Gotta Have Faith?
I used to view devoutly religious people with some degree of contempt. I still do, depending on the person, but now it's mixed with a kind of twisted admiration. Have you ever really thought about the nature of death? Suppose it's not all puffy clouds and flowers nor is it fire and pain and brimstone. Suppose you just cease to exist. What the fuck do you make of that? It is literally unfathomable... our sense of self is all we really know. You can't imagine what it would be like to not exist. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the idea of hovering in some sort of conscious limbo, unable to sense anything or communicate with anything, or simply not existing, which I can't even describe. Both thoughts are utterly terrifying.
That's why I envy the devout. I envy those who can look at death and have no fear or doubt... or at least can pretend not to. Yet at the same time, it makes me angry. It makes me angry because I've rejected organized religion for a number of reasons, yet whenever my mind delves into thoughts I'd rather avoid, I find more doubt. Despite all the hate and prejudice that religion has birthed, I think about converting just so I can escape that fear.
Yet at the same time, I know that will never happen. I've been a skeptic since I was in church school in 6th grade. I'll never be sure until I see the Man himself with my own two eyes. That's the fucked up thing about faith. Those who have can never explain why they have it in certain terms. It just is what it is. I guess God forgot to CC some us when he sent out that out memo. You know, I'm not stupid. I try to be a good person, and you better believe if I felt some sort of divine touch, I'd roll with it. So I either feel sad that I was passed over (pun mostly intentional), or I feel angry because if there is no such "divine touch" then everyone who believes is just a fucking coward taking an easy way out of facing their fears and answering the only questions that really matter. It feels to me like 2,000 years of brainwashing so that we all don't just mope around all the damn time wondering "Why are we here?"
So I wonder, does God fear death? If we are here because God created us, does God wonder why He's here? Pointless philosophical questions aside, where does that leave the rest of us? We want to know why we're here, and I honestly don't believe we'll ever know the answer to that question, in a scientific sense. I guess the best we'll get is a subjective answer. If that's the case, then, painfully trite as this may sound, the question isn't "What does this life mean?" the question is: "What does this life mean to you?"
That's why I envy the devout. I envy those who can look at death and have no fear or doubt... or at least can pretend not to. Yet at the same time, it makes me angry. It makes me angry because I've rejected organized religion for a number of reasons, yet whenever my mind delves into thoughts I'd rather avoid, I find more doubt. Despite all the hate and prejudice that religion has birthed, I think about converting just so I can escape that fear.
Yet at the same time, I know that will never happen. I've been a skeptic since I was in church school in 6th grade. I'll never be sure until I see the Man himself with my own two eyes. That's the fucked up thing about faith. Those who have can never explain why they have it in certain terms. It just is what it is. I guess God forgot to CC some us when he sent out that out memo. You know, I'm not stupid. I try to be a good person, and you better believe if I felt some sort of divine touch, I'd roll with it. So I either feel sad that I was passed over (pun mostly intentional), or I feel angry because if there is no such "divine touch" then everyone who believes is just a fucking coward taking an easy way out of facing their fears and answering the only questions that really matter. It feels to me like 2,000 years of brainwashing so that we all don't just mope around all the damn time wondering "Why are we here?"
So I wonder, does God fear death? If we are here because God created us, does God wonder why He's here? Pointless philosophical questions aside, where does that leave the rest of us? We want to know why we're here, and I honestly don't believe we'll ever know the answer to that question, in a scientific sense. I guess the best we'll get is a subjective answer. If that's the case, then, painfully trite as this may sound, the question isn't "What does this life mean?" the question is: "What does this life mean to you?"
posted by Kultcher at Tuesday, July 11, 2006
2 Comments:
Ah, religion. Yeah. Religion. Is it the god-given truth, or is it escapism? Who knows, really? And I'm not about to argue it with anybody, because we won't get anywhere.
I just feel bad, sometimes, that I'm dating a girl who is Catholic, and has a relatively devout familiy. So, that whole prayer before eating thing... a little wierd for me, the few times I've eaten a meal at their house.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I get where you're coming from. And that's what you're going for, right? Confirmation that you're not the only one out there with your particular ideas? I know that's what I'm going for.
~Ryan~
I for one have felt the touch of the divine. Strangely enough it was only in the depths of a drug frenzy that the sense of god, universe, and my own existence seemed to congeal. I have seen and tastes the fruit of 'it' and yet I still do not succumb to organized religion. I understand now more than ever (and i hate to quote a movie but the words fit) "Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Turn over a stone, and you will find me." Far and away within my own existence somewhere near the bottom of a bag of mushrooms or the last taste of LSD in the back of my throat I understood, for brief and fleeting moments I felt like it all meant something. This chance, this one moment in the history of the universe is ours. "This chance to be alive and breathing"... What an amazing thing it is. Even for a man who wastes every moment of his life the unfathomably small chance that you even exist is amazing in it's own right. So what, maybe there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow but my friend there is always the rainbow..
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