Philosophy is a whirlwind that takes you on a ride, twisting this way and that, turning here and there, across a universe of question marks. But just when you think you've made it to Emerald City: WHAM! You land with a thud on your ass, right back on square one.
Can the existence of God be proved?
My faith was challenged on Wednesday. I had to argue for the con side of the argument. But my opponent argued her pro position from the perspective of intelligent design, making it harder for me to make a good rebuttal. To top it all off, I was getting an odd feeling in my gut telling me that it was futile to even question the existence of God.
Professor Hausman said that faith is not congruent with reason. Faith can still persist despite reason or when there is no reason to have faith. In psychology, this is called belief preservation. So why do we choose to believe in someone, or something, that we lack the capacity to fully conceive? It all seems so arbitrary.
And what is the purpose of life? To go to heaven? Too bad if you fail: welcome to hell. What is heaven, and what is hell?
But isn't it also possible that even if there is no purpose of life or to life, we can still have purpose in life?
Enter the age-old debate of Dualism. Is the mind the seat of the soul? Do we still live on even after our brain malfunctions and decays in the earth?
Am I a bad Catholic, a bad Christian, for doubting God? Sometimes I feel like religion is a scapegoat, some fabricated system of ideas and ideals to help explain the things that we feel have no answers. Perhaps we're just not advanced enough to uncover the truth yet.
Sometimes I find that Oscar Wilde's quote from one of his plays seems more rational:
"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."
Perhaps heaven and hell are here on earth. When one feels euphoria, one likens the pleasant sensations and emotions to the atmosphere in heaven. However, when one experiences anger, anguish, sorrow, confusion, one thinks that it must be some kind of punishment, some kind of hell to be paid. In this case, heaven and hell are simply states of mind. In the future, psychology might find the reasons why.
But right now, philosophy is a tornado of question marks coiling around you, grabbing you from the ground you've stood on for so long. It picks you up and sucks you into an abyss, then spits you out when it is done with you, leaving crumbled debris of confusion in its wake. And you're wide awake, trying to recover from the aftermath of its impact. You ask yourself, "Will I ever find the yellow brick road?"
Nope. Instead, you're back where you were standing, mercilessly tossed aside to the ground like a ragdoll, still as clueless as when you first started.
So after this long journey, I am hungry. Hungry for the answers. Hungry for the truth. But no matter how long or how hard I hunt for the answers or cultivate the knowledge I already possess, I think that I will still starve. Maybe my quest is all for naught.
Are you out there God? It's me, Julianne. Forgive me for being so ravenous.
Philosophy is most definitely a complex topic. I have already done the chapter on the existence of God and it was the most painful to get through.
ReplyDeleteFaith, as we defined it, is something that is illogical: despite all the proof against the existence of God, i.e. evil, death, disease, poverty, whatever, people who have faith still believe in his existence.
With philosophy, I have discovered, there is never a definite answer. I too was left with more questions than answers about whether God existed, whether the battered old table at the front of the equally battered classroom did exist and if we truly had free will. I don't believe your "quest is for naught". The unexamined life is not worth living, a famous philosopher once said; these are valid questions. What gives them value is the different responses and finding some sort of truth. It's a journey and you accept what you want to accept because there is always a rebuttal, always a flaw in an argument.
I have come appreciate philosophy, despite the confusion it causes. I think it has even effected the way I construct arguments and my writing. I embrace it. We must discuss this further when I see you Thursday. Lovely post by the way; quite thought provoking.