I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly. I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. Marilynne Robinson
About This Quote

To believe in a god for whom everything is possible, and to believe in a god who is not bound by the laws of nature, is to go against the grain of our current understanding of reality. But that does not mean that belief in something beyond nature is simply impossible. In fact, there are good reasons for thinking that religious beliefs may be true. In the essay "In Praise of Folly," Montaigne argues that we can learn more from worshipping folly than from worshipping wisdom, and he offers the following argument: "If one believes in a wise God, one believes in a God so wise that he knows all things and can do anything.

To believe in a God so wise as to have created a world so remarkable, one believes in a god so foolish as to have been unable to create anything better." He goes on to say that it is impossible for us to know whether the world was purposefully created or whether it just happened through chance. In any case, if there were an intelligent being who could create something, why didn't he create something better? Montaigne's perspective on this question seems more plausible than the perspective from which we sit today. It has been over two centuries since his essay was written, but it is still relevant today.

Source: Gilead

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