Tuesday, May 12, 2009

curious incuriosities

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I guess it's an unkindness and a blind spot to imagine -- or insist -- that if others hold beliefs, they would therefore be curious about the implications. It's a bad habit, I sometimes think.

Incuriousity is a strange thing -- convenient and cozy, perhaps, but still some childish voice in my mind insists, "How can anyone look themselves in the eye and be at peace without investigating their own beliefs?"

The question is not meant to imply I want anyone to see their beliefs as I see them. I'm not a Christian. The question does imply that I would like to see anyone own up to or plumb their own beliefs. It's probably too pushy by half ... and stupid into the bargain.

The mental chewing gum that occasioned such thoughts was this:

If, to use the language that some prefer, "God is omnipresent" and if someone holds that belief as true and if, perhaps, they insist on it and trumpet it and believe it with their whole heart and without the assistance of theologians or clerics ....

If God is omnipresent -- present in all times and places and events -- then, I would say, only God can acknowledge God. Is there any other option? And if only God can acknowledge God, then who is this one who runs around acknowledging and loving God? I suppose someone might wriggle and explain in the face of such a question -- seek out clerical or theological support -- but if "God is omnipresent," then I think there must come a time when intellectual and emotional squirming has to cease. It is time to get to work.

If only God can acknowledge God, what makes anyone believe God would bother to acknowledge God? Wouldn't that be a pastime for an ego-tripper? If God is omnipresent, what room would there be for preferences -- for ego? And if that were true, whose ego would be tripping? If God is omnipresent, I think the curious might find him/herself between a rock and a hard place: If believers make something of God that God does not make of him/her/itself, wouldn't that be a false God -- a golden calf among golden calves? Why would God be curious about God? Or incurious either?

Oh well, I guess it's easier to believe than it is to find out. Easier ... but sad-making.

Reading this over, I dislike the notion that anyone would see it as mere philosophy or religion. In the face of the longing and uncertainty and sorrow that anyone might feel, what a load of crap philosophy and religion are...new and improved ways of believing and remaining incurious.

So it goes.
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