UntemperedSchism
Newly Faithful
My views on faith and God are changing of late. Those who know me, know me as a staunch atheist; anti-theistic, in fact. I've always maintained that there is no such thing as a converted atheist; if an atheist develops religious belief he must not have had as firm a grip on his faculties as he'd thought.
I've described theistic belief as: insane, stupid, stupefying, deserving of scorn, willful intellectual neglect, the result of existential terror and, most succinctly, pathetic. I've railed against the indoctrination of children within a faith community and I've argued that any introduction of doctrine to a child in their formative years is tantamount to child abuse.
And yet, over the last year and most especially in the last eight weeks, faith, and all its attendant interests, has snuck upon me like a thief in the night. If that sounds like a negative description of what is, in general, a positively described experience, it's because, for me, it is, somewhat.
That's because, intellectually, nothing has changed for me. All of the reasons I had for non-belief and scorn a year ago are still present within me. I know that, when they read this, my friends and acquaintances will either react with disbelief (ironically) or outrage, or condescension. If I was on the other end of this scenario, and it was one of my avowed atheist friends who was expressing new found faith, I would react with some combination of those three emotions.
To be clear, this is not a full conversion to the rigid, literal and immovable faith that I've railed against in the past. In fact, I'm just as outraged as I was previously at those who would use faith as a club, to beat the world and all those on it into intellectual submission. Perhaps more so, as I'm now in the unique position of having a growing understanding of religious experience, even as I maintain full awareness and belief in all the reasons to reject that experience as absurd. It makes me more outraged that any person could take an experience so profound, ethereal and unquantifiable and use it as a justification to subjugate any person who hadn't shared it.
You pity the person who cannot stand, you don't beat them for it.
And there I go, sounding all serenely pompous. It's easy to do when you feel like you're pursuing a higher truth and I have to remind myself there that the principal verb at play is feel. I feel as though this all has merit and value, and I take it on faith. But it is a feeling only, not quantifiable fact.
But then, so is love. And I put a tremendous amount of faith in the love I feel for my family.
So.
I'm left in an untenable position. I believe when there is no good reason for me to believe, and when I have very good reasons not to. I've grown faith without abandoning reason or knowledge, and I'm searching for answers to questions that I've never lent credence to before.
One of two things could have happened to cause this.
1. God has literally filled me with the ability to believe while cursing me with everlasting shame at doing so, which strikes me as being somewhat counter-sensical when considering the prime mover that I'm coming to believe in,
or
2. People change. And when they change in certain ways, they become more hopeful. Hope, being the cause of questions that lead to faith, has always taken a back seat for me to reason and intellect. Probability has been my guide, and science my compass. And that's fine. But it is insufficient for me, now. The sun only exists because it is so large that it routinely defies the odds against hydrogen atoms bonding together at lower temperatures than are required to force hydrogen atoms to bond together.
That's not proof that the sun was designed or that the universe could have existed any other way. But it is vast, and humbling, and gives me hope that the universe is a place of order, intellect, and reason.
And hope leads to faith.
This journal is for me. It's an exploration of my emerging faith, what it means to me and how it will shape my life. At a certain point in this analysis, I expect I will simply let go and enjoy myself, but until then I'm going to do what I do: dissect, analyze and attempt to understand the things that are happening to me, that have no precedent and clash with my view of what to expect from life.
I expect things will change a bit.
I wonder what will happen next.
I've described theistic belief as: insane, stupid, stupefying, deserving of scorn, willful intellectual neglect, the result of existential terror and, most succinctly, pathetic. I've railed against the indoctrination of children within a faith community and I've argued that any introduction of doctrine to a child in their formative years is tantamount to child abuse.
And yet, over the last year and most especially in the last eight weeks, faith, and all its attendant interests, has snuck upon me like a thief in the night. If that sounds like a negative description of what is, in general, a positively described experience, it's because, for me, it is, somewhat.
That's because, intellectually, nothing has changed for me. All of the reasons I had for non-belief and scorn a year ago are still present within me. I know that, when they read this, my friends and acquaintances will either react with disbelief (ironically) or outrage, or condescension. If I was on the other end of this scenario, and it was one of my avowed atheist friends who was expressing new found faith, I would react with some combination of those three emotions.
To be clear, this is not a full conversion to the rigid, literal and immovable faith that I've railed against in the past. In fact, I'm just as outraged as I was previously at those who would use faith as a club, to beat the world and all those on it into intellectual submission. Perhaps more so, as I'm now in the unique position of having a growing understanding of religious experience, even as I maintain full awareness and belief in all the reasons to reject that experience as absurd. It makes me more outraged that any person could take an experience so profound, ethereal and unquantifiable and use it as a justification to subjugate any person who hadn't shared it.
You pity the person who cannot stand, you don't beat them for it.
And there I go, sounding all serenely pompous. It's easy to do when you feel like you're pursuing a higher truth and I have to remind myself there that the principal verb at play is feel. I feel as though this all has merit and value, and I take it on faith. But it is a feeling only, not quantifiable fact.
But then, so is love. And I put a tremendous amount of faith in the love I feel for my family.
So.
I'm left in an untenable position. I believe when there is no good reason for me to believe, and when I have very good reasons not to. I've grown faith without abandoning reason or knowledge, and I'm searching for answers to questions that I've never lent credence to before.
One of two things could have happened to cause this.
1. God has literally filled me with the ability to believe while cursing me with everlasting shame at doing so, which strikes me as being somewhat counter-sensical when considering the prime mover that I'm coming to believe in,
or
2. People change. And when they change in certain ways, they become more hopeful. Hope, being the cause of questions that lead to faith, has always taken a back seat for me to reason and intellect. Probability has been my guide, and science my compass. And that's fine. But it is insufficient for me, now. The sun only exists because it is so large that it routinely defies the odds against hydrogen atoms bonding together at lower temperatures than are required to force hydrogen atoms to bond together.
That's not proof that the sun was designed or that the universe could have existed any other way. But it is vast, and humbling, and gives me hope that the universe is a place of order, intellect, and reason.
And hope leads to faith.
This journal is for me. It's an exploration of my emerging faith, what it means to me and how it will shape my life. At a certain point in this analysis, I expect I will simply let go and enjoy myself, but until then I'm going to do what I do: dissect, analyze and attempt to understand the things that are happening to me, that have no precedent and clash with my view of what to expect from life.
I expect things will change a bit.
I wonder what will happen next.
