My Grand Apologetics Project Part 2

For reference see these previous posts:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html

Part 2: The Dawning Awareness

I want to start with human experience. Broadly speaking, I will be discussing what some would call religious experience. But it should be noted that at this level, I am talking about experiences that not everyone would label that way. Rather these are experiences that I think everyone has at one time or another, though they may not reflect on them extensively. What I want is to take two ways people encounter the world and reflect upon their phenomenology. Now phenomenology is the study of the nature of experience. It explores what it is LIKE to have one experience or another. So laughter is an experience. A phenomenology of laughter would include a discussion of the cathartic nature of laughing. It is the content of experience. There are two fundamental human experiences that I believe lay at the foundation of belief in God. One is the experience of life as fundamentally an adventure. The other is the experience of selfhood as something that is true expansive. Let me explain what I mean by this.


a. Life As Risk and Venture

What does it mean to 'truly live'? This is a question that, in one form or another, vexes most reflective people at some point in their lives. We struggle with the question of what it means to have lived life to it's fullest. There are many different ways in which people 'live out' this question. But over and over again, when you look at the content of these different paths to 'true living' one fundamental insight seems to bubble to the surface: life, at it's most basic, is an adventure, and must be lived out that way if one is to get the most out of it. Let me give an illustration of what I am talking about:

Think about romantic comedies in film. Most of these movies include some male character who has an aversion to commitment. We all know this guy. He sleeps with countless women but refuses to open his heart to any of them. That is until he meets the female lead. She is usually someone he has never slept with that now stirs within him a desire for love. Almost invariably, the film contains two central conflicts. The first has to do with the man: he has always known a life of relative ease and safety, where he never really has to take any risks, but always gets what he wants from his encounter with women. Will he finally take a fundamental risk with himself, will he put his relative comfort on the line for at least the chance at something that may lead to an even better kind of life, but will cost him his beloved security?

The second question has to do with the woman: will she take a chance on someone who does not, at this point, give her much evidence that he is worth the risk? Will she let the hope of something better for the both of them guide her actions? Or will she only go with what she already knows to be true and choose the safer route?

Now I'm not here to morally defend these types of films? Many people have trouble with this formula for both moral and aesthetic reasons. Still, I think there is a fundamental insight here into a near-universal truth: we want the characters to take the risk, for we see in risk and venture a fundamental truth about our own lives.

We experience the world on an intuitive level as an adventure. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that a life without genuine risk-taking, without moving beyond what is safe, certain and known, is a life hardly worth living. We all know the experience of going out on a journey not knowing how it will end, and this experience in some sense colors all our acts of decision-making.

So, now, what is the phenomenology of this experience. I suggest that in our primary moments of true and creative risk-taking, it is like the world is not indifferent to risk and venture. It is feeling of working in concert with not just individual realitIES, but reality itself. It feels like our adventure is the worlds adventure. I think that no matter who you are, you can in those moments of true venture understand what I'm talking about. It feels like the world smiles with you.

Now at this point I am not talking about "God" in any traditional sense of the world. My language is couched in no particular religious language. Indeed, I am not even ready to draw any conclusions from the experience. Rather, I simply want to point to the fundamental experience as life truly lived being about risk and venture, and what it is like to experience life that way.

Anyone is free to argue against the experience as reflecting real truth. Many deny that risk and venture IS life really lived. They would counsel against taking a fundamental risk with oneself, and encourage a more rationalistic and certain approach to life. Further, one can agree with the insight while rejecting any significance behind the experience that accompanies it. But still, I would contend that the experience of life and the attending insight is broadly shared and the phenomenological examination I give can be understood and acknowledged by most anyone. At this level it is only that acknowledgment I seek. If you don't see what I'm talking about, if you can't relate then you just can't and we are at a ground floor disagreement that cannot be resolved. But if you do see what I see, if you know the experience of which I speak, then we can move on, whatever other beliefs may, at this point, separate us.