Yesterday I requested a book I'd seen discussed in the New York Times blog, Think Again, by Stanley Fish. The post was "Suffering, Evil, and the Existence of God." This morning I withdrew the request of the library to obtain Antony Flew's There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind. I did so because it appears that Flew suffers from senile dementia and was exploited by his co-author, Roy Abraham Varghese, the ghost-writer of much of the text that, when interviewed, Flew was not able to recognize or recall. I didn't want to ask the library to obtain a book that is, as far as I am concerned, a hoax, in the same way that I would have not asked for the book by James Frey about his treatment for drug dependence at Hazelden, which was shown to be a pack of lies and did more harm than good to people who are seeking the truth about escaping the evil of alcoholism.
In the same way, I think tricking an addled old man into signing off on little more than a tendentious rather than a purportedly rational argument for the existence of a First Cause is unscrupulous and, whereas I don't want books burned or otherwise suppressed, I'll leave it up to somebody else to request the book.
This is really hard work, trying to puzzle out what I believe about God, as we call "Him." First, define your terms, JT. What do I mean when I say "God"? I mean the creator of the material universe: the macrocosm and the microcosm that we are aware of, as well as all that we are unaware of: the force or entity that caused the Big Bang or whatever started it all and the one that was there before the Big Bang. "Before" and "after" being constructs of our mortal understanding of "time."
It can be neither disproved nor proved, but I believe -- and this is my article of faith, part of my personal catechism -- that this ineffable vastness and complexity and orderliness did not occur by "accident." I believe in a "first cause." We pipsqueaks don't even have the wherewithal to "prove" that. It's just my notion, my inclination -- my hunch. And I'll never know one way or the other. I guess.
It is all such a mystery.
1 comment:
Sometimes we believe because we do not have anything better to believe in. I just have to believe in something greater than anything I know of. Simplistic--I know.
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