question 1, seeing as it's Sunday : God--yay or nay?
My first thought is to abstain. And in a sense that would be honest enough. If pushed to have to choose one or the other, I would have to say nay. But the question begs another: what do you mean by God? If the question simply means invisible superdude in the sky, then indeed nay. If it's the scholastic sort of God, he of the omni-predicates and puzzling logical paradoxes, well, still nay. I simply don't see the evidence for an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good creator/source of being/first cause/prime mover. Take away the "all-good" and I might start listening intently, but more out of curiosity than anything else. I can't get past theodicy, can't explain away suffering and evil, and can't take very seriously those who want to counter with the free-will argument. Disposing of "all-powerful" would also be interesting but leads to some other philosophical problems.
The question becomes more interesting if we move to scripture. Hebrew Bible God? Well, seems more internally consistent to me in some ways, but not a God I could love. Fear, certainly, but not love. Who's to say I need to love God? Or believe in him for that matter? Though I will say that, empirically, I feel like one could make a case for an angry, vengeful, spiteful, capricious, warlike and often indifferent God. But morally, I feel the need to object to that God. How's about Jesus? Hmmm. There are so many obstacles here. There's the relationship to the aforementioned Hebrew God--philosophically, scripturally, historically. I cannot get around the history. Just can't. I mean that in many ways, ways that need not be elaborated. If it could just be about the love and compassion, the lowest and the meek, the good, dark, bloody narratives, the community and some good music, well damn, it'd be sorely tempting. And I was surprised when I met folks at the seminary for whom that was pretty much it. They had many of the same grave doubts that I did, weren't too sure about miracles and resurrections and the rest, but they were happy to call themselves Christians. The funny thing was, I had no problem with that, but I couldn't do it. I am perhaps a fundamentalist about certain things.
A friend told me once that he'd tried hard to not believe in God, really made an effort, but at the end of the day he just couldn't do it. That made sense to me. I sort around in my head and my gut and my heart, and there's just no belief there in Jesus, or Yahweh or the Trinity. That leaves room for other specific possibilities but I'm not sure they interest me at all. I'm not a polytheist or a pagan or blah blah blah. But neither can I consent to being called an atheist. And this is where it starts to get tricky. I may not believe that Jesus died for my sins, but I'm pretty amazed that I exist at all. And that you do and any of this does. Now don't get me wrong, evolution explains a whole lot and quite simply and elegantly. But it does not get to some very basic questions, despite what Richard Dawkins may say (and I don't have a dog in that fight). Natural selection cannot tell me why anything is. Or perhaps more accurately, why everything is, at all. Do you understand what I'm saying here? Maybe there is no reason, but that still sort of misses the point. That anything is at all is pretty fucking strange. And I don't have an answer for it. And I've yet to hear one that convinced me. But I cannot claim to know with certainty, or even to believe, that there is nothing behind it. I fear I'm stumbling here, but the terrain is treacherous. Oh, it is also worth noting that many atheists can be every bit as annoying as the most overbearing evangelical. So I guess this makes me an agnostic by default. That seems kind of unsatisfying, but so be it.
A postscript to the God question: I sometimes describe myself as a friendly agnostic or a hopeful agnostic. And the truth is, that I think it would be nice if there were a loving Creator and if this world was just an important stop on the way to somewhere better. It would be nice if after I died I got to see all my loved ones who went before me, and got to be with them forever. It would be nice if in the end it was all ok. I just don't believe all that to be the case. For the most part anyway. I suppose the closest I come to being religious is in my occasional sneaking suspicion that somehow, in the end, it'll be ok. Which does not, I should add, mitigate all the real suffering in the meantime.
