presser_kun said:
As I said in my last post, lunamoth, I don't mean to be harsh, though, to a believer, how else can what I said seem?
The thing is, I want, really want, to believe.
Really.
Wish I could get past my frustrating "faith" in logic . . .
press
Hi press, you are not being harsh, you are just saying how you see it. No worries about that.
A couple of questions. First, why do you want to believe? Second, what do you gain by deciding to seek truth without God?
OK, I will share a little bit more. I never set out to believe in God. I am a scientist (by training and by occupation, until I had children). My career was great, my marriage was/is good, my life was comfortable. But in spite of everything seeming to be going along smoothly I had a deep deep sense that I was not progressing, just treading water (until what?); I was going around aimlessly. A deep sense that I was not living up to my potential, but wasting my life. There were signs: I drank too much, I was stressed, not satisfied with my job (even though it was exactly where I should have been by all external measure), wanted a family but somehow could never get going on it (we have fertility issues). So on the surface things looked great, but inside I felt empty. But even when I came to this realization, the very last place I would have ever thought to look was God and religion. I was not a religious person, not even a 'spiritual' person. I looked to philosophy to fill that hole.
Well, I read the philosophers and the more I read, the more frustrated I became. They did not 'know' anything more than I did. Sure, they were intelligent and had dived deeper into reason about our existence much more than I ever had, but always at the bottom was...assumption. An assumption about who or what we are. I did not find it satisfying to adopt a worldview based upon someone else's assumptions. Yet, looking to myself I realized that I would never get past my Self, my ego (in retrospect, my false self).
I shared my disappointment and frustration over this with a colleague at work and he said he had gone through the same, but the only philosopher he ever could develop interest in was William James. He lent me The Varieties of Religious Experience. Also at the time, on the advice of a friend (a scientist) I had also started a little mediation routine (ala Deepek Chopra), but I still did not consider myself praying. If I ever formulated any small prayer during that time it was a simple "please thaw my heart," directed into the ether.
After that, I can't really pinpoint exactly what happened, but I decided to at least examine religion as a place that might hold what I was looking for. I worked in a laboratory that happened to be very unusual in that most of the scientists there were quite religious (two catholics, a few protestants, two Latter Day Saints, and a Baha'i). So, I started my investigation by reading and by asking my colleagues about their faith. The door back to my faith did not come from Christianity, but through the Baha'i Faith.
Long story short, once I opened my mind to the possibility that just perhaps science and materialism could not explain all that we are meant to be, I found the whole world opening up for me. I found direction and I found strength. Somewhere early along the line I stopped drinking, which has probably saved me from a life of alcoholism. I found gratitude and I found love. I found hope. I did the "experiment," and find the results conclusive.
I am still a scientist--we all are. It is right and natural that you should search for truth using reason and logic. But, as long as your criteria are limited to using science to understand your nature, you will never understand your nature beyond science.
apologies for the sermon,
lunamoth
