Friday, July 24, 2009
Apple??? It's good!!!
During a conversation I had with a friend yesterday over lunch, my friend told me about his former roommate's belief that nothing really exists. According to roommate, all "reality" is simply perceived... he went into weird stuff about photons bouncing off stuff, but my friend told him that photons have to bounce off something real and tangible. Honestly, it was all too weird and twisted for me to fully understand and relay here to this blog, but what I'm getting at is something I knew but needed to address directly: You can believe whatever you want.
I've heard from more than one of my non-Christian friends that religion is a construct for coping and nothing more. Now, I agree with this statement. Coping has negative connotations, but all it really means is dealing with a situation to bring about success (whatever that is). So, to me, saying that religion is a coping mechanism is kind of a moot point. Life is coping. Once you start throwing subjective terms around, the foundation of the argument turns to sand and no real point is being made.
So yeah, you can believe whatever you want or believe in not believing, as some like to pretend is a possibility. As my last post pretty well portrays, I've been struggling with belief. But what gets me is that belief is real. The fact that we actually *can* believe. Nuts. This is just a small part of what has me pretty well convinced that God exists. According to C.S. Lewis, I at least have "Faith A" down, meaning I believe in the existence of a god. "Faith B," having faith in the God of the Bible -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- is where more people have hangups.
No, I can't construct a perfect logical argument for Faith B like I so desire, but I've not been so bothered by my lack of flawless argument for Faith A. Clearly, you can't argue faith. Duh. I'm just saying I don't understand why I let that bother me in one case of faith and not in another. I've built up a lot of mostly lame excuses for trying to abandon the God I've been worshiping for so long, but I think I'm finally running out of steam. This (of course) brings me back to Ecclesiastes:
"What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun." -Eccl. 1:9
These thoughts and doubts I've been having are not new. People have been doubting forever, and I'm sure many, like me, have run out of steam. All the reasons I make up for not finding belief in God necessary crumble, including the reasons that revolve solely around my own "success." I don't know how much longer I'm going to let Satan dangle this tempting yet unreachable fruit in front of my face, but I'm exhausted from running after it. Not to mention, I am completely lacking nourishment as a result.
And again, thank God, there's no conclusion. Just a continuation.
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Mmm, Ecclesiastes. Those are some thought-provoking lines there and no mistake. I know what you mean about debating the rationality of faith. Believe me, I've tried. Faith is inherently irrational since it doesn't appeal to any of our senses tangibly but we still need it. If you'll see my most recent blog post, you'll see that I talked to a guy last night about faith. It's hard and often, it's something that produces no feelings in us whatsoever. If we measure our faith by our feelings then it's going to constantly change. I heard something interesting in a sermon the other day: the root of the English word "hapiness" is "hap" which means "chance." Needless to say, faith should transcend chance or our circumstances. If we believe that faith is "the conviction of things not seen...and without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him" (Heb 11:3,6).
ReplyDeleteI may or may not have man-handled this topic away from what you originally intended so...feel free to take the above and dismiss it as one of my ramblings. Or not.
PS: I love the Enchanted quote! I can just see you saying that!
I think religion is definitely a coping mechanism..of the very best kind. (The real kind?)
ReplyDeleteidk..like, there's no conclusion to atheism. The conclusion is that there's absolutely no meaning to anything, so that anything you do makes absolutely no difference, and then you become bitter and restless and do bad things as a result of the hopelessness. As C.S. Lewis said somewhere in this large collection of his stuff I've been flipping through, there must be a solid meaning to life or we would not be able to know that there wasn't one. I used to not be so sure about that logic, but since I have to believe in Good and Evil and Heaven and Hell as a result of believing in Christianity, doesn't everything have to have an opposite? Does trusting in the right religion provide you with that one, real meaning?
Ok I just looked up the quote: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. 'Dark' would be a word without meaning."
I dunno if that *actually* makes a good point, but I think it does. :P