My Brush with Atheism.
Well guys, our dear friend slyfoot has left us. I'll miss him.
As I've taken up new responsibilities, I've neglected older ones. Strange, perhaps to think of this blog as a responsibility, but I believe that a very big part of who I am today owes itself to the many years I've poured my thoughts on here. Private, public , ecstatic, remorseful, proud, ashamed, loved, abandoned, loved again, thoughtful, inquisitive, creative, silly, angry... To some extent, each of these represent individual colors adding to the richness of what I've come to call the full "emotional spectrum" of human experience.
I've learned along the way the importance of devoting one's time to self-reflection, to dig deeper and through the momentary impulses, impressions, and patterns-of-thought which threaten to take control of the direction of our daily thought and conduct.
While stationed in England, I started to pursue the implications of my Christian theology toward its philosophical principles. I encountered exciting topics on the interaction of reason and faith, which began for me an adventure in learning, which continues to this day. For me, the last 7 years reflected a personal renaissance, a time when the driving principles of all that was good, just, and possible filled my imagination. Within that possibility lied one key ingredient: a distinct sense of purpose, without which life would just reduce to one big crap shoot.
Along the way, I encountered experiences which did more than undermine core ideas which brought me a basic sense of order in an otherwise unjust world; they all but obliterated my confidence in humanity, in cosmic justice, and in the very rules which much of society claimed to value. A general application of the particular principles embodied in Jeremiah 29:11 became a prospect fraught with difficulty (and, in great measure, remains so to this day).
It was the closest in my life I had come to atheism; the kind to which I think the majority of atheism's late entrants succumb: life's mounting absurdities reach a level of human threshold, at which point our personal resources are exhausted, and faith itself is cannibalized.
Here, the logical consistency of an all-good, all-powerful God with the existence of human suffering was not at issue. Rather, the urgently felt reality of an unjust world was what brought about the sense of intolerability, if not intolerability itself. Atheism, in this sense, wasn't so much rationally derived, as it was emotionally driven; but as emotions do make up a legitimate part of human experience, even these barriers cannot be ignored.
While in this state, thinking deeply on the themes of goodness, justice, and truth became an exercise in painful irony, particularly when one's inner sense of "The Good" becomes seemingly irreconcilable with reality. That may, in part, have contributed to my shifting interest from Theology-Philosophy to Philosophy-Political/Social Science, and--later on--to political technique.
I suppose some choose to stay in this realm for the permission it grants us to avoid having to consider fundamental questions, and consequently having to measure our own lives against the resulting answers. For me, it offered a way to temporarily direct my attention away from an inner turmoil, and toward a direction which extended naturally from the spiritual/philosophical bases I started with anyway.
All of this may come as a surprise to those who've known me for a number of years. Let me just say in closing that I doubt I'd ever be happy as an atheist; given my inextinguishable tendency to try to make sense of things, to bring logical structure, order, and to see patterns in otherwise chaotic events and philosophies is simply what I do. It's not enough for me to drown this insatiable curiosity in a sea of total cynicism and pop culture. Eventually, I do come around, and I do begin looking for answers; and I believe it is in the act of searching that ultimately keeps us on the path leading over and beyond nihilism; because the bleak non-answer to which Naturalistic Materialism is obliged is simply much too small to consider as a serious candidate.
All in all, it's been pretty productive hiatus from this kind of self-reflection. I hadn't planned on writing this tonight, but this brief moment of candor was occasioned by the sudden departure of a friend who himself seemed to grapple with these very questions. I don't know when I'll be able to revisit this spot next, but it's been a healthy moment of clarity. I should try to return again pretty soon.
Sandra, I haven't ignored you. I'll call you as soon as I get a chance in the next week or so!
And Jessica... Thanks. For everything. =)
As I've taken up new responsibilities, I've neglected older ones. Strange, perhaps to think of this blog as a responsibility, but I believe that a very big part of who I am today owes itself to the many years I've poured my thoughts on here. Private, public , ecstatic, remorseful, proud, ashamed, loved, abandoned, loved again, thoughtful, inquisitive, creative, silly, angry... To some extent, each of these represent individual colors adding to the richness of what I've come to call the full "emotional spectrum" of human experience.
I've learned along the way the importance of devoting one's time to self-reflection, to dig deeper and through the momentary impulses, impressions, and patterns-of-thought which threaten to take control of the direction of our daily thought and conduct.
While stationed in England, I started to pursue the implications of my Christian theology toward its philosophical principles. I encountered exciting topics on the interaction of reason and faith, which began for me an adventure in learning, which continues to this day. For me, the last 7 years reflected a personal renaissance, a time when the driving principles of all that was good, just, and possible filled my imagination. Within that possibility lied one key ingredient: a distinct sense of purpose, without which life would just reduce to one big crap shoot.
Along the way, I encountered experiences which did more than undermine core ideas which brought me a basic sense of order in an otherwise unjust world; they all but obliterated my confidence in humanity, in cosmic justice, and in the very rules which much of society claimed to value. A general application of the particular principles embodied in Jeremiah 29:11 became a prospect fraught with difficulty (and, in great measure, remains so to this day).
It was the closest in my life I had come to atheism; the kind to which I think the majority of atheism's late entrants succumb: life's mounting absurdities reach a level of human threshold, at which point our personal resources are exhausted, and faith itself is cannibalized.
Here, the logical consistency of an all-good, all-powerful God with the existence of human suffering was not at issue. Rather, the urgently felt reality of an unjust world was what brought about the sense of intolerability, if not intolerability itself. Atheism, in this sense, wasn't so much rationally derived, as it was emotionally driven; but as emotions do make up a legitimate part of human experience, even these barriers cannot be ignored.
While in this state, thinking deeply on the themes of goodness, justice, and truth became an exercise in painful irony, particularly when one's inner sense of "The Good" becomes seemingly irreconcilable with reality. That may, in part, have contributed to my shifting interest from Theology-Philosophy to Philosophy-Political/Social Science, and--later on--to political technique.
I suppose some choose to stay in this realm for the permission it grants us to avoid having to consider fundamental questions, and consequently having to measure our own lives against the resulting answers. For me, it offered a way to temporarily direct my attention away from an inner turmoil, and toward a direction which extended naturally from the spiritual/philosophical bases I started with anyway.
All of this may come as a surprise to those who've known me for a number of years. Let me just say in closing that I doubt I'd ever be happy as an atheist; given my inextinguishable tendency to try to make sense of things, to bring logical structure, order, and to see patterns in otherwise chaotic events and philosophies is simply what I do. It's not enough for me to drown this insatiable curiosity in a sea of total cynicism and pop culture. Eventually, I do come around, and I do begin looking for answers; and I believe it is in the act of searching that ultimately keeps us on the path leading over and beyond nihilism; because the bleak non-answer to which Naturalistic Materialism is obliged is simply much too small to consider as a serious candidate.
All in all, it's been pretty productive hiatus from this kind of self-reflection. I hadn't planned on writing this tonight, but this brief moment of candor was occasioned by the sudden departure of a friend who himself seemed to grapple with these very questions. I don't know when I'll be able to revisit this spot next, but it's been a healthy moment of clarity. I should try to return again pretty soon.
Sandra, I haven't ignored you. I'll call you as soon as I get a chance in the next week or so!
And Jessica... Thanks. For everything. =)