Afloat on the face of the deep

Writing yesterday's essay led me to the realization that, in a fundamental sense, believer and non-believer are in the same boat, their only essential difference being the paddle they use to stay afloat.
    "The long, distant cry" didn't initially end with "In my own way, I too am troubled by all this suffering. Its mewing and keening continually haunt my hearing." I added that paragraph (and continued to revise it) after realizing that my continual awareness of suffering and its profound unfairness seems to amount to my being one of those "troubled people" my friend referred to. I have to admit that for some time I have been aware of a sense of underlying existential pathos. A dissonant chord continually troubles the melodic line of my life and disturbs its harmony.
    And who can say that Castaneda was free of existential anxiety¹ even when that "normal" photograph² was made?

One person's response to suffering and injustice is to believe that God exists and will put it all right. And he prays continually that it be so. Amen, he says.
    Put it all right. That is, something is wrong for the believer too. For him too it's a dog eat dog world. He feels the world's suffering and is appalled and unsettled by it. He seeks an antidote for it (or for the fact of his own future annihilation) through believing that suffering (or his coming annihilation) is just an illusion or, if not an illusion, will nevertheless be righted in the hereafter.
    Yes, something is wrong, and the believer too is troubled and suffers, however able he usually is to plug his ears against the tragic discord that would otherwise trouble the harmony of his life too.

I want to remember this. I want to remember compassion for those who stoutly resist giving up the palliative paddle labeled "God." For I seem to have been clutching a sort of paddle myself. Rather than pray and shout amen, I beat the waters and decry. And my song lately has only repeated slight variations of the same lament.
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1. From Wikipedia's entry on existential anxiety:

   The theologian Paul Tillich characterized existential anxiety as "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing" and he listed three categories for the nonbeing and resulting anxiety: ontic (fate and death), moral (guilt and condemnation), and spiritual (emptiness and meaninglessness). According to Tillich, the last of these three types of existential anxiety, i.e. spiritual anxiety, is predominant in modern times while the others were predominant in earlier periods. Tillich argues that this anxiety can be accepted as part of the human condition or it can be resisted but with negative consequences. In its pathological form, spiritual anxiety may tend to "drive the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning which are supported by tradition and authority" even though such "undoubted certitude is not built on the rock of reality."

2. My friend who read my paper on mentoring had said, "Carlos Castaneda's picture looks normal. Why did Thom Green say that he looked troubled?"

"Well, no, I don't believe that"

During lunch yesterday with a friend of my own age, I mentioned that I am reading Bertrand Russell's 1945 A History of Western Philosophy, and he in turn mentioned having read Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. I asked whether the book had influenced him, and he said he had long been an agnostic. I asked what "agnostic" meant to him, and he said "just not knowing, one way or the other, whether 'God' exists. I don't know. But," he added, "I do not believe that there's a personal god. If 'it' exists, it hasn't any interest in human affairs."

I said that perhaps he's atheist with respect to that particular brand of god? He didn't acknowledge it, which I took as an indication that he might need to think about that for a while to become comfortable with the label. (It didn't occur to me until later that I might have told him Dawkins's remark that we are all atheists when it comes to most of the gods mankind has believed in.)

Then we got to talking about whether or not our children "believe in god." I told him that my daughter recently wrote me (in a comment on my blog) that she had concluded as a kid that there's no god. And my friend told me a little story about his own daughter:

When she was three years old she had a friend whose family belonged to a fundamentalist church. One day she told us that her friend had invited her to go to church with them. She wanted to know what we thought. We told her fine, go ahead if she wanted to. So she did and went pretty regularly. She seemed to enjoy going.
    But came the time (three years later) when her friend's mother asked her whether she would like to join the church.
    Our daughter said, "I thought I was already a member."
    "No," they said, "there's a requirement for membership."
    "What's that?"
    "You have to believe."
    "Believe...what?"
    "You have to believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Personal Savior."
    Our daughter hesitated not a moment before answering, "Well, no, I don't believe that."
    She never went back.

This six-year-old knew what she believed—or didn't believe, at any rate. I didn't ask my own daughter what "as a kid" meant in her case, but when I read her comment I imagined her when she wore a pair of fairly large-rimmed eyeglasses and seemed particularly independent and inner-directed. That might have been about sixth or seventh grade, but I'm not sure. I hope she'll read this post and let me know!