RE: List of reasons to believe God exists?
December 4, 2017 at 6:02 pm
(This post was last modified: December 4, 2017 at 6:05 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
I think it was Herman Melville who said something like, "why should the creature expect to live as long as his Creator." I always considered a life seeking truth and virtue to be its own reward even if it brings discomfort and sorrow. I even believed that back when I was an atheist. There is a certain romantic heroism in the futile challenge of imposing values on an indifferent universe and asserting one's own meaning in defiance of the on-coming darkness. But that was just me, embracing what was as obvious to me then as it is now. What I did not realize back then though was the deep incoherence and absurdity of a world without some transcendent absolutes. From where I sit now, atheism is no longer even a remote option for me. It's not necessarily irrational in a wild-eyed rejection sort of way, although that's quite evident in some members; but rather, it is a kind of hyper-rationality that devours itself, undermining the premises on which it is built. Here I am talking about atheism as an intellectual commitment with respect to the proposition "God exists," not some trivial ignorance. I guess I would turn the question around. How in the world could anyone find atheism a coherent and satisfying intellectual stance?