This X post by someone named "Comet" caught my eye last week, because it's so similar to my own experience, and echoes a theme that C.S. Lewis often uses. I think it appeals to people who were raised as atheists, or became determined atheists when they came of age after a perfunctory childhood religious training. It was a huge stumbling block to me to believe in a literal, personal God and an afterlife. It still is difficult, when the chips are down, though it's a faith I strive for all the time. Even now, Comet's gut conviction is the one that keeps me trying:
I’ve never been a religious person because I don’t know if God is real
But I’m becoming more religious every day because I know that Evil is real, and I want to be on the other side of it
It is a good sentiment. I don't think I naturally believed in a God, but I believed that somewhere justice must exist. It was a back-and-forth to believing in God from there, but the Jesus part was not a stumbling block for me. Whatever place in the universe turned out to be Just, I knew he would have to be connected to it.
ReplyDeleteJustice is a lot harder for me to believe in than God. I've always believed in God; studying philosophy, which seems to make atheists out of many, only gave me stronger reasons to believe in God. Justice I can't even imagine in my dreams.
ReplyDeleteI mean, Aristotelian justice I can, obviously; as we've been reading about, that's just 'fairness plus lawfulness' where 'lawfulness' means 'making people do the right thing.' But Platonic Justice is as hard to imagine for me as any other physically impossible thing; square circles, I mean, not things like unicorns. The world doesn't support it; perhaps the next world does.
Evil is real. I have felt it on my neck hairs. And it was not physical fear, that is another language. The thing that is scary is that it may reside in us.
ReplyDelete“'Even God and the good man are capable of doing bad deeds, but God and such men are not of that type; for the wicked are always so called because of their deliberate choice (prohairesin) of evil.”
Delete(Aristotle, Topics 126a34-3)”
In the movie "Second-hand Lions," the hero of the story, an old veteran of many adventures, is explaining to some teenage boys how to be good men. One of the things in his speech was, sometimes you don't believe something because it's reasonable, you believe it because it's the best thing to believe.
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a great speech.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duu0bCkSlUo
Ah, yes. I'd forgotten exactly where in the story we hear the speech. Thanks for finding & linking it.
ReplyDeleteMy only objection to that speech is that the only things worth believing in are true things. I was then reminded of Puddleglum’s speech to the Queen of the Underworld in The Silver Chair. “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
DeleteLarry