LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Barbara Falconer Newhall

Barbara Falconer Newhall
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Birthday
July 04
Title
Writer and Blogger
Bio
Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the scene -- on pop culture, books and the writing life, on her grown-up kids, her husband, her nonagenarian aunt -- and life. Visit her more capacious blog at www.BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com.

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OCTOBER 10, 2012 4:46PM

On the Religion Beat -- The God of the Somethingists

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Simeis 147, a faint supernova remnant with a tangle of filaments. NASA image.The Somethingists believe: Something is going on. NASA image.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Good news for those of us – count me in – who aren’t at all sure of what God is like.

God-Cima-da-Conegliano
God -- a mighty Being as per Cima
da Conegliano? . . .

We wonder, is God a mighty and kindly Other who created the world and talks back to people who pray? Or is God some kind of diffuse and universal Spirit who inhabits rocks, trees, humans and houseflies?

I dunno.

Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn has given some thought to the matter.

She reported to a meeting of her Religion Newswriters Association colleagues over hors d’oeuvres in Bethesda last Friday night that there’s a brand-new religion rising up in Holland.

It’s called Somethingism. Or, Ietsisme in Dutch. (It's pronounced ITS-is-meh.)

housefly-on-screen. photo by BF Newhall
. . . . Or a housefly? . . .  Or
Something else?

Somethingism is a religion for folks like Sally who believe in something – but who haven’t a clue what that Something might be.

Sally quotes a bumper sticker that sums things up for her: “I Don’t Know and You Don’t Know Either.”

I’m with Sally.

Don't miss yesterday's post on the rise of the "nones" -- the religiously unaffiliated -- and their influence on politics in America.

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