"People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice" (Christopher, 203).
For the topic of my final paper, I am still interested in writing about Christopher's perceptions of life and whether or not this so called 'logical' view on the world is what alienates Christopher from forming healthy relationships with other others. I would like to further expand this theme into the differences between truth and fact. Christopher seems to believe that the only 'true' things about our world are that which can be proven. I believe that the above quote illustrates the point that unfounded belief is as essential a part of a human being's mental development as is logic, and that for a well-rounded individual to fit in then we must occasionally set aside logic and sometimes accept un-provable assumptions.
Furthermore, Christopher's hyper logic on his view of the world here is quite brutal and perhaps a reflection of the cold way that many people see the world. While the reader may condemn Christopher for being cold-hearted in this particular passage, his point of view is difficult to contradict, as it is so factually based. Thus, we therefore see how such a logic-based approach to the world can be at once alienating while at the same time accurate to a large degree. I find this relation to be difficult to comprehend and a topic that can be expanded on further, thus I think it makes a fitting topic for my paper.
This seems incredibly interesting, and tied—in many ways—to your posts on Christopher's mode of logic from the last week. If you focus in on Haddon's portrayal, and the message you think he might be trying to send via this portrayal of Christopher (as missing something via the hyper-logic) then you're golden... find your passages & be sure close read the language Haddon is using to create this sense of coldness or absence around descriptions of Christopher's logic. Perhaps think about where he turns to give more warmth and humanity in the book as well? This need not come into your paper, but it'll be a good point of contrast...
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