The Non-Theist's Quandary: The Finale

Greetings, Zizzle-Zotians. I’d like to thank you all once again for the conversation we’ve been having. For me, the posts and ensuing discussions have provided a tremendous opportunity to reconsider my belief in a higher power, to analyze my reasoning for said belief, and to organize my thoughts in support of this belief. My hope is that everyone reading also took advantage of the debate to delve deeper into their own belief systems.

The thing I love about the blog format in general, and specifically about the blogosphere we’ve established for ourselves on Zizzle-Zot, etc., is that it’s a completely open forum. We’ve created a community of trust and respect, inviting all to honestly share their ideas and worldviews with other deeply thoughtful, Truth-seeking philosophers, scholars, and intellectuals (and I don’t hesitate when giving us those titles – just look at the discussions we’ve fostered).

As a result, we’ve been able to come together from varying walks of life to challenge each other, to look closer at the big issues and in turn, continue to make ourselves better people.

Truth be told, I could write an infinite number of continuations to The Non-Theists Quandary (okay, that’s a lie – I don’t believe in infinity as it applies to the physical world), and never come close to proof. For every essay I would write a scholar much smarter and more learned than I could write a rebuttal. Poking holes in the non-theist’s faith will never succeed in definitively proving my own, nor will the non-theist poking holes in my faith cause me to apostatize.

My aim was to present some convincing challenges to the non-theist belief system as a way to spark dialogue. For some of us, this was helpful in reaffirming our ideas. Some of us took the opportunity to play devil’s advocate on a few issues. Some of us outright disagreed on certain theories. Any one of these reactions is beneficial in forcing us to confront what we claim to believe and digging in to find out why.

And maybe, though I realize that no non-theists read this blog (at least none that I know of) and I don’t imagine our conversation would be quite enough to shift any paradigms, maybe it would challenge a non-theist to take another look, as we have.

I say with some confidence (and simultaneously trepidation) that definitive proof for or against the existence of a higher power will never be found (at least not in our lifetime). To believe requires a leap.

Whenever I look up at the stars I feel in my gut an overwhelming sense of both awesome power and comfort. We live in an unimaginably vast universe full of galaxies, planets, stars, asteroids, and black holes. Yet we are here. For no reason at all, we’re here, and we have the power to reason, to love, to create. To feel hope, pain, joy, reverence. In my mind, it doesn’t make sense unless we were intentionally put here.

In the end, faith must be blind. We all must find our own reasons to have faith, or not to. I know what I believe. It isn’t scientific. I’ve never seen it, heard it, touched it. But I believe in it. And that’s Truth for me.

Thanks for reading.