Eternal answers...

I remember one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it always was busy with - the quest of God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?

And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in me awoke and received a meaning... Why do I look further? a voice within me asked. He is there: he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledge God and live are one and the same thing. God is what life is. Well, then I live, seek God, and there will be no life without him...

After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was saved from suicide. Just how or when the change took place I cannot tell. But as insensibly and gradually as the force of life had been annulled within me, and I had reached my moral death-bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. And what was strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. It was my ancient juvenile force of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to be better. I gave up the life of the conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities simply keep us from comprehending.

Tolstoy (abridged)

And Tolstoy thereupon embraced the life of the peasants, and has felt right and happy, or at least relatively so, ever since.

I was speaking to a friend last night and he mentioned his feeling of how unpleasant life often feels. His problem with life seemed a little bit similar to that of Tolstoy: in William James' words, "the superfluities and insincerities, the cupidities, complications, and cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying". And they are.

There seems to be something that heals, something that has the potential to break the effective edge of sadness, in the very act of accepting an eternal answer to our deepest questions, even when this answer is as mysterious as God (or 'the eternal', or 'the MORE', or 'the Wholly Other') can be. I am not speaking here of answers in the doctrine-dogma-system way, but rather in the acceptance that there is, in fact, an eternal answer (although it may not be possible to put it into logical and reasoned words).

I find this a very interesting thought... Perhaps even satisfying...

Good evidence

"Only religious belief requires faith because only religious belief postulates the existence of entities which we have no good evidence to believe exist. It is a simple error to suppose that just because atheist beliefs are also 'unproven' or 'uncertain' that they too require faith. Faith does not plug the gap between reasons to believe and certain proof. Rather it is what supports beliefs that lack the ordinary support of evidence or argument. And that is why, as the traditional religious texts tell us, faith is not as easy as ordinary belief. Or, as atheists tell us, why faith is foolish".

Julian Baggini, Atheism: A very short introduction

I think there is some truth here. I think that both religious and atheist 'faiths' (if they can be called like that) are quite different in that they do not both argue for the existence of something but rather one of them argues against the existence of that which there is not enough 'good evidence' to believe in. As some atheists keep telling us, we are all (or most) atheists with respect to Zeus, and we all know what it means to be so. I certainly am an atheist with respect to divine cats with two heads that fly and answer my prayers - I have no 'good evidence' to believe in them.

However I wonder what kind of evidence would count as 'good evidence' for atheists to start believing in any God. I don't think that all the believers around the world do not have any evidence at all that could count as 'good evidence' to believe in the God they believe in; I don't think they are just blind people who happened to choose one God they heard about and that's why they believe.

I find it hard to make sense of discussions like this because sometimes people talk about 'good evidence' but they don't make clear what they mean by it. I recently heard a debate between a woman believer and Richard Dawkins in which he admitted the possibility of the existence of 'emotional truth' (as a kind of truth different to scientific truth), for which 'good evidence' would not need to be scientific but rather 'emotional'. In fact he himself is aware of parts of his life where that kind of truth applies. However, if this is so and both truths are based on 'good evidence' (although different kinds of evidence), is it not possible that religious faith is based on 'good (religious) evidence'?

Snowman photos

It is true... We created a monster...

The evolution of the flagellum

For all those who really want answers, this is an interesting video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9w

And ID again...

"It turns out God has fought back... "

You don't usually hear these days sentences like that coming from the lips of ID proponents. They have learnt that when they present God as their main scientific argument they are showing their real intentions (as well as how little they know about science). And so they usually are very careful to avoid saying things like that. This is why I think the last 10-20 seconds of this short interview are specially enlightening:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=90952

It's God-talk... I knew it!

Evolution and ID debate

This is a VERY enlightening debate...

http://www.kkms.com/blogs/JeffandLee/11566451/

I think it shows quite a lot of what really is going on. Enjoy it!

The intelligence of ID

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3015753963746035923&q=intelligent+design&total=2698&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

Thanks for the link, Pete!