For Each Person A Different Answer

[Llwellyn]

In his most desperate moment, C.S. Lewis asks the question:  "What is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else?"  I don't think there is a single answer that all people can agree on to this question.  I think that every person is going to have their own unique answer to this question.  There isn't a point, there are points, and you're not going to know what they are unless you begin paying attention to the particular answers that each person gives. C.S. Lewis wrote his question as a rhetorical question for himself.  But to me it appears to be a question that leads to a plan of scientific research.  Perhaps it is the question that leads into all science?  We could poll people and find out what their points are.  Even the crazy people!  Even Christians, and Muslims, and Atheists!

 

As William James says:  "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations."  We need to attend to ourselves and to each other.  It seems that we should stop supposing that any one person's point -- whether mine or yours, or Yahweh's or Satan's -- might be "the point."  Right now, the point for me is to think about thinking -- without the burdensome expectation that the result will somehow be final and certain.  More concretely, my point is to do the dishes and clean up the house in my day off from work, before my partner gets home.  I have serious business and no time for paper doubts that C.S. Lewis describes.

 

So let me engage in the science that did not interest C.S. Lewis:  What is your point at this moment?  

 

[Fweethawt]

My point at THIS moment is, that I prefer to do all of the laundry and house cleaning one to two days BEFORE my day(s) off so I can use those days as rest, relaxation and fun time.

 

So, my way really is better than your way as far as that goes.

[pantheory]

What is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else?"

 

 

I think the answer is fairly universal. People think about god to come up with answers that satisfy themselves, as well as thinking about anything  seriously involves learning of it and/or trying to understand it in the context of perceived reality.

 

God as a non-entity is one of the simplest of concepts and understandings. That god was made in man's image rather than the reverse is pretty obvious to me

 

C.S. Lewis was a famous poet as well as being a lay philosopher and theologian. As such he spent much time considering theistic ideas. T.S. Eliot, also a famous poet, also wrote about and considered the futility of such theistic conclusions. Eliot's college major and degree was in philosophy rather than literature so both were probably idealists who struggled with such theistic ideas.