In Other Words

Red Eyed Wondering

After six hours of sleep we went to the Sunday market today (again). Within ten minutes I had bought eight books for a buck and spent the rest of the time waiting for Fish and Banana. Not just any books, however, but non-fiction. I was walking around thinking ‘I want fact, not fiction, I wish they had some good educational stuff over here’ and then I stumbled right across this box, where everything went for 10 cents. Some old guy’s collection that his daughters were selling (I wonder if he knew about it, or whether he was still in a state to care). Of course the stuff is a bit out dated, but outdated is better then not informed, right?

After I was done buying the books the girls still needed some time (read two hours), so I wandered around, considering this and that. I ended up thinking about God (just one of those things, you know). The inspiration for that was Fish’s husband, Taha. He’s a convert (for the uninitiated that means that he joined the Muslim faith of his own free will) and therefore rather taken with religion (the converted are often the most zealous, I’ve noticed).

He loves to talk about his faith and why his faith is the right faith and how the other faiths have it all wrong. I think he is secretly trying to convert me (Banana being Muslim and all). The interesting thing is, though, that he is approaching me from completely the wrong angle. He continues to try to prove his faith right by default. If he can prove that all the other faiths are wrong, well then only the Muslim faith remains. That is logical enough if you believe that there is, without a doubt, a god. Unfortunately I’m still very much in doubt about that matter.

I consider the God question much like the Schrödinger’s cat paradox, where we can just never open the box to find out if God is inside, or not. (I’m not saying god is dead, just that we will never know if god does or does not exist). The black box of ‘the god question’ will probably always remain closed and if we can’t open that box, well then we can never know which faith is the right one (or if any faith is the right one, for that matter). It seems a little pointless to try and undermine one faith to advance another.

I imagine people would feel pretty foolish if they find out they have been killing, hunting and slaughtering each other for a God who does not exist, or even worse, does not care. Alright, I better stop before I get back on my pedestal and sermon all of you. Hehe, Sermoning on the doubt inherent in religion, amusing.

posted by Symbol @ 9.1.05