Thursday, December 21, 2006

Miracles

By Capt. Fogg

I’m still waiting for a couple of things I heard many times as a child – well one actually. The first was that the sun always shines on Easter, which of course is true, given enough altitude. Just ask the guys on the International Space Station. The other is that there are miracles on Christmas. Of course, it’s a cynical quest. A miracle has to be something that can’t happen but does happen, and to my way of thinking, if it happens, it can’t be a miracle. Most people, though, are satisfied with much less in their miracles: a water stain on a wall, a burn pattern on a grilled cheese sandwich, someone who was sick got better despite some doctor’s prognosis. As Christmas approaches, we search for these justifications for our idiocy.

I don’t know if someone somewhere doesn’t have a vast database of disasters plotted against the calendar, but I would be willing to bet that the odds are about the same on Christmas as any day of the year for floods, landslides, earthquakes, fires, famines, and pestilences. It may be a holiday for most Americans, but not for Death. Taking a quick break from supervising my holiday house guests today, I see that the news is still full of grief and horror and sadness and misery and death as has the world been down all the thousands of generations, but I’m sure that someone will ferret out a miracle from the endless stories of the ferret eating the baby’s toes or the infant run through the airport X-ray machine. People will be blown to bits today, people will starve and die in agony in gutters. Life with its concomitant horrors will go on as it always has and without interruption.

Still, we will have our miracles to clutch at in this cold and uncaring universe, to give a sense of meaning to lives that mean anything only to us as we sink into the inevitable grief and sorrow and suffering and an eternity of oblivion as the universe stretches out into an infinite and meaningless immensity.

Happy Holidays.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

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2 Comments:

  • Your liberalism is obviously atheistic, but I respectfully disagree.

    Yes, indeed, people will die, painfully and in many (most?) cases unnecessarily, over the Christmas holidays. Pain and suffering are, it seems, part and parcel of human existence.

    However, as a Christian I believe that God, as his son Jesus, came to share our human existence, with all its senseless and unjustified pain. What is the answer - why is there pain and suffering? In the end, I have to say that I don't really know; I have no glib answers. But I have faith that God himself knows what it means to suffer, both psychologically and physically. And that, beyond any miracles that you say help us to "clutch at this cold and uncaring universe", is what helps me to live a meaningful life in this "infinite and meaningless immensity".

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:31 PM  

  • And thus your disagreement is as you say, based on fear of reality and incomprehension. You don't know why things are as they are but you take comfort in believing that you believe otherwise?

    Good that you tossed in that gratuitious "liberalism" as well. It seems that along with the other things you don't know, you don't know English. Since the foundation of your belief is "I don't know" you must be able to believe in a great many things; not knowing the things you admit you don't know.

    Frankly, I blame much of the horror of our common condition on faith itself. Knowing that our actions have consequence only to us, leads, in my opinion to compassion and to a morality based on compassion. What follows upon the deities we make up to justify our actions is what makes up our history in all its pious meanness, uncaring viciousness and sanctimonious heartlessness. There are godless religions that would call a man who takes comfort in his special place, in the comfort he takes in belief whilst others go to hell, the lowest of men - and I agree. What you worship is yourself. What you deny is responsibility.

    And you expect me to be impressed that you believe something? Do you believe because you're a "Christian?" which means you choose to close your eyes, or are you a Christian because you choose to believe? You certainly can't be one because the data drives you to it - you admit that.

    You go so far as to admit that God is unknowable and yet you dare to give him attributes! That's self contradictory and dishonest. Yet you think you have made some kind of a point?

    By Blogger Capt. Fogg, at 9:18 AM  

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