn’t make it true. And at the very minimum the fact that you recognize that you need to believe in something in order to carry on with life - and that need is what drives you, not truth and not reality - should give one pause when attempting to shove your reliance on a fantasy down the throats of others.

I confess: I’m one of those people who have a desperate need to believe. So I know how it feels. The problem is I know too much about life and I know too much about religion to just wallow in the fantasy. That makes life tough for me, I know, but that’s who I am.

Now maybe the news isn’t all bad, and I will opine more in future posts. I can’t always give you what you want, brothers and sisters. Sometimes, all I can give you is the truth.