Ducks, The End of The World, and Other Silly Stuff Like That.

On Friday night, my friends and I went to Dapur Bebek. It's located on Bojongsoang, near the entrance the of the GBA residence. I know right, ducks. I've been eating a lot of ducks lately. Contrary to my former belief about this stupid species, ducks taste good.

Anyway, this post won't be about how yummy they taste, this post will be about the end of world.

So, when we were eating those stupid ducks, Mutia told us a story where she'd been robbed at gunpoint. It happened in Aceh years ago. She and her family was on their way to Medan by car (I think) when suddenly they got ambushed by some guys from GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka). They demanded 10 million rupiahs or else her uncle would be taken as a hostage up in the mountain. Mutia told us that one of the rebels pointed a gun on her head. And they demanded every girls who used jeans to take off their jeans so that they could burn it (because apparently jeans are one of the tools used by satan to destroy mankind, heh, stupid GAM). And I forgot how it went, but the rebels finally agreed to lessen the ransom, from 10 million to 2 million rupiahs. Then, wait....no, this isn't important. I wasn't gonna write about this was I? What was I gonna write? Oh, the end of the world, right.

I don't know what brought us to that topic. But we did. Four of us (that's all of us except me) argued that life will end (kiamat) when the sun dies, around 5 billions from now. Well I disagree. I was a bit more optimistic. By then, mankind will hopefully have the technology to move to another habitable planet somewhere in the universe. Fuck yea humanity.

I knew that someday the whole universe will explode (although another theory said it will implode), but that won't happen until a ridiculously long time (more than a googol years, or 10¹⁰⁰ years, from now). So there's no reason to worry about it.

I just realize now that I forgot to put other factors into the equation. What if a huge asteroid hits the earth before we know how to space travel? Well, humanity could face the same fate with the dinosaurs. But I'm sure humans are smarter than those reptiles, so yeah I'm still optimistic that human will survive till the universe dies.

This discussion naturally led us to another topic: religion. They asked me what will happen after I die. I went along explaining what it meant to be an agnostic. You see, agnosticism is not the same with atheism. Atheists don't believe in the existence of god. They're so sure of themselves that I think they're not better than religious people.

Agnosticism is the believe that basically state "I don't know". Because, just admit it, you don't actually know about god, do you? All the things you believe until this very moment were told by your parents or your teachers. But they couldn't prove them either. No they couldn't. They just read about them in a book that's written a very long time ago. But you want to believe them anyway because... that's what a belief means. To believe is to accept that something is true without the need of any evidence.

The atheists, on the other hand, think that everything that's written in holy books are false, and that god doesn't exists, 100% sure.

We agnostics say: we don't know. Yes, repeat after me: we. don't. know.

So when they asked me what will happen after I die? I simply said what I had to say: I don't know.

(intermezzo: seriously, I like girls who would talk about heavy stuff, like religion and women's rights and monkeys and Britpop music. I despise party girls, or as some people say, "woo girls". Not the ones who go to parties occasionally, but the ones whose lives are inside the party. No offense okay girls, I don't mean to be sexists, there are "woo men" too. If you would like an example, um, Black Eyed Peas).

I couldn't remember if it was Gladys or Mutia, but one of them asked this next question: "Which religion would you teach to your kids?" Hm. Tough question. First of all, I don't know how to raise a kid, yet. Your kid is the biggest investment you'll ever have. Hell, for evolutionists, breeding--hence ensuring the continuity of our species--is the main goal in life. So I will be very careful about raising mine. My answer was, "I will teach them the basic of all religions.". Well, it dazed them a bit. Said that it would make my kids confused, what if your kid ask you about the origin of life? which god is the correct one? bla bla bla. As you probably know, I'm a slow thinker. So instead of answering with a witty comeback, I said, "relax, I know what I'm doing". Mutia and Gladys was curious about how my kids will turn out, so I offered them this: "Ok, let's meet again when we have kids". So there you go, a tiny pact was made: 14 years from now, the five of us will meet on Dapur Bebek to see how my kids will turn out, compared to their kids.

I forgot to tell them one more thing though, that when I have kids, the two top priority lessons I would teach them are these: Logic & Compassion.

Which brings us to the last topic being talked that night: If you won't teach your kid a particular religion, how would your kid knows morality?

*Prett* I farted.

They argued that religions are the source of all morality.

No it's not. Mankind learned morality through trials and errors. They find some things are better than others ("better" means it gives more shared benefits to the whole population) and then they call it moral. If you don't agree with this, just ask yourself: "Do monkeys kill each other?". Okay let me answer that for you, the answer is NO. How would monkeys know that killing is immoral? From a religious text book? No. Through time, they found out that killing is bad, and they just don't do it anymore.

What about humans? Humans kill each other. Yes. But humans eventually created laws which forbid killings, loooooooong time before they wrote Vedas (kitab Weda), and even looooooooooonger time before "God" created Torah.

Just my two cents.

Shit this post is longer than the length of my Kapita Selekta essay multiplied by three. I should stop.

Conclusions:
- The world will end, but life don't have to end at the same time.
- But when the universe end, everything ends.
- I don't know what will happen after I die, or after the universe dies, nor do you.
- Religious people believe in god, atheists don't believe in god.
- Agnostics think both religious people and atheists are either too scared/too arrogant to accept the fact that we just don't know.
- I will teach my kids the basic of all religions, and let them decide their religion themselves, if any.
- I will teach them logic & compassion. I think these two things are the seeds of morality.
- I like girls who can talk about heavy stuff.
- I farted.
- I've been eating a lot of ducks lately.
- It's the second post in a row where I talked about animals (yesterday was caterpillar). I think I'm gonna write one more animal related post tomorrow. It's gonna be about pigs.