Of course, an experimental post, where I can post a photo and push buttons to see what some may do, without risking any memorable text that I want to keep till the sun burns out.
In a sense the most fascinating thing about my self, is that it seems totally arbitrary. I was born 8 June 1940, 74 years ago. How so? How did this consciousness come to be to those parents, starting nine months earlier. Identity is called a mystery because there is no answer. As far as I know the mystery of my being (anyone's being, anyone's identity) has no good rational explanation. It just happens, and, if you see what I mean, if I am the only "inside," so to speak, that I will ever know, though the world is full of people, people with mysterious, unknowable identies ("insides"), then my identity (anyone's) identity makes for a terrible and yet exciting existential loneliness. Because, not only is our reason for being unknowable, assuming, of course, that there is one, but the crowning knowledge that defines our being and intensifies our existential loneliness is the knowledge that we will die. Everyone, I am sure, saw that coming. We are that sparrow, flying into the mead hall out of the darkness, flying from one end of the hall to the other, then flying back out into the dark. We can thank the Venerable Bede for preserving that succinct image of our mysterious, excruciating dilemma. And what will you do with your time in the light, your time during that very short passage?
Time to push some buttons, or time to go to bed, for the time being, the remaining time. Cue maniacal laughter?
The button said "text," and it had a lower case "a" over it. I pushed it, and it said "write here." I would like to put some text right here under the picture, but so far I haven't discovered how. On that sad note I think I will fold up my existential dilemma and go to bed, hoping of course that that darkness is one of the temporary ones and not permanent.
Okay. Given our existential dilemma, our identity grounded in mystery, how can anyone be an atheist?
Beauty is real.
Goodness is real.
Truth is real.
God, I believe, as defined by David Bentley Hart in The Experience of God, is real.
Incidently, I approve of Snoopy's perspective.
(Paid for by mom and dad)