Usually whenever a theist or an atheist gets into these conversations, they are both using similar points of departure inthat they are convinced, utterly, that the convictions they carry are correct. Neither entertains the notion that they are ignoramuses in the face of a totality so vast as God. Of course, usually neither realizes that they are both in their own ways programmed by the social norms and conditioning received at whatever institution or group they spent the majority of their lives in (families, homes, churches, synagogues, schools, nightclubs, etc.).
Without humility in approaching this question, one must confront their ignorance with humility, or a snarling beast may emerge without warning.
This often leads to an argument or steeping weeping arrogant banter where an enlightening dialogue could have done nicely.
When approaching the question of God's existence on my own (I tend to avoid these conversations) I usually arrive, with some hemming and hawing, at the elegant statement that the concept is variable and our words for it extremely limited, but God (that is to say, the perfect and most Alien Being that encapsulates the entirety of existence, not the Demiurge called Yahweh, etc. but more what is described by some as Allah, the Pleroma, Kosmos) is an absence that indicates a Presence.
Does that make much sense? A crude metaphor would be a hand in a glove, say. But I digress. Yes, yes I am a Gnostic. We're the rarest of sorts, anachronistic in our approach due to a claim of "direct knowledge of God" that very few touting "faith in God" would care to stomach, hypocrites and cowards that they are, by and large. Religions are spoiled directly after inception due to the fallen nature of matter.
Matter is fallen, you ask?
Yes, insofar as all living things are beholden to cessation. Perfection, another unattainable concept, as remote as God, stands at the forefront of our attempts to interact with the everyday. And every day we fail. God is a Thought. If your grasp on reality is such that you tend to require irrefutable proof in every formula, every i dotted, every t crossed, then you could say that no, God does not exist.
Is that simple enough? God exists as a concept that drives us through its divinity; perfect, immortal, mysterious and eternal, insofar as we will carry the concept so long as we exist as thinking beings.
12.22.2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The one point that the professional Atheists (Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, etc..) make, that I appreciate, is that they do not yet know. I am not sure if I will ever "know", but I believe that through a personal journey, one can get that much closer to figuring it out.
Good post!
It is unfortunate that one has to tiptoe around certain subjects in this great year of our lord!
"It is more convenient to assume the objective existence of an Angel who gives us new knowledge than to allege that our invocation has awakened a supernatural power in ourselves." -Crowley
Post a Comment