God and The Itch

It has just passed midnight, in the garden of good and evil.  

I have a massive day ahead of me and I am characteristically unable to sleep.  It’s times like this when I start to question everything that surrounds me, and I rarely come to a cheerful conclusion.  So forgive me, my friends, if this post is distinctly more sombre than usual.

For reasons I won’t go into; my main thoughts today have been about death.  The one thing that we all owe to God, and we will all be forced to pay.  If you think about it in terms of forfeiture avoidance, it’s genius really - make your clients biologically unable to avoid payment.

I’m not really one for talking religion most of the time, but for me thoughts of death and religion are intrinsically linked.  

I do consider myself to be a Christian, although I do little to merit the title.  

I suppose I try to be good to people, and treat others how I would wish to be treated myself, but I admit that I am not always strong enough to do so.  

I do not repent when I should , and I do things wrong, when I have had the foresight and time to know that I shouldn’t.  Therefore I do not exactly live my life by Christ’s example. 

I believe in God enough to feel that He exists, but not enough not to have to hope that He does as well.  Not enough to fear that this may be “it” and that there may be nothing but oblivion waiting for us on the other side.

The 2 men I find most comforting in times like this (at the moment) are quite different but are both scientists none the less.  The first would in fact, ironically, be Richard Dawkins who once said that we are to end at the point of our death, this only serves to make our lives more purposeful than if we live on.  Our place in the universe having been unique and transitory, like some cosmic snowflake, possibly insignificant, but no less beautiful than any other life simply because we are the only ones who could have lived it.  

I do take some comfort from this, but it’s not without it’s faults.  Even if I could come to terms with this for myself, I don’t think that I can accept this for my loved ones.  For them my feelings are entirely selfish.  I don’t want to lose them, and I don’t care how beautiful, or unique their lives maybe, it would never be enough to compensate for their loss.  So Dawkin’s statement is ultimately unsatisfactory.  It just doesn’t feel right.  Maybe I just don’t want to believe it either.

The second is the great philosopher Descartes.  He sat in a room with a little stove for ages, thinking like crazy, and came up with a good proof for His existence.  This was at the same time of proving that we all exist.  This might come as a shock to you, but before he said “cogito ergo sum” in the 17th century, everyone just walked around wondering if everything was really there, or just an illusion created by some naughty demon.  Descartes used his noodle to simply think it through*.   

He thought that as we have an idea of something that is perfect, the cause of that idea must be perfect.  A man is not perfect, because we know that our knowledge increases with time i.e. we cannot be perfect because we don’t know everything.  Therefore the perfect thing that gave us the idea, must be something else: God** I find the idea comforting because it actually offers some form of proof.  It has been pointed out that Descartes is wrong about knowledge, and that we can never be sure of what we know, but we all think that we are real.  We have faith in our senses and surroundings, even though we cannot know if they really exist, so it’s a nice theory as even the criticism requires faith in something.***

Sometimes It’s when I can’t sleep that my thoughts turn to death, as I just can’t stop thinking, and death is the one thing you can’t avoid facing, and it’s the one thing that most people want to avoid.  Over time I’ve concluded that it’s why I love film and cinema so much.  As Anne Rice suggested; we love entertainers because they distract us from the thought that we will one day end.  This possibly goes for everyone we ever loved, even our children.  There is of course at least a small part of us that has children to give us the illusion that we are, in some way, immortal.

It is one thing that does cause me to have to hope that God exists, instead of just accepting it.  It forces the question how could He love us and also inflict such a terrible fate on all of us? Or even to expose us, and our innocent children, to the risk of death, without a first proving that He exists to us all?

I accept that I may have just missed most of his appearances in my life, and I’m not sure about the times I think I’ve seen His work.  

So if you’re listening God, I’m a big fan of your work - I really am, but I’d appreciate it if you could just be a bit more obvious sometimes, because I occasionally get a bit dejected with the way things are run down here.  You know? Perhaps take a break from being mysterious from time to time?  I think obvious might really be your thing this century.  Oh and when I’m having a bit of “me” time in the bathroom, could you just give me a pass on that?  Thanks in advance.

I know I maybe wrong, I’m probably just talking bollocks, but I think a death may be too much of a price for a life, given that you can never forget that it’s coming.  As the quote goes from Blade Runner “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch”

*anyone who spent time in HM Forces will tell you: it’s amazing what your mind turns to when you’ve got too much time on your hands.

** I have given my own interpretation of both ideas.  Yes I know they may not be wholly accurate, smart arse.

***This ties in with the theory of knowledge, and at the risk of being ripped to shreds by any proper philosophy students, I don’t have the time to try my hand at the entire thing.