One is the secular, intellectual, scientific/philosophical world that I am, sort of coming out of that I interacted with for many years
&
The other is the religious, Christian, church world that I'm wading back out into..
So it's an interesting place to be and provides me with an valuable vantage point that may not be that common..
Some important aspects to this Christian world that I'm moving back towards, are that I feel that there is this real anchor for me in attending church and praying to God.. My turning back to these things is giving me a focus and a peace that I have not had for a long time amidst this stormy world..
And I'm feeling that I'm finally starting to immerse myself in a community, in attending church, that I have been looking for but had no luck finding for exactly 5 and a half years now, when I attended my first Atheist & Agnostic meeting June 27th, 2007. So this wholehearted venture has been a fulfilling experience for me so far.
--An overarching focus that has helped me to keep moving in a certain direction has been the saying:
Do you want to be right OR do you want to be happy?...............
But this is more of something that I have reflected on and found important to my inquiries than this being an overarching attitude or an ultimatum..
The above question in bold is a very important echo from my December 6th post where I said..
"I now consider this to be the highest ideal in my life:
To understand happiness and fulfillment and to bring emotion
and experience along for the ride and not strictly exclude them.. (like I did when I was only a secular intellectual)
To ask myself: Do I
want to be right OR do I want to be happy.
Figuring out how things work and analyzing everything has not lead me to
more happiness, especially back when I considered that the only way to approach
understanding reality. If anything it has made finding happiness a more complicated matter."
Lately, I’ve felt like my mind has been this highway of
thoughts. And I don’t feel there’s been
much time to reflect on each individual thought that’s come whizzing
through.. Ever since I met Ivonne it’s
like my life has sped up and this has kept me preoccupied and has increased the quality of my life, praise God. And there are some very big choices that lay ahead of me in 2013. This year may very well determine the rest of
my life more than any year before has.
That’s my conclusion at least. So hopefully I can properly digest many of these insights before things get busier with school starting on the 8th..
--I’ve been in a discussion lately with a friend of mine
about belief and I phrased my position in the form of a question with 10 points
to it:
Is belief and
"going beyond scientific evidence" really that much of a negative if:
1- If you're not hurting yourself and or those around you.
2- If science can never know anything with absolute certainty and theories are always contingent.
2- If science can never know anything with absolute certainty and theories are always contingent.
3- If most people are not true experts on anything, even though we idealistically admire the concept of the
scientific process..
4- If most people have no real desire to be a true expert on anything, even though we idealistically admire the concept of the
scientific process..
5- If apart of our mind is devoted to and predisposed to
belief in addition to a part of our mind being devoted to and
having a predisposition to rational and analytical thinking.
6- If having a thorough, scientific knowledge of reality does not
help you deal with life any better, in fact it may help you deal with it worse,
because it complicates reality for your mind, which merely wants a conclusion
more than the complicated truth.
7- If the concept of "intellectual integrity" and only
having knowledge that is scientifically proven is overrated and
not really the value that we should have the most focus on.
8- If, according to Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, we
believe things before we rationally understand them to be true or not, because
this is a natural state of the mind.
9- If the claim, "There are no Atheists in foxholes” is true.
and..
10- If religion plays a major role in health and longevity..
and..
10- If religion plays a major role in health and longevity..
--My friend replied back to me (Though only replying only to the question and not also the 10 points. Interestingly, they were originally 8 points when we exchanged emails, lol!!)
“Is belief and ‘going beyond scientific evidence’ really
that much of a negative if"
I don't think belief, in general, is negative. I
think we all have beliefs. The worst thing ever, is having a belief that
runs contrary to evidence; such as believing that God made humans through a
miracle of special creation, rather than humans evolving from other animals.
Science has finished that question, and to have a contrary belief is to believe in error. It is like believing that the whole universe resolves around the Earth, like the Bible writers thought.
Science has finished that question, and to have a contrary belief is to believe in error. It is like believing that the whole universe resolves around the Earth, like the Bible writers thought.
So belief is not negative or positive in itself. It
is negative when it contradicts the known facts of the world.
--So I replied:
I do hope you got something from the 10 points I brought up, because
they are relevant.
In any case, this point of yours is on my mind:
“I don't think belief, in general, is negative. I
think we all have beliefs.”
It concerns me that even though, as you said, belief in general is not negative and we all have beliefs, it's my strong opinion that most secular intellectuals put a negative stigma on belief by mixing it with, confusing it with, or grouping it with the bad type of belief your talking about that contradicts the known facts of the world..
...And that was the end of our email exchange, for now.
So..... I think that I will go expound on those 10 points about the relevancy of belief in my up and coming part 5 of 10 and part 6 of 10 posts...
...LET 2013 BEGIN...
