And so even when I was more involved, and hadn't yet thought these things through, identifying as a Christian or a believer in god never sat easily with me. It felt like willful self-deception,

This is me. I was a very devout Christian in grade school, but I did have those doubts even back in, say, third grade. (I went to a private Lutheran school.)

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Jessica, I hope they can work something out. I sometimes think that the entire purpose of insurance companies is to not cover people and not pay out any money.

Step away from the research, vw. I do the same thing, in part because research is my favorite part. The writing, nsm.

As I have said before, I struggled with describing my beliefs, or lack thereof, until I read an interview with Carl Sagan's wife after his death. The interviewer touched on Sagan's atheism and said, "Didn't he want to believe?" She replied, "No. He wanted to know."

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That only contradicts a benevolent, omnipotent God. Who's to say God isn't just interested in us? That or eternally bored. I was just thinking the other day about how if you wanted to, you could believe God was so lazy he let evolution do all the work. Then he sat around looking at all the dinosaurs and plants and people. And maybe he walked away. Or took a vacation. I think if you want to believe in a God, you can totally come up with a plausible personality.

This is why I like the portrayal of God in The Universal Baseball Association. First of all, J. Henry Waugh (do ya see the Yahweh/Jehovah in there?) is not a deity, as such. He's a guy with a job like being an actuary. And he invents his own table top dice baseball game (like Rotisserie baseball, if you know what that is). But his game is massively complex and absorbs all of his life. He creates this alternate universe governed by the rules of his game. He creates the ballplayers and calculates their skills - not unlike an RPG. So imagine this world that's a mix of RPG and Sims and Rotisserie baseball, and you not only follow Mr. Waugh, but you get absorbed in the events of this world he created.

Coover's an excellent writer, so this is all very grounded in a regular guy's every day life. Very detailed and earthy. And the metaphor is obviously there, but he works it without anvils.

Anyway, what happens is that something very exciting happens in Waugh's little universe. And then, because of a roll of the dice, something horrible happens. By this time you're so deep into his character and world you can really feel Waugh's anguish over this horrible thing. You respect that he desperately doesn't want to cheat or break his rules, or roll the dice again. That his whole universe would come unraveled if he did. That his faith in that world would vanish and that it would cease to exist. But he suffers for the world he created.

I always thought that was a very compelling insight.

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I believe in some kind of unifying force. I don't believe in a G-d that's micromanaging every detail of our lives, but I do believe that there's something binding everything together.

Hil, you are me in this respect.

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I don't believe in a G-d that's micromanaging every detail of our lives

I don't either Hil, despite the fact that my faith is pretty (both testament) scripture-based. I believe God is sovereign, and could choose to micromanage, but doesn't--that created natural law to handle the details. I guess I think He doesn't because He seems to be a stickler for free will.

I can imagine in myself the comfort it could be if I decided to go that route, the strength that it can bring.

This is something that usually escapes me. I know it is a common conception about the religious, held by both many religious and non-religious people. It gives me comfort only as pertains to those things that are way beyond my ken (eternity--I can't even conceive of it). But in a present day-to-day, mundane sense, my faith is disquieting, not comforting.

eta... It's because such big things are so beyond my ken, that I don't really require much comfort about them, in the first place. That big way-past-us future doesn't trouble me, because I can barely graspe the world around me, never mind the huge stuff.

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Cindy, s'funny. I read your posts about having to drive everyone hither and yon and wonder how you do it.

I'm accomplishing things today at a reasonable pace. I learned a new thing about the work I'm doing, and I made my client very happy with the thing I turned the "all wrong" work I did into.

Was that a sentence?

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Yup, Deena. You get a pass on grammar for today. It made sense to me. Some days that's all you can ask for.

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Hi Deena, I actually finished Baldur's Gate 2.

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Talked to HR again. The peson who's in today doesn't have the authority to make an exception for me, so she's going to try and get ahold of the person who does, who is taking a personal day and may not be reachable. (And may not want to make an exception in any case.)

In order to extend our COBRA, we have to fax them a letter today, because the cutoff date is the 19th, and so if they don't stop our "cancel coverage" order from a couple of weeks ago today, it'll be too late.

So to sum up, it is a clusterfuck of massive proportions, and I am ready to scream.

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Glad the "all wrong" thing worked out, Deena.

I don't know if I can be coherent about what I believe. I tend to equate god with the underlying physical truths of the universe, and I'm quite sure that any god worth believing in is not gonna miffed at me for believing the wrong thing. So it kinda doesn't matter. But I can't accept the notion that we're only alive for this short period of time and then we just disappear. That seems like such a waste.

(eta: Arrgh on Jessica's behalf. What a mess!)

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