“When I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than the following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best.”
(Jude in Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure)
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5 Comments
It’s a beautiful quote. I’m in the odd position of having had fixed atheistic opinions, which dropped away. I haven’t signed up for a religion, and I have no plans to, but I am no longer an atheist. That can be strange, especially when I read a passage like the one above, which still resonates better than any religious text. I’m on a journey in the opposite direction. It was pleasant passing you; good luck. You have plenty to look forward to where you’re going.
@linneawrites: I hope you’ll stick around and give your opinion. Have you discovered some kind of new evidence for a deity, or have you had some kind of unexplainable personal experience?
Definitely no new evidence. I might have come up with a small amount if I had kept my head when I lost my atheism, but… well, there’s a contradiction there.
I became a theist through personal experience. Or perhaps a hallucination; I have not ruled that out. However, if I hallucinated, I would also have had to have been capable of accurate precognition. I know–sticky problems here, such as “predicting” something I planned to do, or changing my plans. For what it’s worth, here’s my anecdote:
I was dead set on a course of action. God, or my hallucination, informed me that I would take a different course. Also, that I would act in ways contrary to my norm, and, in the one tiny area that I had knowledge of the situation-to-be, my current intentions.
So, I discounted the hallucination and put all my energy into sticking to my plan. I wasn’t about the let even the most intimidating version of the (hypothetical, utterly implausible) God tell me what to do. Free will and the intellectual tools to use it to its fullest were and remain two of my favorite things.
I lost that fight; I got thrown off my path and dropped into God knew what. Pun intended. Each particular of the prediction was realized to the fullest. It did work out well in the end, which, if I were in any mood to accept any theistic hypothesis beyond what I had just endured, might have been a point in support of a benevolent god. Or maybe I’m just that good: experienced a psychotic break and kept on chugging.
Had I written this down, sealed it and mailed it… you would have one more theist claiming “evidence” for their flawed faith.
For me, though, it appeared to be a well-executed demonstration of existence by God. It helped that the vision came with an “I am that I am”-type declaration and huge helping of emotional certainty. This occurred six years ago, and I’ve only been somewhat calm about it for two.
I’m afraid I now fall into the “let’s take this obviously fallacious idea and see if it’s useful for everyday life” crowd. God may well be imaginary, but the imagination has its uses, and using it can be beneficial.
@linneawrites: Interesting. Have you ever had premonitions and had them be wrong? It seems at least once in our life there should be a time where they are right. I have them all the time (especially dreams), and they’re usually wrong.
I remember one morning I woke up and had dreamed my cat had died. I was startled — what if it were true? And then I said to myself, “Dan, it could be true. But how many times have you dreamed of things that have never happened? In fact you’ve dreamed your cat has died before. You’ve dreamed all kinds of crazy things and they’ve never happened. But this may happen, and if it does, it’s not because you dreamed it. It’s because your mind must have picked up on something before and it influenced you, or it could be that finally out of the thousands of things you’ve thought would happen, one finally will. But it’s not *because* you dreamed it.”
Well my cat was fine, but I thought it was funny how I had to talk myself out of it. One of these times he will die and I’ll have a dream about it that week, and I need to be prepared so I don’t jump to invalid conclusions. (I’m not saying you are, I’m just speaking for myself.)
Of course I don’t know the specifics and I can’t judge your experience. Perhaps you did have some kind of contact with the divine. But I wonder why so often these experiences don’t work out as we think? That’s why it’s so exceptional when it does. Is God just wrong most of the time, or playing with us? If one thing happening is evidence of the divine, shouldn’t all the times it doesn’t be evidence against it?
Thanks for sharing!
@Daniel:
Short of writing a disclaimer in all caps before telling my story (at your polite request), I don’t know what else I could have done to make it clear that I do not consider it solid evidence of the existence of a god. I am familiar with the standards of logic; I lived by them for as long as you lived by Jesus. I recognize that I have not offered proof in that sense, and I understand that that is the only sense that truly applies to the concept of proof.
Take another look at my last paragraph. If you’d like to argue that point, we may have something to talk about.