Monday, August 15, 2011

Stupidity

Perhaps you should only think where you are the most stupid, for only there are the most interesting problems going to lie for you. 'Interesting', because you don't know the answer to them. Of course your stupidity is a very personal matter. One person's stupidity can be an embarrassment for another, but for them it might be their hidden strength. 'Why are you being so stupid,' they might irritatingly remark, 'can you not see the answer to the question?' But your relation to your own stupidity is a far different affair. It is not enough that you are stupid, as seen from the position of the other, you have to feel your own stupidity. This means that you know there is something missing in your response. My stupidity lies with entirely within the word 'God'. I do not understand why people believe in God, but at the same time, my absence of belief seems entirely stupid to me. I don't have the insouciance of those who quite happily call themselves atheists. I don't know what it means. I have more time for those who think the entire discussion is useless, that you shouldn't talk about God at all, whether you believe in Him or not, than those who either assert his existence or don't. For example, when Jean Luc Marion defends himself in his preface to the English translation of God without Being against the theologians that he didn't mean that God did not exist and that He certainly does, I find his ability to simply pronounce that God exists entirely baffling (I know his book explains why he can say that, but it doesn't help me). At the same time, militant atheists like Dawkins and his ilk, are entirely laughable. They haven't even read Kant or Nietzsche. It's as though we have been transported in a time machine to the 17th C, and yet the proclaim themselves to the most up to date, the most modern, knights of reason against the oncoming hoards of irrational believers, be they Christian, Muslim or whatever.