Old age faith and doubt


Doubt is a normal part of life. Most people have to deal with it, though I have some friends who seem to have absolute faith in what they profess to be true. While for me, well, as I get older fewer and fewer answers seem to come to me, I have less and less to hold on to. Yet I am neither an agnostic nor an atheist. God makes sense to me, it is my education and images that get me into trouble when they start to fade in to black. Life seems so much like a dream anyway, days, weeks, months, years and decades are speeding by so fast that I feel like I am on a bullet train carrying me over the the terrains of life. My friends, whom the majority are close to my age are starting to show their age, some developing serious diseases. There is a lot to adapt to as ones ages.

Yet I am also happy and in spite of the changes in my perception on God, the no-thing-ness of the mystery, I also feel at home. The afterlife seems like a silly concept at times, I can't get my head around it, yet the belief or faith is still there. Do I fear death? Well of course I do, but at times the thought of annihilation is a comfort, though I don't think that is what happens. So I again choose to believe in God and over the years I have had experiences that seem to point in that direction, yet perhaps I am wrong. So what? All we can do is to take one step at a time forward seeking answers to life's mysteries.

I think science has situated itself into place that it does not belong, it can do nothing to fill the void that seeks answers than can not be found in a test tube, or give answers to the reason that nothing in the world seems to fill the need for the transcendent. No we need philosophy, poetry, literature and religion for that. In the end, we each must choose what to believe and seek to deepen ones insight about the path chosen. The tendency to want to think for others, or to shower them with contempt if they think or believe differently, is just a common human trait that is helping to make this world a living hell. It fact it is the hard nosed atheist that have helped me to keep my faith. For in the end, many of them are just as bad as extreme religious believers of any tradition.

The whole debate over God is at a stalemate and has been for years, no more can be said of it. There are rational reasons on both sides to bolster
each point of view. Atheist becomes believers, and believers become atheist, there are many books showing both sides......we choose. Perhaps that is what life is about, the not-knowing, the seeking, the darkness....and what we do with it