There is no meaning to life:
“Meaning” is itself a human construct, without humans the concept doesn’t exist. How could life itself be based on something that life thought up? It’s like saying a supercomputer was programmed using 1 billion digits of pi deep within its code and the same computer was the first to calculate pi to 1 billion digits. It’s a logistical nightmare.
People lie:
Ok, this one is fairly obvious, but it took me a while to realize the full extent that people will lie. Your friends will lie, your parents will lie, the government will lie, the school will lie and even your great Aunt Susie will lie. Just take a minute to think of anyone or anything you’ve ever trusted; now understand that you have been lied to, I know this because you already made the mistake of trusting them; maybe it was something small, but either way they lied. In fact, just think of everything you know, every value, idea or story you hold to be “true” and dig deep to find out if it is (just be careful of other people who tell you what you know is a lie, they could be lying too!). You’ll find out your whole life is based on a lie if you really do this, so I suggest you don’t. Really, ‘trust’ me on this one.
Nothing happens for a “reason”:
Whenever something either really lucky happens or whenever something really tragic happens people will say it happened for a “reason”. Sure, if you are actively looking for a reason you’ll find one but that doesn’t mean the event has any more purpose than anything else. It’s all a matter of perspective and there are only two: Some mysterious magical force is causing chains of events to happen so it’ll eventually line up favorably for you (wrong way) OR shit happens randomly (correct way). This kind of magical thinking (isn’t that a symptom of psychosis?) can actually turn out to be harmful when people expect “the universe” to fix an unfortunate turn of events instead of fixing it themselves (watch The Secret and you’ll know what I mean).
There’s really no such thing as “good” and “bad” people:
Good and bad are of course (as is everything you experience really) human constructs. They evolved out of necessity to allow our communities to thrive as widespread murder, rape, torture etc. is generally detrimental to societies; the societies that had ethics survived and the ones that didn’t died off (evolution). To keep people from being bad when no one was looking religions developed to make people believe there was some greater force that could distinguish between “good” and “bad” people and ultimately reward or punish them. That’s all fine and dandy for early civilizations (as is ritualistic sacrifice) but does it really make sense to call a person as a whole “bad” and deserving to go to hell? How did they end up bad? If it was because their parents beat them than that’s not really bad is it? God will let them off the hook for that. What if they were just raised that way, or what if they were really poor, or what if they were born with part of their brain missing? Is it ever really anyone’s fault how they turn out? Everyone is a unique person in unique circumstances and will do exactly what they would be expected to do in those circumstances. If you still believe someone should go to hell for any reason whatsoever please explain why.
You (yes you, the one reading this) are smarter than most people. Yes, I know statistically that doesn’t work out; however any measurement of intelligence is arbitrary. In my opinion/scale of intelligence anyone who realizes the above is “very intelligent” (as is anyone I consider as smart as me, smarter would be “fucking intelligent” and most extremists are “very unintelligent”). Only a few thousand people will read this if I’m lucky, so anyone who hasn’t read it will quite easily be ‘most people’.