Here's where Timicism stands on the following topics:+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
God
The Timicist is first and foremost agnostic. I'm not an atheist, because I can't say definitively that there is no God. That would be a proclamation I don't feel I'm qualified to make. There's enough stuff we don't understand to leave room for the possibility that there are higher beings that our tiny little human brains can't fathom.
However, the Timicist lives his life, essentially, as an atheist. I don't let the possible existence of a higher being influence my outlook or actions in this world.
If there is a God, this is what it would look like to the Timicist.
The Timicist God is NOT:
- ... anthropomorphic. That is, it does not look or act like humans.
- ... a benefactor, protector, or genie who exists to grant us wishes.
- ... susceptible to human emotions and motivations.
- ... watching over you and interfering in world events.
- ... engaging in a power struggles for human souls.
The Timicist God is is a force, an atmosphere, an energy and links all living things together. We are all part of it and it is part of all of us. It is something that we can tap into, some more than others, on those occasions when we feel an overwhelming sense of love, joy, or peace.
There are times when I think I am tapping into this energy. When I listen to REM's "Night Swimming" and the hair on the back of my neck stands up, for example. Sometimes my cat will sit on my lap and purr and look at me with such a look of contentment that I'm overwhelmed with a sense of love for this stupid little creature. It is at these times that I think, "If there is a God at all, then it is in my cat right now."+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Death
Timicism has no clear answers to what happens to us after we die. Since no one has ever come back to tell us about it (and proved it), it's impossible to know. It could be that we become a part of this great energy that surrounds us all, a part of God. Or it could be that nothing happens, that we simply cease to feel or think and that's the end of our existence (AKA the Big Dirt Nap.) Maybe what happens to us is such a mystery that we have to invent places like heaven and hell in order to relate to it on human terms.
But the most favored Timicist theory, the idea that would be most appealing to me, is that of reincarnation. I like the idea that I'll get to live again, but in a different body with a different mind and in a different environment. Maybe even on a different planet. My experiences growing up playing all kinds of video and computer games has contributed to this mindset. In all of those games, you can die an unlimited number of times, yet you always get another chance at a new beginning. I like the idea of getting to play the game again.
I don't have any proof that there's reincarnation. And I certainly wouldn't make any life decisions based on it. But I don't have any proof against it, either, which still allows for the possibility that I may get to play another game of life after I die. And even if it's just superstition, it's a harmless and comforting thought.+++++++++++++++++++++++
Fate & Free Will
The Timicist is a strong believer in luck. Obviously, there are smart decisions you can make to increase your luck and bad decisions that decrease it. But in the end, a whole lot of life is one big crap shoot.
When people pray to God and ask for things like good weather, a healthy baby, or success for their favorite sports team, what they're really doing is asking Fate to favor them. So I often use the word Fate where other people might say "God." Where you say "grace of God," I say "luck of Fate." The difference is that Fate is not sentient. It doesn't think or know what it's doing, and it's not doing you any favors on purpose.Whenever I look at a situation, I love to play the "What If?" game. We all do. I imagine how things could have turned out differently. "If only I had seen that stick in the road, I could have avoided the accident." But I didn't. And of all the possible ways things could have turned out, there's only one possible way things did turn out. That's Fate. There's no possible way to know if the huge and complex interactions between everything in the universe could have produced a different result, because there's only one result it did produce.
I do entertain the possibility that we have no, or very little, free will. I grew up in a scientific culture that's always looking for explanations. We debate whether nature or nurture, heredity or environment, make us the person we are. And we constantly try to understand where people are coming from, why they behave the way they do. I think these are very valuable things to know about ourselves, but if you take this kind of thinking to its logical extreme, it leads to a lack of free will. If we can explain why people are the way the are, and if we truly knew every minute detail of how a person functioned (we're currently a long way away from this), we should be able to predict how they would behave in a given situation, assuming we could analyze the millions of variables that go into it.So I don't know if I have free will or not. I certainly do believe that there are forces at work on us that we don't know about or understand, and they have a huge influence on how we behave. And when you mix that up with all the other (random?) events that happen in the universe, this is what the Timicist calls Fate.
This theory of no free will is not a license to act irresponsibly and give up on life. Even if the decisions we make are ultimately driven by other forces, it's important that we have the illusion of free will. Perhaps it's even a necessary component of our incredibly huge brains. (See below.)
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Biology & Science
I used to tell people, before I invented Timicism, that my religion was Science. I believe there is a certain order to the world, that everything in the universe obeys certain laws of behavior, and I call that order Science. Of course, Science doesn't know everything, and sometimes our scientific conclusions turn out to be wrong. Because Science comes from people, and people are fallible, a lot of what we conclude from it could prove to be wrong one day. But that's what I like about it.
More important than the conclusions of Science are its methods. Science insists that we develop, test, modify and prove or disprove hypotheses. Because of this, I put much more "faith" that Science will get at the truth much more reliably than organized religion, which tends to be pretty stubborn about change. This is what I mean when I say that Science is my religion. I choose to put my "faith" in Science, in the laws of the universe, rather than in an unprovable and untestable supreme being.
With my reliance on Science, I believe all human behavior can be reduced to biology. We are just animals with (relatively) huge brains, which makes us infinitely more complex than the other animals we share the planet with. Our huge brains are what separates us from the others: what inspires us to art, religion, laughter, speech, abstract thought. Our brains were originally an evolutionary survival tool, but now we are so complex that we often lose sight of the biological forces that act upon us.
As far as how Science & biology interact with God, death and fate, I don't think they are mutually exclusive. There's enough wiggle room in Timicist theology for them all to work together. I just haven't decided yet if God is a part of Science or if Science is a part of God, or if it even matters.
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Superstition
The Timicist has a few superstitions that he recognizes as (mostly) harmless. One of them is reincarnation (see above.) Here are some others.
Signs: Timicism, as you may have gathered by now, is a religion for indecisives. I don't like to jump to conclusions and like to take my time in making decisions. Often I don't like to make decisions at all. That's why I am eager to let anything I perceive as a sign decide things for me. I will often let random events decide things for me. For example, I once let the outcome of a basketball game decide for me if I was going to ask a girl out. (My team won, so I asked her out-- we ended up dating for two years.) Of course, you could argue that I probably wait until I receive a sign that favors the decision I would have made anyway, and you probably would be right. But it's more fun to call it a sign than to say all that other stuff.Karma: Another Timicist superstition is that of karma. While the idea of a cosmic moral bank account is important to the Timicist, the part where we are rewarded or punished based on our balance is just a superstition. It's fun to believe that maybe, when good things happen, I'm being rewarded for something positive that I've done. But this can be a dangerous superstition if it leads to the mindset that people always get what they deserve.
The Universe is Screwing With Me: Another Timicist superstition is the view that there is some grand plan, that God or the Universe or Fate has a plan for me and events often conspire to teach me a lesson or throw me a rope. I don't really believe these things are true, but sometimes it's fun to think them. Jinxes: If you want to insure that something will never happen, think and talk about it a lot. If there's something you really want, just spend all your time obsessing about it; it will surely never come true. Whatever scenario you act out in your head for any given situation, the reality will always be different. If you plan for something, it won't happen, or not like you planned it. This goes for positive and negative scenarios. If your overactive imagination plans for the worst-case scenario, it won't happen, either. Misfortune, just like fortune, sneaks up on you. [Update: I have revised my position on this. Read about it here.]
A corollary to this superstition is the key to Timicist Happiness: Always to keep your expectations low. Don't go into new situations with preconceived notions of how it will be, because if it doesn't live up to your expectations, you will be disappointed. As one wise person once pointed out to me, "Expectations are the devil's highway." I firmly believe that the best times are never planned. They happen spontaneously when you least expect them. The secret to happiness is to be in the right place at the right time, and to recognize it as such. Actually, this isn't a superstition, but something I really believe.
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