(February 3, 2021 at 12:44 pm)Five Wrote: Have you guys also struggled with "I don't know"? Was it ever scary or painful to reach that place? I recognize it's still new for me and the likelihood that healing from religious trauma will eventually happen.
Fear of "going to hell" is real for many who try to throw off religion. It takes time. For me, realizing there was no hell or heaven was a liberating event.
Scientists are perfectly okay with "I don't know". However, their uncertainty is with respect to improvements in our understanding, not usually overthrowing our groundwork of being.
There can be different degrees of uncertainty. Science is a set of tested stories that provide clear predictive ability. They can be overturned tomorrow by something better, but the original theories were still valuable. The new theory just has more value.
Not knowing everything about the self and the universe is part of the human condition. There might be some higher power out there I have no knowledge of. No biggie -- if I don't know about it, it probably isn't something I can interact with. Given that a "higher power" is so ill-defined as to be meaningless, there is really no point in worrying about all the possibilities. This sinks Pascal's Wager.
Logic and science tells me that an afterlife makes no sense. The chance of that being wrong is very low, but if there is an afterlife, then everyone will experience it regardless of which private deity or non-deity they claim as their own.
In our uncertainty, we still have lots of useful knowledge, if we keep questioning and learning. The question is - do we turn our ignorance into deity worship?
