Old King Log

In response to my last Blog 'Andy' gave a very considered and reassuring reply to my angst over the faith vs. reason struggle I highlighted in my last posting. His suggestion was that a Deist belief might provide a means of reconciling these two parts of my personality/psyche.

I have considered this and will consider it further, but the trouble with Deism takes me back to a comment Dan made last year when I was contemplating 'Why Terrible Things Happen'..

In that he (an ardent atheist) mused:

"you might consider what kind of deity you (want to) believe in. Can we presume that the existence of torture, famine, etc. rules out an interventionist deity (or at least a non-sadistic interventionist deity)? We must surely reject the "mysterious ways" argument: there's no mystery in being tortured to death. So you are left with Old King Log, the ultimate cosmic observer, who winds up the universe and lets it run until heat death or big crunch, perhaps taking notes or writing an amusing commentary on his blog. And what is the point of that?"

And that is the problem in a nutshell -- if God is simply the spark, the source of the 'Big Bang' then is that it? And if that is it, then again it leave the questions about purpose and contingency unanswered... that is unless Deism is more complex and nuanced (which it probably is).

More to follow...

I looked into the void and the void looked back

I have always felt an internal conflict between my faith and reason, almost as if two aspects of my psyche are in constant conflict with each other. Being an academic, especially one who has been influenced by post-modernist reflections on discourse and the social construction of norms values and so forth, reconciling my intellect and my faith has always proven difficult.

You see I can accept that religion was a form of mind control for the masses, I can see that society, the family, the relationships between men and women are all social constructions but if I then deny faith and embrace atheism I am left with the void. What is the point of life, there is no point, we become apes clinging to a rock... our existence merely contingent on so many historical and evolutionary accidents. And whats the point then of anything, of being 'good' rather than evil, of love (it will die with us), children (they will die), the only constant then becomes the second law of thermodynamics -- entropy. Trouble is I cannot accept that, therein lies the problem, I cannot accept that that is all there is, I stare into the 'void' and recoil. Which invariably leads me back to faith.

This has been compounded by the fact that so few of my colleagues are anything other than agnostics at best. Indeed for many years I expounded atheist views but was always drawn back to faith by the bleakness of the atheist message. To paraphrase Nietzsche I looked into the void and the void began to look back. So I returned fully to my faith about 3 years ago and have been more comfortable in my own shoes than ever before, however I continue to be plagued by the conflict. Just as the part of me drawn to faith recoiled from the void of atheism, equally the intellect in me finds it hard to reconcile with the answers Christianity sometimes gives -- be it on the evil that men do and the apparent indifference of God to that evil, on the judgement of non-believers (even if they have lived selfless and virtuous lives), on sexuality and so on and so forth. This weekend I have had a recurrence of the 'Is this all there is' thought process and feeling and the despairing that such thoughts engender.

So I will continue this conversation about faith, and solider on the difficult journey that I know faith is...