Down the left-hand side of this blog, there's a section entitled "I Never Miss." And there listed is a blog by a Seattle physician named Sid Schwab, whom I discovered some months ago and whom I have read faithfully ever since. Our views resonate on almost all subjects. We're on different sides of the God-divide, though. He's "nope." I'm "yep." Just recently, Sid finished a three-part discussion he entitled "Religion" (1), (2), and (3). I felt compelled to write a response to the series, partially because what he wrote was very interesting and elicited a response from me, and partially because I believe in encouraging my fellow bloggers. I love getting comments myself, and I assume everybody else does, too. I want to share my response, not because it's brilliant--certainly not!--but because at the least, it's legitimate.
OK, now I've finished the 3rd installment. Thanks, Sid, for this arresting discussion of your deeply held convictions. I'm a theist who finds himself in hearty agreement of much of what you write.
But I also happen to believe there's just as much faith (blind or otherwise) involved in denying God's existence as in affirming it. There's no proof either way. There's just argument, the appeal to human logic. Are we really willing, on either side of this divide, to put our faith in that weak reed? Human beings have been carrying on this debate about god-no god since they discovered the other guy disagreed with them. I really see little difference between the my-god-is-better-than-your-god tussle and the my-nonexistant-god-is-better-than-your-existing-god tussle. Death will provide the definitive answer, of course. Unfortunately, although there have been many unsubstantiated reports, no emissary from over there has brought back the conclusive documentation.
Fact is, nobody--N-O-B-O-D-Y--knows what happens to you when you leave this realm of existence. And of course death, the great curtain, is what it's all about--nobody knows, but there's a multitude who will argue that what they believe happens on the other side of that curtain is what actually happens.
If my 65 years of life have taught me anything, it's that beyond a few special motor skills and some basic cognitive processes, human beings are pretty limited creatures. And nowhere are they more limited than in their ability to deal with the "other" anything--the other race, other religion, other country, other viewpoint, the other explanation. Those things provide human beings with more than enough reason to slaughter each other. And have for millennia. I'm supposed to put my faith in the logical processes of this creature? Sorry.
I'll settle for less killing, more kindness. If religion or no-religion inches humankind towards improvement in this area, I say, "Praise the Great Spirit, whoever or whatever, it is."
In the meantime, I'm still trying to figure out how human consciousness got here from those bits of cosmic dust that were always there.
3 comments:
Perhaps He is a lurker....I'll settle for less killing and more kindness as well.
Thanks for the kind words. Two things: first, it's Schwab, not Schwartz, although that's what the Chief of Surgery called me the first time he assisted me with a case, when I was a junior resident.
Second, I'll copy and paste here the response I made to your comment on my blog:
baysage: I don't disagree, really, with anything you said. Nor did I mean to imply any certainty. I simply find the idea of god nonsensical. To me. Most especially, the Christian idea, as I understand it, because it's so internally inconsistent. The truth is, I'd love to believe there's life after death (although I read an amusing book several years ago about a guy who died and after a few millennia, when he'd mastered a perfect golf game, learned everything Einstein could tell him, etc, etc, he got so bored he asked for a finite end...) And the ultimate question, as I've written, is the ultimate brick wall: who created God?
I do disagree a bit with your "blind faith" contention, in that it's clearly blind faith to believe in a god and whatever rules he has. Non-belief is less blind, in that it is a matter of thinking it through and coming to a conclusion based on what evidence, or lack thereof, there is. I agree no one can "know." I don't "know" there are electrons, either, but I'm pretty convinced by the math and physics (assuming for the sake of argument that I understood them worth a sh*t.) Belief, in my view, is inarguably a leap; non-belief, from an evidentiary point of view, is sort of the default position, from which one ought to move based on facts.... Or so I'd argue.
In any case, the only reason I'm writing this stuff is because (phony claims of wars on Christmas, bogus Christian claims of oppression in the US to the contrary) of the way we are more and more threatened in this country by those who wish -- overtly!! -- to impose Christian theocracy on us all. Aware I'm pissing in the wind, I nevertheless feel like pointing out what, in my view, are the inconsistencies in the approach to life that that implies. As if it would convince people to keep their religion to themselves, where it belongs....
Hmmm. I meant for the italics to include only my copied comment. Untidy. Sorry.
Post a Comment