Crisis of Faith

Lately, I've been having a crisis of faith. I've been told that such an event is not uncommon, but nevertheless, my crisis of faith snuck up on me pretty much undetected. For more than 30 years I've been an agnostic. So I really didn't think I had enough faith to generate a crisis. Which goes to show what I know.

As an agnostic, I never felt the need to deeply examine my belief system, which went something like this: "I cannot prove god exists, and cannot prove he does not exist. Time to move on." It's a very basic sort of belief. It allowed me to view believers and atheists with equal amusement. How presumptuous they are to tie their hopes and dreams to what may or may not be. I was happy. I even have a bumper sticker for my truck. It says, "Militant Agnostic--I Don't Know and You Don't Either." It addresses equally people on both sides of the "is there a god?" coin. It was cool.

But I'm beginning to doubt even that level of faith, which I will call, for wont of a better term, "the faith of not knowing."

What, might you ask, is responsible for me potentially losing the least amount of faith (the faith of not knowing) that one can have? Oh it started out innocently enough. I read a little Thomas Paine. Founding father and American patriot Thomas Paine was a deist, which made a lot of sense in his day, but I would bet he'd be an atheist in today's world. In his pamphlet The Age of Reason he does a bang-up job of dismantling Christianity, using the Bible itself as his only supporting document.

Then I bumped into British evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, who makes a series of very strong, scientifically based arguments against the existence of god in his fine book, The God Delusion.

Mix in a bit of Bertrand Russell, in particular the texts Am I an Atheist or An Agnostic and Is There a God?, and you can easily see where all this is headed. Bottom line, I'm contemplating taking the step from not believing there is or is not a god (Agnosticism) to believing, without conclusive proof, that god does not exist.

My faith quivers at the thought of becoming smaller still, becoming finally completely weightless, and floating away on the breath of nonexistant angels.

Here Comes ... Vacation!

Two days from now my wife and I will be flying off to Phoenix. The purpose of the trip is to attend my nephew's high-school graduation. We'll be seeing a lot more of him once he finishes school--he'll be attending Dartmouth College in the fall, only two hours away from our home.

I'm looking forward to touching base with the branch of our family that lives in Phoenix, but to be honest, it's way too hot for me there this time of year. I like to refer to Phoenix as "the back porch of hell."

Once we've made the appearance at the graduation, we'll be off on a mini road trip in order to escape the heat. First we'll drive to Vegas, where we'll take in the Cirque-du-Soleil like show who's name escapes me at the moment, and the next day we'll hit the northern canyons--Bryce, Zion, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I visited these spots as a child, but my wife Elisa has never been there. At Zion and Bryce we'll be staying in the park lodges--unfortunately the lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was booked solid.

After that we'll drive back down to Phoenix and fly back to New England on a redeye. I'll be quite happy to miss ten days of mosquitos and black flies, but I'm sure they'll be patiently waiting for me when I get home.