(I don't know the source of this great picture.)
In this TMI blog post I relate some health issues I'm having and offer some philosophical reflection. May you find it at least midly illuminating in your own life journey.
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Unfortunately, my gratuitously inflicted nerve pain, which I've suffered from consistently every day for over two years, is not going away. And unfortunately I am just getting exhausted from the physical pain. I now fear the pain will never go away for as long as I remain alive. Furthermore, I now live in a constant state of melancholy, even if I try to hide my despair from people by smiling or exhibiting an emotionless demeanor. And I'm scared at the prospect of living the rest of my life with such pain. It's scary to even think about. I can honestly say that I don't enjoy living anymore and haven't for a while now. That's just the truth - I don't enjoy living. But that's life. Random shit happens. We just have to keep moving forward, even if it is really difficult. We have an obligation to keep going. For all we know, this vale of tears may be designed by some deity to be a world of soul-making. Who knows? Do I believe that? No. But do I think it has a non-negligible probability of being true? Yes, I do. And my assessment of this probability gives me some hope to continue on in the journey called life. It gives me some hope that my pretty random (but not completely random) suffering may, in the end, be redemptive. Perhaps I delude myself in thinking seemingly gratuitous suffering is redemptive. Maybe so. Maybe so. But what I do claim to know is that I don't know that it's not redemptive - and that is all the motivation I need to keep going.
In saying the above I realize that perhaps my earlier comment I made in another venue wherein I said that one should disbelieve some proposition P if one's evidence for P shows it is probably false - even if belief in P provides significant benefits - is not correct. Let P1 here be "God, a maximally great being exists and suffering is redemptive." Now suppose the evidence for P1 shows it is probably false. Why should you believe P1 is false if it helps you get through life's struggles and merely believing in P1 has utilitarian benefits? You may reply because we should follow the evidence wherever it leads, and if the evidence shows P1 is false we should abandon it, regardless of what the consequences are. But isn't that just begging the question? After all, suppose the posterior probability of P, that is, the probability of P after taking into account the specific evidence for P, is . 49. It's not clear to me that you should disbelieve in P if P has positive utility and belief in not P has negative utility, especially since the probability is very close to the probability that you should believe in P (greater than .50). One can extend my reasoning further here and undermine what I have written in previous posts: If Christianity has net positive utility on personal and societal well-being, then it's not necessarily the case the people should abandon Christianity if they assess that it is probably false. If they don't assess the probability is too low, then they may well still be rational in believing it. So maybe what I am trying to say here is that evidence by itself is not the sole determining factor of what you should believe, contrary a popular view in epistemology called evidentialism. I'm sure the pragmatic-cum
-evidence view of belief has been expounded upon by philosophers somewhere. But I'm just not familiar with the literature here, to be honest.
In any case, writing this has just exasperated the nerve pain in my wrists - maybe this is God's way of saying "stfu and stop philosophizing, man." Oh... Another thing: I recommend you keep humor in dark times. It helps a lot. Laugh at the darkness and create your own light through laughter. During the last date I went on a few days ago the woman told me something to the effect of, "I like you. You're very funny, even if you're very dark." Always strive for the light and strive to spread the light wherever you can. May peace be with you, dear readers, even if it is not with me.
