likesthecoat | Ianto's diary

When I was little, my mom used to take me to church every week. When I got to be about 14, my dad said I was old enough to make up my own mind and that I didn't have to go if I didn't want to. He was pretty cynical about religion.

I stopped going after that, but Christmas and Easter were important to my mom so I would still go with her to those services. We went to an Episcopal church, very high-church liturgy. Candlelight service for Christmas Eve and the whole Easter vigil thing. Sometimes I miss that, but I understand what you mean about believing in something greater than yourself. It is comforting.

I know there are greater forces at work in the universe. Some of them are benevolent and some are not. I choose to believe there's a force even greater than them, though I'm never quite sure what he thinks he's doing.

42.

Yes. But what's the question?

I think the universe will collapse if we ever figure that out.

(All right, that's flippant of me. I apologize.)

I'm not sure I believe in a great destiny to all things, myself. It seems to me like life will just go on and on and on, as it did before humanity and will afterwards, and tying it all up to one man on one planet seems . . . too pat. I don't know.

I read an article by Penn Jillette (the illusionist) a while back, about why he's an atheist: the jist of it was that he feels he has more of an obligation to live a good life because he's only doing it for himself and those he knows, rather than being scared into it by fear of Hell. That sort of thing I can understand.

I'm not all about the one man on one planet thing either. In fact...well, nevermind.

But humanity, or something like it, has been around for a very long time, and regardless of whether it continues to look like its current form, it will probably be around for a very long time, even after Earth ceases to exist. Some of the greater forces in the universe have taken an inordinant amount of interest in our little planet ~~(and in a small, specific group of people on it)~~, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that if there is a greater force than those greater forces (er...right) he/she/it might be just as interested in our little planet and the billions of people on it as any other planet and the humans/aliens/sentient plants on them.

Oh, I know there's intelligent life out there. I've even seen some things to suggest that life has existed for an incomprehenisble number of years and will continue to exist for just as long.

When you start getting to the whys of it all, it feels like searching for meaning where there is none--or rather, searching for a greater meaning than "take care of each other" or whatever one's personal philosophy is. And I'm not so certain there is a greater meaning.

If you take an infinite number of worlds and the infinite number of life forms that exist on them, and their religions and their gods and their beliefs . . . to say there's one God and he chose one planet and/or one life form to make his own, that just doesn't seem right.

(Of course, my particular crisis of faith has to do with "if there is a God, why did he let Lisa die," but that's a question everyone who's lost a loved one asks. And I've read The Problem of Pain and don't particularly feel I know the answer any better.)

When it comes to personal philosophy, I don't see that religion helps any more than humanitarianism. In fact, I've seen way too many examples of religion screwing up a good thing, making good people to monstrous things (although, come to think of it, I've seen humanitarianism in its most literal sense do that as well).

I don't think that there's a god who's chosen just one planet and/or life form to make his own, but I have to believe that there might be a god (or something that more or less fits into the human idea of god) who takes an equal amount of interest in all worlds. Whether it is personally interested in the lives of all creatures everywhere is not really my department, but believing it exists makes my job a whole lot easier to do.

(Yeah, I think everyone has had to deal with that at one point. I've lost a lot of people. More in the last three years than I care to recall. I don't have an answer for that, and even though I've never read The Problem of Pain, I'm betting C.S. Lewis didn't really have the answer either.)

That's always the trouble, isn't it, when trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Of course a finite mind can't understand the motivations of an infinite one.

Whether it is personally interested in the lives of all creatures everywhere is not really my department, but believing it exists makes my job a whole lot easier to do.

Aren't you a geologist? How does this affect your job?

(Supposedly A Grief Observed is supposed to be the more helpful book to the genuinely mourning. I haven't picked it up yet.)

Aren't you a geologist? How does this affect your job?

That would be telling, now wouldn't it?

I used to do geology. And though I'm still technically a geologist, my job's a bit more complicatedthan it used to be. Currently, the program rather likes people who are either very firm in their atheism or fairly certain that God exists.

That would be telling, now wouldn't it?

Rather the point, that.

Currently, the program rather likes people who are either very firm in their atheism or fairly certain that God exists.

That must make for some interesting workplace conversations.

For the most part, the split is scientist/military (scientists in general being atheist and military not), so the conversations were already interesting. Usually, unless it comes up on a mission, people keep their beliefs to themselves. Those who don't...well, they're "special". Actually, I only know of one person in the program who looks down on people for not agreeing with him. But he does that with everything, not just religion.

Interesting. And I assume the organization is such that very few people are both science and military, and all the resulting complications that would come from that.

Actually, we've got quite a few military scientists. The main team (for lack of a better term) has one. She's kind of the lead scientist actually. At least in matters of engineering or astrophysics. But I tend to think of them as military. It's the most all-encompassing role. If you're military, even if you're also a scientist, you tend to see things from a military perspective.

As it happens, the colonel (the woman I mentioned above) is Catholic.

The complications that arise generally come when people start stereotyping. I've been called a grunt on more than one occassion. (No matter how many times we try to explain that only Marines are grunts. Airmen are zoomies or flyboys.) And it's common practice to refer to the scientists as geeks. It's usually in good fun, but sometimes people think the stereotypes of those names really do fit, and that's where we run into problems.

Us vs. Them is never a good idea in a close working environment.

Us vs. Them is never a good idea in a close working environment.

It's never a good idea in any environment, I'd say.

It sounds like your team has a fascinating mix of people. We're a much smaller sampling of humanity--I don't think any of us are particularly religious, though G. and I both observe Welsh saints' days. (National pride. You understand.) So it's not come up, really, about how God fits in with what we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

(We don't confide in each other that way very often anyway.)

If you believe in yourself, have faith in yourself, there is no need for a higher power. That's not to say that gods don't exist. I know for a fact they do, and they're a pain in the ass. There's no need to elevate them above oneself.

It's difficult to not think of a god as an elevated being--I've always assumed it was rather the point.

Everyone must do what works best for them, of course. And, perhaps it's the differences in our religions- or even our status in said religions- that account for the way we perceive them.

I can rightly assume you're not a Buddhist, yes?

Not a Buddhist, no. Church of Wales--it's a branch of Anglicanism.

Ah... Christianity, and a form of Catholicism, if I'm not mistaking?

Yes to the Christianity bit, not quite to the Catholicism bit. We have married clergy, for example, and don't answer to the Pope.

I see. In Buddhism, clergy are permitted to marry as well and, like you, we have found no need for someone to act as an interventionist between ourselves and our gods. Interesting that two religions can be so vastly different, and yet possess two such strong similarities...

A lot of religions have one or two things in common.

Hn... very true.

You seem to have put a lot of thought into this area. Tell me; are you clergy or clergy in training?

And, I don't believe I got your name. I'm Genjyo Sanzo...

No, not at all: I work for the government, sort of. It gives me a surprisingly large amount of time to read.

I'm Ianto.

Ianto's diary

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