angiej in her journal. My response (also included below) probably makes more sense if you read her article first.As an aside, an interesting comparison is the episode of The Prsioner "The General" where No.6 defeats the computer with four letters "It's insoluble, for man or machine...W-H-Y Question mark : Why ?"
Because...
Such a simple question, and yet so difficult to answer. My simple one-word response is, of course, not really an answer at all - more an assertion that no real answers exists. Our world is shaped our choices and the choices of those around us and those who came before us.
We can better hope for more of an answer if we narrow down the question. Many things - our race, the society we live in - are predicated by where and to whom we are born. The possibilities are dictated by the sate of the world, there is no room for unfairness or favouritism. Why was I born into a comfortable and loving family whilst someone else was born to a single mother in a famine-stricken and war-torn part of the world? Because someone had to be. One of us was lucky, the other profoundly misfortunate.
Other questions may be answered not by the blind forces of chance, but by the choices we have made. Why am I depressingly single while someone else is married with children? Because the life I chose to lead is not conducive to meeting new people and the person I chose to become is not someone who easily makes the sort of friendship that leads to more. I don't doubt that if I had made different choices then I'd be curled up asleep with my wife right now. But if I had made those choices, then surely I would no longer be me.
I can whole-heartedly agree that if God exists, he is not petty. My view would be of a deity who allows us to make our own choices and mistakes, for good or ill. One who would judge on the spirit of our actions rather than adherence to the letter of the Word, one who does not care if we do not choose to regularly praise Him (for surely God does not have an ego), but how we behave towards others.
Where I would beg to differ is if God does not exist. While the existence of the divine is certainly a sufficient condition for us to want to better ourselves, surely it must not be necessary. For me, it would be would be a desire that when my time comes, I can pass away with the belief that at least in some small way the world was better off for having had me in it (even if it's no poorer for having me gone).
I was born and raised a Christian, and it was a long time before I came to examine my beliefs - and realised I had none. I became an Atheist not because of a firm belief that there is no God, but because nothing has made me believe otherwise. I would say that rather than having "the psychological ability to not believe", I do not have the ability to believe - and even this lack of belief is not something that easily and comfortably boxed away.
As such, I don't look down on those who have faith, but rather admire them for their ability to believe in something larger than themselves. Perhaps not so much those who blindly and unquestioningly follow the herd, but certainly those who are willing to examine their faith, to ask (and answer) the difficult questions as you have done.
As for the question "Why?", I have no answer - but that's something I have learned to live with.
Metempsychosis
October 21 2002, 15:31:42 UTC 18 years ago
Reincarnation, as opposed to Resurrection, not being Christian orthodoxy, this is hard to discuss clearly in a religious framework. It's barely clearer having discarded religious baggage: a brutal materialist like me can wave their hands to define consciousness as merely an emergent property of complex organisation, but this fails even to address the essential asymmetry between me, in this head behind these eyes, and the millions of other conscious beings. (Solipsism is an irrefutable answer but psychologically unsatisfactory, to say the least.)
I hope this is the only life I have. My secret fear is being reincarnated as someone stupid.
Re: Metempsychosis
October 21 2002, 16:35:35 UTC 18 years ago
It's amazing how trying to explain your world-view to others serves best to clarify it for yourself.
As for reincarnation - if it does happen, then we have no recollection of our previous lives. If that's the case then nothing of us would be passed on into the next life - in which case how is it reincarnation. If I'm wrong, then I'll see you all on the Riverworld.