Theism week report
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of 'so, what have I learnt so far' is that this is really difficult! I mean, it really is! Ok, so I never expected it to be easy, but I find that I have to concentrate to believe that there is God, but when I do, I really do believe. I think the problem is, whenever I'm not directly foucsed on believing, my mind slips back into a sort of default atheist state, whenever I hear an agruement for God, my mind is automatically challenging it and finding the holes it.
I find that when I do 'believe' it's not specifically that I beieve in a christian God which was the idea at first, my God doesn't seem to belong to any religion, he/she is more of an omnipotent omniscient and all loving thing up in the sky than one that is telling me to keep the sabbath day and go to church.
However, on the subject of going to church, I did! I went to St Pauls in London, I'm told its protestant but I wasn't going for any particular branch of the Church. Overall I'd say that I did enjoy the service and it was definatly worth me going.
The most uninspiring thing: The hymns
The most inspiring thing: Looking directly up at the domed roof and through the glass windows to the sky outside, that really did feel heavenly.
It did give me a good start to the week and a nice feeling of Godliness, but something I did notice was that although I was thinking throughout the service that 'there is a God' (which there is btw), I remeber spotting this guy a few rows ahead of me in this dark suit and expensive looking haircut, and to me if there was one person who looked the most rational minded and grounded person in the Catherderal, it would have been him, but then it came the the blessing and he (like a few others) crossed himself (proving his strong faith). I remeber this slightly shocking and dissapointing me, it felt like the two images I had of this guy didn't fit - the rationality and the belief in God. I think that it probably says something about my own feelings.
Why can't someone be strong in faith and strong in rationality and reason?
My degree is in the physical sciences and consider myself to be extremely
rational and yet my faith in God and Christ is extremely important to me as
well.
Because she means that to be completely rational you would only believe in
what you see and experience and what is on earth, and while most of us
haven't had visions of God or any other sort of holy being, we can only
keep the faith that something is there. She also means that a totally
rational person would believe in science created from science and nothing
else that defies reason, such as Evolution vs. the Creation Story (btw,
it's called a STORY for a purpose) and not fairies or pixies or elves or in
fact, God. The belief in fairies is the same as believing in God in a way
because it's a belief in something that you have not seen with your eyes
physically but still think it's there. Some may argue that believing is
seeing, but that's a whole new argument.