Reflections on desperate situations and lost causes

Concerning Being and the Exquisite Necessity of Suffering

4:24 PM - 1/5/2006 - comments {2} - post comment

Concerning Being and the Exquisite Necessity of Suffering

Concerning Being and the Exquisite Necessity of Suffering

I

I Believe in God and yet I know that that does not establish the existence of a God or gods of any type. I have no proof that God exists and I feel my arguments to prove His existence would sound trite and worn. And yet, I choose to believe.

II

I do not believe I will be rewarded fro believing in the existence of God anymore than I would be punished if I chose not to believe. To believe or not to believe in some respects can be the same thing.

III

If I choose to believe in God there is no reason to try and convince another person of God´s existence. It does increase or decrease the nature of God if I argue my personal views with another person. If I choose not to believe in a God there is no reason to challenge someone who does and try to undermine their faith. Either course is vain and self-serving.

IV

If someone tries to challenge my faith or my lack of it changes nothing at all. The nature of God and of everything in the Universe stays the same. Nothing changes even if I do or someone else does. If I know the Truth or I am utterly confused, the nature of Truth and the Universe stays the same.

V

I do not believe God can be petitioned with prayer and yet I pray sometimes, and feel I should pray more. In fact, even if God does not exist I feel it is not unreasonable to pray. It is not even inconceivable to pray that God exists. In this sense one does not pray for a reward or to avoid a punishment. One prays for the hope that life is vested with some meaning after all. And even if life has no meaning and there is no God, it is really no different than if there were. Suppose we God say exists, and suppose we say He does not. When we look out the window the world has not changed one bit.

5:22 PM - 12/15/2005 - comments {1} - post comment

CONCERNING BEING ANDTHE EXQUISITE NECESSITY OF SUFFERING

         CONCERNING BEING AND THE EXQUISITE

NECESSITY OF SUFFERING

I

When a person has lived most of his life not accepting the possibility that God exists in any form and then they struggle with the desire to believe that He does in some way his life becomes a world of new conflicts and challenges in regards explanations and reasons. A new category of questions emerges and he is forced, against his will, to try and define a thing he once argued was indefinable. There is no choice. Evil must be attempted to be explained now with a God in the background of it all. Does life continue or cease after death? How can he be sure of anything he thinks and has an opinion on regarding what is indefinable?

II

If you are driven to believe in God then you are consequently driven to give to God a character, a nature. You have are forced into assigning God attributes that seem dubious. How can I ever be sure that the attributes I assign to God are not simply the attributes I want God to have? If I say God is forgiving and merciful on what basis do I rest that argument. Not to say there are not brilliant arguments to give to support any statement we can make about God, but how can I ever be 100% certain that the conclusion I have reached is not tainted, poisoned by own limited intellect, my own corruptions and desires.

III

If I say God is a forgiving and merciful God, maybe all I am saying is that I want a God that will be forgiving and merciful with me. The whole situation becomes problematic for me. If God is merciful then will He not simply bestow mercy on me, or do I have to do something... jump though some burning hoop of fire... to receive that mercy? How can I, or anyone, be 100% certain that they have not erred and jumped through the wrong hoop? Some people have an absolute degree of certainty about their position, that the hoops they are leaping through are the correct ones. But if two people are diametrically opposed in their positions how can they both be right even if they are both 100% certain that they are correct? How can you verify the unknowable? Some people will argue that the unknowable can be known. If not with absolute accuracy they will say that they have concluded that 2+2=5, which is closer to the Truth than saying 2+2=8. But when speaking of God no one can truly make the claim that 2+2=4. You would have to be God Himself to make such a claim.

I want a God who is merciful and who will forgive me, or I want a system at least wherein there is some concept of redemption. A system where my life can be changed and I can become a new thing. But I ask with exhaustion, how can I know that the system is truly this thing, and that it is not simply this thing because I want it to be? Simply because I want or need God to exist does not bring a nonexistent God suddenly into being. So I am pinned on the horns of a dilemma. I can choose to simply believe in a God or a system of redemption for no other reason than I am driven to believe out of human despair and hope that in believing I find some consolation and comfort. Or I can choose to not believe and free myself of all the doubts belief generates (though not believing does not mean not doubting, else why would I have chosen to believe?) Yet, in not believing I am forced to accept the Universe as a cold and brute fact, and not thing possibly possessed of a higher and more sublime purpose.

V

2:09 PM - 12/8/2005 - comments {2} - post comment

Concerning Being and the Exquisite Necessity of Suffering

Concerning Being and the Exquisite Necessity of Suffering 

 I

There are many reasons to believe in God and maybe as many not to. But it seems that most people choose to believe in the existence of God despite the sounds arguments to the contrary. Some people believe in God and it has nothing to with reason and logic, but rather they are driven to believe in God. It is not that they cannot face life and death in a Godless universe, but they cannot face themselves in the mirror any longer.

II

In the end all the brilliant arguments for and against by people like Thomas Aquinas and Anthony Flew are not what determine the decision as to whether some people begin to pray and hope, it the coldness and length of a solitary night and the vast unknown of a dark future alone.

III

Some people call this type of coming to believe as cowardly. The inability to face life on life´s terms. This may well be true, and if it is so what. In the end cowards and heroes wind up in the same forgotten place.

IV

Life forces upon us decisions we would rather not have to make, and we experience events and moments we would avoid had we any choice. Life is rather chaotic and jumbled for many people and maybe for most or all. Some people are able by some method to impress upon the chaos some illusionary pattern of order that gives their lives direction and a kind of balance. It is not relevant that the pattern branded onto the zigzag of daily life is an illusion or not. In fact it may well not be an illusion. Who am I to say yes or no to these grand things. I do know that I was driven in one dark night to believe in the existence of God and I have tried to find some solace or comfort in that tenuous belief ever since that night. If my faith is irrational I do not care as I have tried to be the rational angry atheist and failed. I lost all my faith in atheism. If I believe in God because I am a coward then I am a coward and I am not ashamed.

V

As one gets older his arrogance wanes. It is easy to laugh at death when one is twenty or even thirty. It is easy to be flippant with God and hope. But as times continues forward one's Being is worn away as if by erosion. Not only the flesh, but the soul and mind as well. It is not easy to laugh at death when the shadows he casts over you grows shorter and shorter. You begin to learn a little respect.

7:52 PM - 11/15/2005 - comments {0} - post comment