Gekko:
How can you say you aren't questioning my intelligence and then say you think I am dumb two sentences later? You are basically suggesting that my beliefs are nothing but Sunday school baggage. But guess what, I didn't go to Sunday school as a kid. My dad was basically an intellectual hippie more interested in holistic medicine, conspiracy theories and recreational drugs than organized religion. I didn't go to church, I went to rainbow gatherings. I wasn't told 'Jesus loves me' as a child, I was told that Reagan is a bastard and Che Guevara is a hero. My early influences were stoners, not bible bangers. And apart from me, what about those who come to faith after violently opposing it most of their lives? What about those who set out to investigate Christianity in a willful attempt to discredit it, and end up believing it instead? The 'Freudian baggage' theory just doesn't hold water. I didn't have a meaningful faith in God until midway through college, and I put those seeds of belief through some serious trials. Remember the samsonite commercials where the gorilla beats the daylights out of a suitcase? That's what I did. I sought out the biggest guns possible and aimed them directly at my fledgling beliefs, in their early and vulnerable stage. I ended up making them stronger.
Faster:
Where you finish often depends on where you begin. I didn't start with faith, I started with doubt. Doubt in everything. No assumptions means NO assumptions, not even assuming that thought has intrinsic value. People question my faith in the supernatural. I started by questioning the average person's faith in the here and now.
Do we really exist? Does reason have true validity, or are we simply making nonsense sounds at each other? How do I know that what I think I see and hear are not illusions of the mind? What is mind? Does matter carry more weight than energy? Is an object more real than an idea? Is the finite more real than the eternal? What is time? What is distance? Are they anything more than fabrications? Is there such thing as the past other than personal representation? If two people have different perspectives of a past event, which is correct? Is there such thing as future if it never arrives? What is the present? Where is it? Is it everywhere equally? Am I there? Where am I going? Can I trust anyone or anything? Does trust even have weight as a concept?
My point is that I have come to conclusions that seem radical to others because I did not start with a full dance card of 'normal' conclusions to weigh them against. 'Radical' is a relative term. From my perspective, mathematics, science and the value of everyday life all require 'leaps of faith' as large and daring as my leap of faith towards God.
The holy grail of physics is to find a 'grand unification theory,' a simple theorem that can fit on a t-shirt and essentially explain the root cause of everything. I sought to find my own grand unification theory for reality itself. I did not start with the basic assumptions that most people make to carry on with life, because I felt assumptions like that had to be justified. Before I decided I would believe in meaning, I had to find it. Many people say 'I'm here and I'm happy and that's good enough.' And that's good enough for plenty of folks, I'm not casting aspersion on that approach. But it wasn't good enough for me. I had to go deeper and try to really understand what makes things tick. I was allergic to ignorance and BS (still am).
I got down to the nitty gritty and found myself questioning everything. Every single thing. I quickly discovered that I had to put blind faith in at least one thing: my ability to reason and grasp logical connections, to put two and two together and make four. Without assuming the validity of logic as a first principle, we are lost at sea and may as well throw up our hands. From there I moved forward, building my approach to reality from the ground up, trying as hard as I could to be equally cognizant of that which I know and that which I do NOT know. In an effort not to reinvent the wheel, I sought out as many alternative belief systems as I could and weighed them against my observations, measured them with my logic stick. Almost all came up wanting. Some were incomplete, some were contradictory, some were both, some were not full belief systems at all, only partial observations of reality. Except one. Placing God at the center of my conceptual framework allowed all other pieces to support each other and function correctly. God was (is) the foundation that allows the structure to stand. Remove him from the equation and the structure falls apart. So I can say that I have 'absolute certainty' because I have developed a panoramic perception of reality in which all truths stand together. Just as you cannot truly isolate a single factor in a multiple variable cause or effect, you cannot truly isolate a belief about something as complex and all encompassing as reality. Everything has ramifications. If the foundation is weak or improperly set, the right frequency of feedback can set off vibrations that destroy the structure. If the foundation is correct, then reality supports the structure and strengthens it, making it stronger over time. This has been my experience and the end result of my journey.
This also illustrates why I cannot fully convey the basis of my confidence on a message board. Recreating a massive structure in the span of a few posts would be amazing indeed, but I am no magician. I cannot detail all the connections I have made or adequately convey the connections. I wish there were a single book that could pull it off but I'm afraid there isn't. Not a copout but a recogniton of the time and space limitations we face.
p.s. understanding is ultimately only bestowed by God anyway, He can only be found if He first draws you to himself. Another conclusion I am sure you guys will love to hateâ¦.
