So there have been an overwhelming number of atheist exhortations rhuminating through my quadrant of the blogosphere as of late, and I figure this would be a good time to work out some of my own beliefs in writing. What better way to really search yourself, eh?! I will submit that faith is an issue to which I’ve devoted quite a number of brain cells. If I were to plainly and truthfully divulge my current position, I would say that any attempt to use logic, philosophy, or otherwise scientific procedures has only left me conflicted. When I hear most arguments about the validity of a particular religion, or the existence of God, I usually scoff at the arguments made on both sides, simply because I’ve consistently counteracted both of them in some attempt to justify my own existence. However, I constantly find myself giving God the benefit of the doubt. Let’s call this side of me my soul. So to sum it up, I have tendencies toward belief, and no hard proof on either side.
The way I have come to deal with any question challenging the purported characteristics of a Christian God, is to think about the question until I can fathom at least one satisfactory explanation. The explanation must not break any of God’s proclaimed characteristics and must satisfactorally resolve the dispute (at least to me). Once again, in giving spirituality the benefit of the doubt, I hold true that if I, a very, very imperfect (by any spiritual standards) being, can think outside of the box enough to resolve these types of questions, then certainly a self-proclaimed perfect entity should be able to resolve them with little, in fact, zero effort.
One exhortation comes from Mano, who asks Where Was God During the Tsunami? He cites the following divine characteristics: benevolence—God must not be a cruel God, passion—God is not passive in any human affair, and power—God must not be limited in His course of action. My explanations are very heavily influenced by Christianity, since that is what I grew up with, studied, and have remained challenged by for these 22 years. Let’s focus on yet another characteristic that God claims as His own: perfection. Perfection implies the existence of an ordering by goodness, such that one and only one course of action is the best. Not only must the action be the best at that time, but that time is the perfect time for that action. To God, who would surely not be limited to human notions of time and space, perfection is his existence. In other words, God must be perfect across every nanosecond in every coordinate across all known and unknown sub-atomic substances upon which he exists. No wonder, humans “fall short of the glory of God.” (More on that later.) To me, this builds a very clear pathway to a deeper understanding of God. All His creation serves to glorify Him, and every action that He takes must maximize the amount of glory he deserves. A tsunami on Earth, must therefore glorify Him perfectly. In the Christian religion, this glory is fully realized when He overcomes the flaws of an imperfect world—which is a necessary part of his own perfect existence, and without which his own glory would only be diminished—through an offering of communion between beings of infinitely unlike worth. Should a God who is able to keep an already perfect world in it’s current state of perfection be worthy of glory any more than you or I as perfect humans be worthy of the same glory for existing in such a world? My hunch is no. You can look at God’s perfection as a check on his action, but really for a God who creates action, and is utterly perfect, no action exists outside the realm of perfection. In this way, his bounds are limitless, and human-centric justice plays just as great a role in his perfection and resulting glorification as any injustice, no matter the perceived toll. Human life must only matter to the extent that it serves to glorify a perfect creator.
I think it’s a mistake to believe that God loves you because you’re you, or because you “matter to him,” or any reason that might be warm and fuzzy. Instead he extends his love to you out of his own perfection. His perfect existence implies an outreach to allow communion between his perfection and your imperfection. You and I might call this selfish, and I think it makes God pretty hard to understand. Stepping outside of myself I can see that a perfect being is justified in being self-centered.
The biggest questions I have about God and religion stem from my own personal experience with religious ritual and its followers. It seems to me that familiar Christianity, at least, is in the habit of creating self-defeating followers. It’s very hard to operate in the world when you are constantly careening between feelings of guilt and redemption. In some denominations, human acts of “goodness” are specifically downplayed, because they serve a much smaller role in the Kingdom of God, than do acts of prostelitization, prayer, and other spiritually focused, pragmatically ambivalent acts of faith. This is something I have experienced with my own senses, and I can tell you that it makes it very hard for me to understand religions of this nature. Guilt is an awful feeling, and to me, it only seems to get in the way of being a kind and caring person. Spend your time feeling guilty, and you won’t get a great deal accomplished. So, it sure seems like a lot of work, thought, and perhaps a few subconscious oversights, just to justify God’s perfect existence. I don’t understand a God who clouds himself this much from his own creation. I also don’t completely understand the Christian plan of salvation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got the Sunday School stuff down: the jist is I am imperfect and in need of a perfect intervention (Christ) to commune with a perfect creator. In fact, Christianity tells me I am imperfect because of an original sin passed down through humanity and originating with Adam. So, I am not Adam, but I am still subject to the same imperfection he wrought. Benefit of the doubt: if the perfect God had placed me there instead of Adam, I would have taken the same action. Point taken. But, I also never asked to exist (as far as I know). So basically I had no choice in the matter of being an imperfect being. Thoughts along this line quickly lead to feelings of insignificance, unhappiness, and other feelings which are exactly the opposite of those feelings I’ve found necessary to function as a human being, but I’ve found to be undeniably present in many Christians. How is it that a belief in God and the exercise of the very neurological components he has endowed to me must coexist so violently? I’m still searching for this answer.
I do not understand it when people come to a staunch conclusion on issues like these. I’ve known my share of weak Christians and weak atheists. The bottom line is: thinkers have it rough. I also find it funny when science-minded folks seem to think that our generation is in the unique position to have the best and most correct theory of existence. Somehow, we are done revising science and it’s theories on existence (read, evolution and primordial history). You know, we’ve stopped revising a couple times in the past, so we’d expect it to happen again, sometime between 1995 and 2020, right? ;) Uh-huh.
Thus ends my long awaited post on faith. This is not to be considered a definitive, coherent, or truthful (does that cover everything?) collection of my thoughts. I also reserve the right to change my mind on anything and everything I’ve said. :) I hope I haven’t scared my family off, and I welcome anyone to posit their logical and emotional reactions in the comments, or preferably in real life.