A question of faith

Following a series of links from a Tom Tomorrow cartoon, I came across this question in an article:

"Is faith a matter of choice? Is it an act of will? Are we therefore to be held accountable for the presence or absence of faith in our lives?"

The article was based on a letter (whether genuine or not I couldn't tell; I don't know the writer of the article) from an atheist feeling alone and alienated in a strongly Catholic (and conservative) family, and the article writer answered the letter to the effect that if the family truly believed that faith was a miraculous gift of God, they should accept the letter writer's lack of faith as just as much a "miracle" as their own faith.

This is, of course, based on the principle that anyone who can believe in a god must automatically be so credulous that they will believe absolutely anything no matter how inane, which I find somewhat problematic. (You believe in a God whose son died on a cross? Why won't you believe that the rain is caused by little goblins with buckets standing on the clouds? Oh, you're just being awkward.)

My own belief on this is that faith is a thing of two parts. On the one hand, there is, I think, a sense that some people possess and some don't. I don't think this sense conveys any actual detailed information, just a feeling of something vast and omnipresent that those who feel it identify with the deity of their choice. I don't have it myself, so I'm speculating in a vacuum, but people who I think do have it have told me that they do, and I don't see any compelling reason to disbelieve them. The other part of faith is indeed a matter of choice and an act of will, and it's whether or not you choose to acknowledge this sense. It's entirely possible that some have it and prefer to believe that it's a delusion, or just part of the normal background noise of their brain.

Thus we have four possible stances:

1. I have the godsense, and believe it gives me contact with my God.
2. I have the godsense, and believe it is of no significance.
3. I do not have the godsense, and do not believe in any God.
4. I do not have the godsense, but believe in a God anyway.

More on this when I come back from Richmond Fellowship appointment.

(no subject)

Turns out a lot of my further thoughts on the godsense came out in comments, and the rest I've forgotten. So, back to the telly-watching, and last night and today's treat was the Reeves and Mortimer remake of Randall and Hopkirk Deceased. Great fun. I loved the original series, and this was in every way a fitting successor to it. Vic and Bob played it mostly straight and were therefore the funniest I've ever seen them, Emilia Fox was a true Jeannie for the modern age, Tom was divine as he always is, and the effects technology was used sparingly and sensitively. The scripts were more reminiscent of The Avengers than the original R & H (D), but as such they succeeded in recapturing, for me at least, a sense of innocent fun that was characteristic of that kind of telly in those days and that I thought long lost.

Would that all remakes were as good, or as faithful.

We've now moved on to RTD's Casanova, in which Tennant's portrayal of the lad himself is only distinguishable from his Doctor by virtue of the fact that he has plausibly to turn into Peter O'Toole at some point. But then, since I have no investment in any previous depiction of the character of Casanova, I don't much care and can enjoy the show for what it is.