VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1361786725|CONTENT|I think Giles might be an existentialist – this TFTD was a bit of an existentialist manifesto. If there is a central core to existentialism (big if), it is that each individual defines the nature of their own existence simply by existing. All thought and morals spring from the individual, not from society or religion. It is the attempt by others to force an individual into a category, into a box, that creates angst. I am what I am, not what you perceive me to be. So when Giles says that each individual assumes that they follow a god who is just like them, all they are doing is confusing the order in which that happens.

There have been plenty of Christian existentialists. Søren Kierkegaard was one. The main aspect of this version of Christianity is that the bible is not seen as a set of rules and instructions, but more like a book of Zen Koans. The book doesn’t provide the answers, but the process of trying to find the answers for yourself leads you to a better understanding. So you can’t quote chapter and verse to say why something is right or wrong - you read the whole thing, ponder its twists and contradictions, use these to test and question your opinions, and then ultimately make your own mind up. An existentialist would argue that there is literally no other way of doing it, and that anyone who claims to be following the bible’s instructions is either hiding or confused.

A cynic would say that this process is exactly the same with or without god. Maybe that’s why we see Giles as a closet atheist. I actually think this type of religion is a good thing to have around. Because there is no attempt to link a moral thought with a set of outdated instructions, it is at least honest. It is also benign – it can’t mount a campaign against gay marriage because its members can too easily disagree. And it is openly interested in other sources of thought, even explicitly atheist ones. The part where we differ (the existence or otherwise of god) becomes completely personal and somewhat academic, and therefore easily ignored if we want to arrive at a consensus.

This is a discussion about existentialism, so it needs a quotation from JPS (with my emphasis added).

 [blockquote]I emerge alone and in dread in the face of the unique and first project that constitutes my being: All the barriers, all the railings, collapse, annihilated by the consciousness of my liberty; I have not, nor can I have, recourse to any value against the fact that it is I WHO MAINTAIN VALUES IN BEING; nothing can assure me against myself; cut off from the world and my essence by the nothing that I am, I have to realize the meaning of the world and my essence: I DECIDE IT, ALONE, UNJUSTIFIABLE, AND WITHOUT EXCUSE.[/blockquote] |IP-ADDRESS|10.0.119.228, 217.36.222.79, 10.37.36.203|MODERATIONFLAG|