Dear Michael:
Thank you so much for your candid and probing response; it is most illuminating.
Before addressing your final question, I am going to risk characterizing your presentation of religious faith. Some of our readers, if not you yourself, may find this presumptuous; if so, I accept their criticism.
It seems to me that your version of religion is a highly intellectualized one--admirably reflecting your own passions. But those aspects of faith which you label "kitsch," Michael, are as central to many believers' experience of religion as a drive to ask questions. The Church itself has not discouraged--one might even say it has authorized--such manifestations of kitsch as relic worship, rosary counting, and saint idolatry (see, for example, the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe). Papal Rome has even done its own brisk business in "buying and selling."
These manifestations of "peasant piety," as you call them, suggest to me that for many people, religion is as much about providing an amulet against misfortune and a shelter from fear and death as it is about intellectual inquiry.
And a non-believer looking in sees not just the metaphysics but also the Fra. Galvao pills and the reliquaries and has to decide whether the entire package makes sense in light of what he already knows about the world. That's why I would have loved to know how you approach claims from other religions. Do you think there's any difference in efficacy, for example, between a rabbit's foot and a monkey's paw in protecting against misfortune, say, if a devout practitioner of the Yoruba religion insists that the monkey's paw channels his ancestor's spirits for his benefit? Do you think it's appropriate in deciding whether the monkey's foot possesses such a divine power to ask basic questions of proof and causality? And is there a difference between an animal appendage and a St. Christopher's medal?
In your latest post and in No One Sees God , you make the drive "to keep questioning, infinitely" the hallmark of humanity and the sign of God's presence within us. I do not understand why that particular drive, as admirable as it is, requires or suggests a Creator or Answering Presence any more than any other human trait. There are probably as many if not more people with an insatiable drive for power as there are individuals with an insatiable drive to ask questions. There is also a widespread desire for a free lunch--witness the number of people who play the lottery. Many individuals put "enormous energy" into the drive for sex. I do not, however, infer from the prevalence of such drives that there is a priapic divinity or one who lusts for dominance, or that there is an Answering Presence that provides windfalls to people and an all-you-can-eat banquet in the sky.
I do not follow what you mean by "'the light of faith'" that is "not . . . reason alone" but a "further use of reason."
As for whether I am aware of the "presence of God in [my] own mind," the answer is no. I share your wonder, Michael, at the amazing fecundity of human creation. But I experience the insupportable beauty of a Schubert song or the astounding reliability of an economy that daily brings us clean water and fresh milk as a human triumph. Far from living in a meaningless world, as you suggested in First Things ("Atheists invent a heroic image for themselves . . . to cover up the emptiness of meaning in human life"), I find the world awash in meanings, more than I can possibly take in.
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Amid a small torrent of unjustified claims these were among the funnier:
"Without even considering design in nature and systems it is only feasible that existance comes from an original conciousness. It is deductable that such an original consciousness must be all powerful and always right in order to justify and uphold it's own existence."
If it were true existence must come from an original consciousness that begs the question of what the original consciousness comes from. Another, earlier original consciousness? Which itself comes from a still earlier original consciousness? Etc. etc. Sorry, Kevin, but your logical problems don't go away. And the part about all powerful and always right is utterly non-obvious, and that's all if we assumed the existence of such a consciousness, which of course I and a lot of others don't.
"When athiests are exposed to truth they become extremists. That is why athiests hate religion. They hate something about themselves."
You get a big kick out of making baseless claims, don't you. But they are baseless.
Try to think outside of the box. Anything that is created needs a beginning. God is everlasting to everlasting. God does not need a beginning. That is our realm. I see God's everlasting nature as being the true nature. Our reality is real enough (Christ's blood and body make it real), but God's reality is the foundation to our existence. Where do the parts of the matrix come from? From the eternal. It is only because of the curse of sin that we must deteriorate and eventually die in our bodies. Understanding God is not about how many molecules are in a beaker. It is understanding the underlying foundations of existence.
" Anything that is created needs a beginning. God is everlasting to everlasting."
By your claim, nothing else. You've found something comfortable to you to believe in and cling to it even though it has no foundation.
You're right about something, though, that an individual must first be open to the concept of God. (Since, God has made the universe it would go without saying that even when a person denies the Creator they would still find a working logical universe, hence the Evolution just-so story based off of the organic and inorganic matrix, and they being closed off to God could still find solutions - because God is just) However, keep in mind that it doesn't matter if anyone assumes that God exists or not, it wouldn't change the fact of His existance. What I've been trying to show you is that God, as a concept, must have certain characteristics, and that characteristics of Logic in our world coincide with what could be presumed about God. In this, without formally believing in God one could understand that Logic merely says that if God exists He would have to be all powerful and always in the Right. ____When we say that 2 plus 2 equals four we know that it is a logical outcome. If someone suggested that 2 and 2 is five we would toss it out as illogical. This is the nature of the physical world. Illogic is tossed out. Logic is upheld. Illogic is not self-sustaining. When we toss it away it stays away. If logic is tossed away it comes back. What upholds logic is the mystery. So, the question is what justifies Logic? There is an instigator that suggests that there is a Creator to everything made. Beginning with the assumed proposition of a Creator, we could also say that such a creator, if it existed, would, along with being the source of Logic, be Right in all of its doing and be all powerful. This we know because Logic is our invisible tool to discern true from false, and if anything existed that could create the universe it must be Logical in itself and self-sustaining. ____There is more that can be said in this, but the point I am making is that if God exists then God must be Good and the source of Logic. It also means that if God exists such a one would always be right, or God could not exist. Do you understand this, disagree with this?
It makes no sense at all. You are still making baseless claim after baseless claim. And I think we are the only two here, so I'm leaving. Turn the light out when you leave.
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