RE: Science and Religion cannot overlap.
August 11, 2014 at 8:00 am
(This post was last modified: August 11, 2014 at 8:07 am by Michael.)
Whateverist,
In responding to your reply let me first say that I fully realise anything that I say following this could be wrong. I lay no claims to certainty; I am a much more faithful and hopeful Christian than a certain one.
Let me just add a few words of background as I realise that the child is frequently father to the adult, and so I think I would be missing something important by not acknowledging something of my childhood. I was brought up by non-believing parents who nevertheless sent me to Sunday school (whether that was because they thought it would do me good or because it gave them a couple of hours quiet time on a Sunday morning, I'm not entirely sure). So I learned the usual bible stories. I don't mind admitting that in my young teenage years I was very moved by the BBC series "Jesus of Nazareth" when it was first shown, and that inspired a child's faith in me that lasted until university days (I equally remember being inspired by Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series when that was shown; I hope I'm always a person with catholic tastes). At university I became interested in other ways of seeing the world, and atheism seemed an attractive approach for a scientist to explore and embrace. This was in the days before the 'new atheism' and I struggled my way through Russell's 'Why I am not a Christian' which seemed to be the atheist bible of the day (a brilliant thinker but with none of the literary panache of Christopher Hitchens). So I settled into being what I and others called a 'freethinker' (this seemed to be to be cooler than simply being an atheist; it had more of a revolutionary feel to it, casting off the bondage of something or other, as if I were carrying on the spirit of 18th century France). Anyway, then followed a settled period of about 15 years of content atheism despite marrying a devout Catholic.
There is little much that can be said about the 'conversion experience' itself other than something led me to sit quietly in a church most days, and over the course of several weeks an increasing sense of the numinous developed that could not easily be ignored.
So you ask whether what I call 'God', or the numinous, could be within us; that we create God rather than vice versa. The short answer is 'yes' that could be the case. The Quakers sometimes talk of God as the 'Light within', which I think allows them more flexibility in allowing for God as either entirely internal or external. I have some sympathy with that view. But I don't go there myself.
What raised your question was my 'conversion experience' (albeit a rather undramatic one, simply sitting quietly with a growing sense of the numinous over several weeks). When thinking about that I am aware that since it happened I have had much time to reflect on it, and so I have a more formed view of things now than I had at the time. Your question certainly occurred to me at the time - could it all be being generated by my mind? And that led perhaps to the only clear decision I really made in the whole process. I remember thinking 'I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and I'll see where that takes me'. In many ways that is still my approach, but 10 years on it has taken me on a journey that has been rewarding and life changing. I don't mean life changing in dramatic ways, but they have been significant to me. Perhaps the three things my youthful friends would notice is that I gave up the habit of drinking prodigious quantities of beer for a life of abstinence, I adopted vegetarianism (and am now mostly vegan) as part of trying to 'live more gently in a violent world' (as Jean Vanier describes Christian living), and I follow a monastic pattern of prayer as a lay member of a monastic community. So, for me, giving faith 'the benefit of the doubt' has led to a life that makes sense to me, and has been fulfilling. I don't know for sure, but I doubt that if I had taken the alternative path and given doubt the benefit, that it would have led anywhere particularly, other than an ever deepening solipsism. I suspect it would have not 'scratched the itch' that I had. And this is what I think Kierkegaard describes, but more dramatically in his own life, that when we reach a point where we find nothing is sure we either stay there with an ever-deepening sense of the futility of everything (as was the case for Nietzsche) or we take a leap and embrace something we cannot be certain of at the time (and, I suspect, can never be truly certain of).
That's a bit long-winded, but I suspect it still raises many more questions than it raises (I haven't talked much of the step from the sense of the numinous to Christian belief, for example). In essence, when confronted with the question of whether the sense of the numinous reflected the presence of a real numinous external to myself, I took a risk, said "let's assume this is real and see where it leads", and 10 years on it makes more sense now than it did at the time, feels less risky (though still uncertain), has challenged me and has led to what I look on as positive changes in my life, and has been immensely satisfying.
In responding to your reply let me first say that I fully realise anything that I say following this could be wrong. I lay no claims to certainty; I am a much more faithful and hopeful Christian than a certain one.
Let me just add a few words of background as I realise that the child is frequently father to the adult, and so I think I would be missing something important by not acknowledging something of my childhood. I was brought up by non-believing parents who nevertheless sent me to Sunday school (whether that was because they thought it would do me good or because it gave them a couple of hours quiet time on a Sunday morning, I'm not entirely sure). So I learned the usual bible stories. I don't mind admitting that in my young teenage years I was very moved by the BBC series "Jesus of Nazareth" when it was first shown, and that inspired a child's faith in me that lasted until university days (I equally remember being inspired by Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series when that was shown; I hope I'm always a person with catholic tastes). At university I became interested in other ways of seeing the world, and atheism seemed an attractive approach for a scientist to explore and embrace. This was in the days before the 'new atheism' and I struggled my way through Russell's 'Why I am not a Christian' which seemed to be the atheist bible of the day (a brilliant thinker but with none of the literary panache of Christopher Hitchens). So I settled into being what I and others called a 'freethinker' (this seemed to be to be cooler than simply being an atheist; it had more of a revolutionary feel to it, casting off the bondage of something or other, as if I were carrying on the spirit of 18th century France). Anyway, then followed a settled period of about 15 years of content atheism despite marrying a devout Catholic.
There is little much that can be said about the 'conversion experience' itself other than something led me to sit quietly in a church most days, and over the course of several weeks an increasing sense of the numinous developed that could not easily be ignored.
So you ask whether what I call 'God', or the numinous, could be within us; that we create God rather than vice versa. The short answer is 'yes' that could be the case. The Quakers sometimes talk of God as the 'Light within', which I think allows them more flexibility in allowing for God as either entirely internal or external. I have some sympathy with that view. But I don't go there myself.
What raised your question was my 'conversion experience' (albeit a rather undramatic one, simply sitting quietly with a growing sense of the numinous over several weeks). When thinking about that I am aware that since it happened I have had much time to reflect on it, and so I have a more formed view of things now than I had at the time. Your question certainly occurred to me at the time - could it all be being generated by my mind? And that led perhaps to the only clear decision I really made in the whole process. I remember thinking 'I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and I'll see where that takes me'. In many ways that is still my approach, but 10 years on it has taken me on a journey that has been rewarding and life changing. I don't mean life changing in dramatic ways, but they have been significant to me. Perhaps the three things my youthful friends would notice is that I gave up the habit of drinking prodigious quantities of beer for a life of abstinence, I adopted vegetarianism (and am now mostly vegan) as part of trying to 'live more gently in a violent world' (as Jean Vanier describes Christian living), and I follow a monastic pattern of prayer as a lay member of a monastic community. So, for me, giving faith 'the benefit of the doubt' has led to a life that makes sense to me, and has been fulfilling. I don't know for sure, but I doubt that if I had taken the alternative path and given doubt the benefit, that it would have led anywhere particularly, other than an ever deepening solipsism. I suspect it would have not 'scratched the itch' that I had. And this is what I think Kierkegaard describes, but more dramatically in his own life, that when we reach a point where we find nothing is sure we either stay there with an ever-deepening sense of the futility of everything (as was the case for Nietzsche) or we take a leap and embrace something we cannot be certain of at the time (and, I suspect, can never be truly certain of).
That's a bit long-winded, but I suspect it still raises many more questions than it raises (I haven't talked much of the step from the sense of the numinous to Christian belief, for example). In essence, when confronted with the question of whether the sense of the numinous reflected the presence of a real numinous external to myself, I took a risk, said "let's assume this is real and see where it leads", and 10 years on it makes more sense now than it did at the time, feels less risky (though still uncertain), has challenged me and has led to what I look on as positive changes in my life, and has been immensely satisfying.
