Faith In A Godless Age

(Disclaimer: People of faith, I truly respect you and your beliefs. This blog post is about me and mine, and will be written accordingly.)

I was raised in a moderately religious household. We didn’t “practice” as such, but God was real, with the capital G and everything. Mostly I’d pray for personal favours, such as the acquisition of a new videogame, or for technology to stop malfunctioning on me, which surely isn’t how that’s supposed to work. I’m afraid my core understanding of the bible comes from a picture-book version for primary school children, and whatever my distracted mind soaked up in RE at school. And so I suppose it’s no surprise that as I got older, I treated the Christian faith as one might treat Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny: something to tell the little ones to make the world a little more magical.

I don’t mean this derisively, of course. Whilst religion may have been the perpetrator of many crimes across history, I also know many people here in the modern world who have a perfectly well adjusted view of their faith. I’m not one of those atheists who believes that I’m the only smart person in the room if I’m the only non-believer. But if I’m to write about what I want to write about today, I have to be honest about my perception of the world.

Let’s continue to talk about atheism, because I don’t like to label myself as atheistic. It’s… true, as far as the heart is concerned, but I prefer to call myself agnostic. We covered as much in the previous blog post. The reason for it, besides what I covered already, is because I don’t consider my belief system to be a closed book. I’m not about to embrace religion, and this isn’t an invitation to be “converted”. I’m simply not comfortable proclaiming that I absolutely know that there’s nothing outside of scientific coincidence that causes us to exist when we still have so few answers on that front officially. But, yes, as far as the heart is concerned, I’ve spent the last decade or so of my life adjusting to the reality that there is no great plan, there is (broadly speaking) no life after death, and there is nothing to make us behave aside from our own moral code.

So, nihilism then. Right? Life has no meaning, we were born to die, let’s bang on some metal instruments and scream into a microphone about it. (I’m allowed to make that joke, I listen to Architects.) Well, not necessarily. A lot of people who think they don’t have a faith kind of do. Some turn to conspiracy theories about aliens existing among us for thousands of years. Others look to ghost stories for proof of something coming afterwards. It doesn’t have to be a theistic belief system as long as it tethers you to a world with a larger meaning, with room for the unexplained. But I can’t say I fall into those categories, either. I’m largely a cynic when it comes to ghost stories, and don’t get me started on the History Channel.

Aliens. (Cue the meme.) Don’t get me wrong, of course they exist. The universe is so vast, how could they not? But personally, I tend to believe that we’ve not met them. I mean, you look at the vastness of the universe, the likelihood of life emerging, and the difficulties involved in space travel, and the question becomes less if life exists, but if we’ll ever get to meet it. It’s fun to dream of secret galactic empires and guardian aliens watching over us until we meet some perceived threshold, but ultimately, you’ve got to separate the fantasy from the reality. And, speaking of nihilism, the Fermi Paradox is a whole thing… and that truly does frighten me.

But enough beating around the bush. We’ve ticked off religion, aliens, superstition, and nihilism. I guess that leaves the obvious, doesn’t it? Love. We make our own meaning to live. And even if nothing comes afterwards, even if legacies eventually fade, even if the universe finally winks out of existence and there’s nothing left at all, we’ll still have happened. We’re still in this moment, the present, and as hard as I find it to live in sometimes, it’s all that truly matters. I worry that as modern society moves away from the safety net of religious certainty, the question of what gives life meaning is drawing too many of us to nihilistic despair. But the truth is, we don’t need gods. We don’t need ghosts or aliens to affirm our place in the universe. We just need each other. How we got here, whether it was by accident or on purpose, it ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are here. And in an uncaring universe, we’re the ones who have to care for each other.

And of course, it isn’t as easy as that. But as far as faith goes, that’s what I have.

August – A Month of Changing Winds

This month I gave The Tombstone Project some love; both to the project itself, and the actual Word file. Firstly, I went back and dug up some old poetry from my teenage years, some of which turned out to be surprisingly decent, especially given what I thought about it at the time. Secondly, I began writing more “journal” style entries specifically for the project, talking more personally about my life with the freedom of not having it made public until after I’ve, y’know, snuffed it. This doesn’t mean I’ve immediately begun spilling everything that goes on in my brain onto the page – people I know will still be reading this, after all – but so far, irregular, personal updates have provided me assurance that my autobiographical works aren’t entirely made up of phrases like “I can’t go into specifics”, or otherwise silent omissions of importance.

As for the Word file, well, I added page breaks after each entry. I won’t bore you with the specifics but it was a pretty unorganised mess before this. Anyway, now that I’ve done that, we’re sitting at 450 pages, although that’s at paperback size because I don’t know how to change it back. No, seriously, I am stumped, and not even Google is helping. It sounds like a simple problem but it’s not, okay? I’m good with writing and I’m good with software but apparently I am not good with writing software. Add it to the list of life’s great ironies.

Am I rambling about inane nothings? Sorry. I have plenty that I could talk about in terms of what’s happened to me this month, but at the time of writing, that’d fall under the “silent omissions of importance” I mentioned earlier. I won’t give a vague impression of what I’m omitting, either, because people jump to all sorts of incorrect conclusions. Instead, I’m just going to apologise for the low word count this month and jump straight towards the section where I ramble about my hobbies for a paragraph or two.

I took a bit of a left turn and streamed for 10 days in a row, after having not livestreamed anything for a few months now. The reason? World of Warcraft! We’re ramping up to the release of the new expansion, and anyone who knows me knows what the game means to me. I’m beyond in love with the world, characters, and gameplay of that universe, and I’m super excited about where the next expansion, Shadowlands is taking us: the afterlife. As you may be able to surmise by the existence of this project, I spend a lot of time thinking about death, and while that’s usually in more of a serious, existential way, I also thoroughly enjoy fantastical stories which explore what happens to use when we die.

Besides that, though, I’ve also enjoyed Gamescom this month (not least for the animated WoW short it premiered), dabbled in poetry, delved into the book Mythos by Stephen Fry in the hopes of better understanding Greek Mythology, and took a breath to appreciate the changing of seasons. Much of this month was spent in a sweltering heatwave, but in recent days the heat has broken and the coolness of autumn has taken its place. This time of year always makes me nostalgic and introspective, reminding me of starting school, or university, of taking comfort in certain fictional worlds; of rare quiet moments where I’ve sat and appreciated the breeze, the waning sun, the distant sounds of life in various gardens and roads.

There can be no perfect afterlife. It would always be autumn, but the winds of autumn are appreciated for their heralding of change, and perfection demands stasis, lest it be imperfect for its ephemeral nature.

It’s been quite a month.