Existential Rumination

I've been having rather intense, deeply theological, philosophical, and above all else, procrastinatory conversations with one of my supervisors recently (he's called Ben, and that tells you absolutely everything you need to know about him. He's also the Metallica guy).

Basically he asks me a question based on his Christian beliefs, such as 'is there such a thing as good and evil as polar opposites?' and I give it a moments thought and come out with something off the top of my head that counteracts it - or at least, in my view. Mainly these theories revolve around stuff that I've concluded after writing that piece A Conversation With God a while back, based on reality as perception. As to good and evil, for example, I explain that I don't believe that any person acts under a knowingly evil agenda - the father who rapes his four-year-old daughter, for example, only thinks that he loves her very much and this is the only way he can show it, or the suicide bomber thinks that he is on a mission from on high. Definitions of good and evil are governed by the masses and the majority, and one person's actions are only evil from another's perspective. As much as Hitler must never be brought into any debate, I'm sure that he thought he was doing the right thing and all who opposed him were trying to bring down his righteous regime.

This brings us to the question of truth, something Ben loves to discuss - surely truth, then, can only be one's perception of reality, and if reality is only a perception of truth, this leaves some sort of existential paradox with layers of meaning I can't even begin to interpret. For the devout Catholic, for example, their belief goes against all Darwinian teaching. Their faith provides their truth, which negates scientific explanations. For them, that is what is real, because of how they see it. For the Darwinian student, of course, there is proof of evolutionary theory and none for a creator god. While there is the perceived advantage of 'fact' for this, there is the profound lack of faith - however, this is what they see and how their minds process it, and for them - a truth. Their reality.

What my beliefs are getting some way to explaining is that both camps can be right - not by some timeline where God created and let evolve, because there are errata in that theory above and beyond what I'd like to pretend I know - but by the fact that reality is not what exists, but how what does exist is interpreted. And indeed once that is understood, we must then see that existence is nothing but the promise - or premise - of substance with no grounding or backup, and that what we perceive may not even exist - although of course, it does to us, as that is our reality, and we try not to get too bogged down in the circular meaning of it all.


I think it's clear by now that I need more meditation on this subject. I'll just leave you with this - I'm sure anyone reading this has toyed with the reasoning that everything's a dream, and that how would you know if you couldn't wake up - especially those of you who have been watching the Matrix rather too intensely than is good for you. Keep that in mind while re-reading this post, then go read 'The Bully' by Ian McEwan. Then give me your thoughts.