My day of heathenism in a nutshell

What up what up. It's been a little while since I have written anything on here. Life is continuing to happen. I have been getting a lot of Xmas shopping done, I am almost finished! Hit up the MOA last night. I just have a few more people to buy for. And I have to get more stuff for Larissa. Hundreds of dollars worth of gifts! Kidding.

The other day was pretty interesting- Denny is team-teaching a class in spirituality at Northwestern University, which is a majorly Christian school. He went to school there and is working on his masters at Bethel now to be a youth pastor. Apparently it seemed that a lot of the students in the class hadn't had very much experience talking to anyone who didn't share their beliefs, and Denny wanted to show them that it was ok for people to believe differently then you and you can still be friends with them and whatnot.

So I came in to the class and talked to them about why I am not a Christian. Or why I am an "atheist" so-to-speak, even though I don't necessarily consider myself to be that exactly. Not an orthodox atheist. Mostly I just think it's fine that I don't understand the nature of the universe. I've made my peace with the fact that I won't ever know if there is some sort of higher power. If I do find out after I die or something then that's great, but if I just rot in the ground that's fine too. It kind of gives me more justification to make the best of this life, knowing that it may very well be all that I get.

That said, I definitely don't see any particular reason to believe in the Christian God. There have been literally thousands of all-powerful deities thought up by all kinds of different cultures all over the world for thousands of years... and they are always considered to be the only true God.

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
	...Stephen F Roberts

Make sense?

Anyway. I feel like it went really well, talking in that class, and I think the students enjoyed it too. Hopefully we all got something out of the experience. Everyone was very respectful and asked good questions, some of which I didn't even really have solid answers for. One part that sticks in my mind was after I mentioned that I would like some sort of evidence for the existence of a God or higher power if I was going to believe in one. I know that goes against the whole "faith" thing, but I'm not necessarily down with that. Faith is basically just to believe in something that is not provable or observable with no particular basis in reality... why should I bother? If there is a God, and the only way to avoid him condemning me to eternal suffering and torture is to ignore all of the available evidence and my best judgement (with which I have supposedly been blessed by Him) then he really doesn't sound like that great of a guy to me. Sounds like kind of a dick.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent there. I mentioned in the class that I would like to see some evidence, and one of the students asked me about that and what kind of evidence it would take for me to change my mind. And to be honest... I really don't know what would do it. I said something along the lines of, "Short of God himself riding down on a cloud and waving his arms in front of me and saying 'Hey I exist, go to Church!' (and I would start going) I don't really know what else could convince me. If I did have some sort of spiritual experience I would probably chalk it up to something more scientific... or a hallucination."

I was also asked whether I was open to having some sort of emotional experience that convinced me of the presence of a God, instead of just something cognitive. I don't really know if I am. Part of me would like to think that I am open to that just for the sake of being open-minded, but part of me would like to think that I wouldn't be open to it, because it seems kind of ridiculous and subjective to me... and I would really prefer something objective and provable. I guess this emotional experience would have to happen for me to know how I would respond.

Oh and I just remembered, one student brought up a classic Pascal's Wager scenario- as in, "Why not just belive in God and be a Christian for the sake of 'fire insurance'?" However, this idea totally disregards the possibility of the existence of any of thousands of other Gods- even infinite other Gods, if you include all the ones that no one has thought of yet. If you pick one just for safety's sake, you really aren't helping your odds that much, since you could pick the wrong one and still get burned by any of the other ones if you pick wrong. Anyway, it was kind of fun for me to get to talk about Pascal's Wager in a room full of Christians.

My only regret looking back on the whole experience is that I think I still left them with the impression that I am "searching" for religion, or God, or salvation or something like that. Maybe they were going to think that no matter what I said, I feel like I tried to put it down but I couldn't do it. I think a lot of people look at a state of agnosticism as something that exists only as a transitional period between belief and disbelief, or vice versa. But I am very comfortable with not knowing what's out there. I don't feel restless, I don't "long to discover a higher power," I don't feel like I am all alone in the universe. I'm not in the middle of a dark period of my life, that I know of. If I strive to be a good person in this life and I'm happy doing what I enjoy and spending time with people I love, can't that be enough? It seems pretty great to me.

Anyway. Highlight of that day:
Denny saying that I was a lot like Jesus. Twice.