No, no, really. Look:
"Newton Pulsifer had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. And he'd given up on ecology when the ecology magazine he'd been subscribing to had shown its readers a plan of a self-sufficient garden, and had drawn the ecological goat tethered within three feet of the ecological beehive. Newt had spent a lot of time at his grandmother's house in the country and thought he knew something about the habits of both goats and bees, and concluded therefore that the magazine was run by a bunch of bib-overalled maniacs. Besides, it used the word 'community' too often; Newt had always suspected that people who used the word 'community' were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew." - Good Omens, pg. 165-166, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
LOL I JUST ordered this book off PBS. And yes the description is a bit creepy O_O
ReplyDeleteYou can buy books on PBS? Who knew!
DeleteThis book is awesome. This is the best book with the best conversation between a drunken angel and a drunken demon about big damn brains, ever.
EVERYONE SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO READ THIS BOOK! O.O
Yay, more Good Omens! :) Newton Pulsifer is a fantastic character.
ReplyDeleteQuestion, on the belief thing. It occurred to me that I think I remember you writing a post or two at some point about how one night you prayed and asked God to let you know if he was real, and you woke up in the morning and just knew. How do you interpret that experience now? Is it one of those things that you rethought and rationalized, and if it is, what do you think was going on there? Did that knowledge just sort of fade over time?
My own "knowledge" comes and goes sometimes. I'm sure there were points in the past where I was certain Christianity was right, and I can remember "knowing" that Judaism was right and Christianity had gotten it all wrong, and there have been times when I've been certain of the presence of gods and other times when I think I'm imagining the whole thing. So you're definitely not alone in that shift and in the uncertainty, I'm just sort of curious about what you think of that experience. My own has been kind of troubling for me. It's hard for me to make a full commitment to a path without a lot of thinking and trying it out and such, because I've committed myself to things before and then stopped believing in them.
Yes, you're remembering right. That was how I wound up starting back on being religious in the first place. I was *certain* of the knowledge at that time. I didn't have to think about it or question it, I just knew that there was a god. The problem was figuring out which theology was the correct one.
DeleteI've gone from that to thinking that no theology was more or less correct than any other, to doubting divinity entirely.
I think that yes, part of it is that I've rethought and reanalyzed and picked the experience to death so that I look at it now and suppose that it was all in my head. It's never been repeated, and something that's not repeatable is not reliable. I think I was certain because I wanted to be certain, that my mind tricked me. Of course, I could be wrong.
I *want* to believe, and I don't want to believe at the same time. If there is a god/s, assuming that it's not the asshole so many people who claim to be believers make it out to be, then I could benefit from a relationship with it. But if there's not, then I don't have to worry about being wrong or what happens to everyone in the afterlife or why (if the Abrahamic faiths are on the right track) a supreme good allows/created an abject evil and lets humanity run around being such assholes.
I jumped into Catholicism, I jumped into Christianity and it's faded over time. I've never felt 100% comfortable in any denomination that I've tried, there's always been doubts, niggling suspicions that it's all totally ridiculous and I'm just doing the same thing I did as a kid - playing dress up and pretending.
I honestly feel like part of it is my own fault. I feel as though I've been promised, if such and such is true, then if I have enough faith I'll have that miraculous flash of light and an encounter with the divine so that I'll *know*. And I haven't gotten that. I doubt and envy everyone who does get that or at least believes that they've gotten it. I know not everyone does, that most people live their religious lives without this sort of thing, but I feel like I've been promised it by the stories of the people who have, like this is the true sign of faith and I want it even as I know I couldn't ever trust it.
I can identify with that last paragraph a lot. I never felt at home in the conservative Christianity I was taught as a child, because I never had that moment of salvation that everyone told me you had to have. It wasn't enough to know (because I had always been taught it was true, it honestly never occurred to me until years after leaving for college that it might not be) that God was real and Jesus was the savior and everything else. It wasn't enough to want to follow God with every single second of every day. I hadn't had that moment where God pierced my heart with absolute knowledge and made me into a new person. So I always felt like a fraud.
DeleteAnd even now, I've had spiritual experiences where it feels real, but I can never know for certain. And I read blogs of people who do seem to know, who claim to regularly meet with gods and experience them in as concrete and certain ways as I encounter other humans. I don't think I'll ever have that, but that doesn't stop me from hoping for it.
And even now, I've had spiritual experiences where it feels real, but I can never know for certain. And I read blogs of people who do seem to know, who claim to regularly meet with gods and experience them in as concrete and certain ways as I encounter other humans. I don't think I'll ever have that, but that doesn't stop me from hoping for it.
DeleteThis. Exactly this.