Subject: Re:uplift
From: Cecilia Baader (cbaader@cubsmvp.com)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 00:06:19 GMT
Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie> wrote:
> My problem isn’t an indifference to these eternal values.
> MY problem - & I don’t think I’m alone - is how difficult
> I find it (& more so with every passing year) to combat
> the argument that they are essentially illusory, that there
> need be no underlying supernatural ‘explanation’ to things,
> that the universe is best understood as a sequence of arbitrary
> events & that these wonderful, numinous experiences that
> we call ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ are no more than the firing
> of certain groups of neurones in the human cortex.
Certainly you're not alone there. But. I guess that I look at it
from the other direction. If I cannot prove something is absolutely false,
then I cannot reject it. I may not necessarily accept it either, but
I will not deny the possibility that the truth is the explanation that
should not make sense. How many times has a breakthrough been made
that proves that what all of mankind believed to be true was utterly
false? The world is not flat. A land war in Asia is a bad idea.
There is something smaller than an atom. Bloodletting is more likely
to kill someone than cure them.
So is there a God? I cannot prove that there is not.
Actually, I cannot prove much of anything. Perhaps I am a brain in a
box and I am only imagining the world and science and this keyboard
clicking beneath my fingers (and if that's true, then I'm a genius),
or perhaps not. All that I can prove is that I am a thinking being.
Cogito ergo sum, n'est-ce pas?
It's the same old argument. If I can prove that I am a thinking being,
then the only thing that matters is my perception of reality. Or, to
continue the argument of Descartes, things which I perceive very clearly
and very distinctly are true. If I perceive something outside of myself
then it exists. The world, for instance. And if I did not create it,
then someone else did. The classic proof of a God.
And I've never run up against an argument that proves to me that what
good old Rene Descartes had to say about the subject was utterly false.
Perhaps I created this and don't understand that I did, for it was before
I gained a consciousness of self. Perhaps. But I think that if I were in
charge of everything, the Cubs would have won a lot more ballgames. I'm
thinking that explanation is the least likely.
I just don't know, though, when it comes right down to it. So I have a
choice: embrace a God or reject Him. Reject Him, and form a cult of Me.
Because if another did not make all of this, then I must have done it.
Perhaps it's all just science. Perhaps it's just synapses firing and atoms
making bonds with each other. Maybe it all comes down to the laws of Physics
and Chemistry and the like and I'm just fooling myself. There's a grace
to the way that all things fit together that I love, a melody that repeats
itself from the smallest water molecule to the sea that's made up of them.
Break me down and you'll find more of the same. (Sometimes I think that
Science is just as much a religion as any other. And you've got far more
believers in the atom these days than in, say, Adam. Bad joke. Sorry.)
It's a way, a Buddha-Truth. A Tao? I like the sheer beauty of that.
What I do know is that the more I look at various belief systems, the more
some sort of Truth seems to emerge. Salvation comes through the betterment
of self. Salvation is absolute closeness with God. And the things that
get in the way of that closeness are the things that all of us like the best.
But the promise is always that if we can get beyond all of these worldly
things, what God has to offer is a thousand times better. The semantics
differ, but the message is very much the same.
It's little wonder, then, that people reject it, or accept a partial message
because that's what they were trained to believe by their parents. It's
not easy. Downright impossible, if you ask me.
But that's where the faith comes in. The choice to embrace the message, to
live it. Here's the rub: you either believe or you don't. And not
believing seems to me like it's just as much a choice of faith as believing.
So I believe. It's too hard not to.
Whether I live it or not is a different story. You're far more likely to find
me on a barstool than in a church pew, unfortunately. But hey, I'm a good
Catholic. I feel guilty about it the whole time.
So I guess that what I'm saying is that I don't not believe. Therefore,
I must believe. It's a strange proof, and not altogether mine, but hey.
I told you I didn't think all this up on my own.
(This is the part where everyone gets to call me naive, by the way.)
Regards,
Cecilia.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu May 17 2001 - 17:47:53 GMT