“The real mystery of things is not what they are, but that they are.”
I don’t want to scandalize anyone - but for some time now, I’d say almost two years, I’ve not felt something I’ve felt my entire life, ever since being a little boy who looked up into the night sky and saw the stars and thought and felt, “God exists.” I still have faith in God’s existence. I still know, in a sense, that God exists. But how do I feel? That intution, that feeling, and even my reasons, have somehow left me. It is very odd. Because I have memories of those feelings and reasons, but I no longer really have that feeling or think those reasons. I have memories of my logical reasons for believing - but these memories are old, dusty, and have little daily impact except that I know that I once proved God’s existence to myself as a settled matter. But this reasoning isn’t at the ‘tip of my mind’, so to speak. The settled matter remained settled, but somehow forgotten. It is just a memory of sorts. And so I find myself praying, asking God to guide me, and I find him saying - ‘return to the beginning, to the stars, to the reasons that you had in the first place, to seeking me with your whole heart and whole mind’.
And so I begin again, by asking myself, does God exist? I feel that I still have faith - I still choose to follow God, even as I grope numb and blind. I have not turned from him, though I no longer perceive him as I once did. So I turn my thoughts and my heart again to this vital question - does God exist? Not in the sense of questioning his existence, but in the sense of - where are you, why are you, how are you, who are you?
I think that this will become a series of posts about my renewed search for God. Does it seem absurd to search for something you already know exists? Well, think about losing your car keys. You know the keys exist. You know you need the car to get where you’re going. You even know what the keys look like. But for your life, you can’t remember where those keys are. You can’t find them. You’ve kind of stopped looking for them. You ponder the idea that they are lost forever. But no. They are here somewhere. They are simply misplaced. And so too is my conviction in God’s existence - my subjective feelings and reasons that believe in his existence. I know he exists. I still follow him. But I want to see him again like I used to - dare I say, almost face-to-face.
Follow me on this journey if you like! I’ll be examining every possible argument, and do my best to formulate my own reasons and ideas. I’m not out to convince anyone but myself. Please don’t hesitate to leave your best criticisms and insights - I want to leave no stone unturned. I hope we can all further our pursuit of truth together, even if we end up (mostly likely) disagreeing sharply.
Comments
I’m starting with a careful reading of this site, which I think is really original: http://www.aquinasblog.com/05-to-begin.html
Well. Certainly a fair question.
I could refer you to Russell’s Teapot. Or perhaps to the invisible pink unicorns. But really, all they TRULY are are thought experiments showing how impossible it is to disprove god, and so tries to show just how absurd belief in him is in the first place. And while they bring up good points, it certainly will not do anything to answer your question. They are pretty much just “preaching to the choir” type ideas. The choir being my type of people, not yours.
Since you are a spiritual person, saying that we don’t have any physical evidence of his existence probably wouldn’t mean all that much to you.
And citing the numerous inconsistencies between your beliefs and religious texts would serve only as an attack on your personal beliefs, and not on the existence of god himself. Really, nothing in any religious text really has anything to do with whether god really exists or not.
There really is no way to PROVE that god does or does not exist. And since people will continually credit simple fortuitous happenstance on him, he’s not likely to go away until we can give definitive reasons for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that happens. Not too likely.
Thanks for the links. I gave a lot of thought yesterday as to things that don’t seem to exist, yet have an affect on existence. For example, love, the speed of light, numbers, and even pink unicorns.
Perhaps love doesn’t exist - we simply feel the product of neural and chemical impulses in our mind. And yet . . . love affects things that exist. Love has some kind of reality to it, even if it doesn’t technically exist. Or think about the speed of light. Does the speed of light actually ‘exist’ apart from the fact that light particles move that fast? Or what about numbers? If numbers have no reality - if they are just a figment of our imaginations - then how do we explain their power to affect existence? What about pink unicorns? Clearly, pink unicorns do not exist. Yet they seem to be affecting our world. Many people’s lives are changed by pink unicorns, even though no pink unicorns actually exist.
So this is fascinating to me, that there seem to be things that don’t exist, yet have an affect on existence itself. Clearly, one could call these things ‘ideas’, but I think there’s more to it than that. I’m pretty sure this is old philisophical ground, but don’t know where to look for it. I’ve never understood Plato’s ‘Forms’, but I think there’s something here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms
Can it be proved that Forms exist? Do Forms not exist? Are Forms real?
I think these questions can be asked not only about Forms, but about love, laws of physics, God, and pink unicorns.
Well, I would say that all of these things are only as powerful as we let them be. Numbers exist only as a representation of reality, and therefore cannot “change” it. All they have the power to do is change our perception of reality. Objectively, numbers don’t affect anything. And while it’s true that pink unicorns don’t exist, it’s also true that they don’t affect anything. Only the IDEA of invisible pink unicorns affects anything.
So really, all of these “ideas” affect nothing other than ourselves and our perceptions.
Now, you can go the solipsistic route and say that our own interpretation is the whole of reality, and then go around merrily slaying p-zombies (which, to a true solipsist, is everyone else).
Or you can say that all of our thoughts and ideas are merely chemical impulses and don’t mean anything.
Religion has a different take on it. Religion would have you believe that humanity is somehow unique and that our very method of thought was somehow granted to us by some divine power.
As to the forms thing. I would say that they are very real to whoever thinks of them. Just as a hallucination is very real to a paranoid schizophrenic. It may not be TRULY there (or if is is, just as a chemical impulse), but it has the power to alter you and your perception of existence.