Extreme rationality and faith

[WishboneDawn]

Dawn -

Do you happen to know which thread it was or have a link? I did a forum search for "MBTI" and came up with a number of threads but I didn't know which one was the "main" one. Or even if there was a "main" one. :)

The thread was on the II forums which are now sadly defunct. Some of the best discussions I had about Biblical criticism online were had there. *sigh* .

[LizzyBee]

If anyone has any suggestions that I haven't listed above or haven't been mentioned in the thread already, I'd love to hear about them.  In looking at my lists, I realize they do tend to be heavier on the atheist/agnostic side of things but I think that's because I tend to find most theist books very "touchy-feely" (KWIM?) and that turns me off almost immediately.

 

 

FWIW, Peter Kreeft is not touchy-feely.  He teaches logic and philosophy at the college level and I find him to be rather dry.

 

I was kind of excited to see Francis Collins on your list.  I read an article once that described him as arguably the most intelligent living person, and when I have doubts about my faith, he's one of the people that comes to mind as someone who is very intelligent and a believer.  He was an athiest (agnostic, maybe?) who came to faith as an adult.

[WishboneDawn]

If there is no evidence to support such an idea, why would you go ahead and believe such an idea anyway? Why not accept the claims of Scientology, or Jainism, or astrology? If these claims are rejected because there is no evidence, why the double standard with regard to a supernatural entity?

 

I'm not Dicentra obviously but that's an interesting question.

 

If I came from a religious tradition that was literal, inerrant, etc. I might have more trouble with deciding why I should believe. 

 

My upbringing was cultural Christian but really secular. Church was rare. I knew what little I did of the Bible from TV specials and those illustrated Bibles for kids in waiting rooms. I took a course as an adult that my community choir director, also the local Anglican priest, mentored. I needed to get out of the house. It was EFM, an Episcopal church thing, and it covered the Bible from a liberal-moderate perspective that varied little from secular scholaship of the kind Bart Ehrman writes about. So no literal Bible free from mistakes.

 

I started attending the Anglican church where the minister is passionate about gay rights and views faith as a series of questions rather then answers, our Bishop is female and the denomination is bound as much by reason (stifle that laugh!) as scripture and tradition. Doesn't always work out as we have our conservative elements of course. But heck, I've listened to homilies about the importance of Jesus as Myth (big M a la Joseph Campbell. He also posited Santa as a myth. That seemed to upset folks more. :D))

 

I mean none of this to say this is the True Approach to Christianity or to try and sell you on my brand of Christianity. 

 

Anywho...Long and short of it is that to decide I believed in God didn't demand huge compromises in areas like science. I had the freedom to engage faith without having all the answers about whether I believed in the virgin birth as fact. 

 

So the compromise to my otherwise skeptical outlook is small. It doesn't carry huge penalties except being acccused of hypocrisy in the comment section of the odd atheist blog and I can handle that. And I want to believe. I just do. I enjoy the trappings of belief. 

 

ETA: More directly, it's a comfort, yes, a crutch (when I'm not struggling with it). And because of how I was introduced and by whom, the Bible and faith are intellectually rewarding. 

 

I do tend to gravitate toward atheists online though. And I married an atheist. And I think Richard Dawkins is right sexy. Maybe one of these days. Who knows.

[BrookValley.]

Another INTJ here. Also an atheist. The short of it? I just couldn't believe. I thought about it--a lot--and just decided that, no, it wasn't going to work for me, and maybe more importantly, I didn't want it to. I'm good with that, though.

 

I do enjoy hanging out with liberal Quakers, though. Maybe because they are all action and not much talk. But while I greatly value the connection between people in a community like that, my mind cannot rationalize attributing it to any supernatural being.

[NASDAQ]

So, just to throw this out.

 

I'd keep my religion whether I believed it was true or not. It works perfectly well for what it does, regardless of any faith/god issues.

 

We're Jewish.

[Guest]

For reference - I'm an INFJ.

I searched for years to find a way to make Christianity work for me.  I finally realized that... I'm not a Christian after all :)

But - I do believe in God. Well - I believe in a higher power, or something bigger than us that is universal.  I don't think we can properly comprehend it because our little animal brains aren't capable (reading Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is great for explaining that idea....)

Read The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine and look into Deism.  Paine can be a little more insulting to Christians than I think is necessary, so take that in to consideration.  Most modern deists believe that most paths are valid ones, everyone needs to find their own path, and as long as your path isn't hurting anyone, it's fine.  Kinda like the Libertarianism of religion, lol.

Fascinating. This is a lot like me and I'm an INFJ, too, although I have also scored as an INTJ. I come out very close on the Feeling/Thinking element.

 

P.S. I even identify as a Libertarian politically... :D

[melmichigan]

Another INTJ here.  I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school.  My mothers death bed wish was that I would be raised in the Catholic church and grow to have her faith.  I started debating religion with the priests at a very young age, somewhere around second grade, when they told me that according to St. Augustine babies went to hell if they weren't baptized.    

 

I tried to find faith for almost 30 years in various denominations without success.  I just can't find it.  Admitting that to myself and letting it go, that has been a journey.

 

Someone should do a new poll.

[BrandieRose]

 

I have been searching, questioning, and doubting my personal belief system for a few years now.  As a bit of background...  I was raised as a Baptist (not terribly strictly or consistently) and attended a fairly modern, charismatic Baptist church while I was a university student.  I have gone through phases in my life where my adherence to the Christian faith was strict and other times where I think I was just paying lip-service.  As I grew up, I never thought to question the existence of God - that was a fundamental given that wasn't up for debate.  Now I'm questioning.

 

For those of you who are familiar with the Myers-Briggs terminology, I am an INTJ.  The I, the N, and the T are very far to those ends of the spectra.  The J is closer to the middle but always comes out as a J.  I don't put a lot of importance into the Myers-Briggs classification system but I find it's handy to quickly give an overview of personality.  I am a very, very rational person.  Emotions and emotional responses and reasons are, for the most part, not terribly useful to me.  I have read books on faith from many different view points.  I have had discussions with close friends.  I feel like I'm further away from an answer than ever.  Maybe I'm just searching for an answer to a question that can't be answered rationally - I don't know.  A very good friend of mine asked what I was searching for.  Proof of God?  I said no - but I am searching for certainty.  Does my differentiating between proof and certainty make sense?  Bleh - I feel like I'm rambling and not making any sense so I'll just cut to the chase...

 

Is anyone out there willing to share how they reconcile their extreme rationality with faith?  Is it possible to reconcile extreme rationality with faith?  If so, which faith?  And how?

 

(I keep re-reading my post and trying to figure out if it's going to come off as offensive to anyone.  I express myself in writing very badly.  I truly, truly mean no offense to anyone.  Really. :))

 

 

I have had this same issue in the past.  I have found that Christianity is rational.  I'm a Christian because I held all the different belief systems at arms-length and decided that Christian thought was the most systematically logical. Atheism and Agnosticism both take much too much faith for me.  :)  But let me add that nothing in this world can be 100% proven.  We can have overwhelming evidence for a thing, but there is always an element of faith.  Not blind faith, but "the circumstantial evidence is so overwhelming and every other option as been proven false" kind of faith.  For example, when I go in my kitchen, I sit on my chair confidently.  I have faith it will not collapse beneath me.  It could, but it is looks structurally sound and has a good track record.  So I have evidence my chair is safe, but in the end I am practicing a bit of faith - I don't know 100%.  We do this all the time in the legal system and in life in general.  So, there is no dichotomy between faith and reason.  We should only have faith in what is reasonable.  The Bible is reasonable.  There are a lot of great books, probably written by other NT's.  If you're interested here are a few titles:

 

"A Shot of Faith in the Head"  by Mitch Stokes

"Miracles"  C.S. Lewis

"A Case For Christianity"  C.S. Lewis

 

Any youtube video by John Lennox (I'm pretty sure he's an INTJ)

 

 

And I leave you with this quote from Lewis:  â€Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.â€

—C.S. Lewis

[amy58103]

 Atheism and Agnosticism both take much too much faith for me.  :)

I've heard other people say this, but I don't really understand it.  I was wondering if you might be able to elaborate a little.  What do you need faith "in" to be an atheist?  How is that more demanding than having faith in Christ? 

[WishboneDawn]

BrandieRose - I was originally going to be somewhat dismissive of your, "it takes faith to be an atheist," comment because that certainly has never been the case for me. Atheism or agnosticism has generally been the rational, reasonable choice and I think a lot of atheists would agree with that but...I'm wondering if for some people of certain personality types that might no be the case?

 

I DO think it's a bit of a cliche generally though and I know some atheists find it rather insulting.

[milovany]

I'm not the one who made the statement, but I've been transcribing an upper level college biochemistry class this summer, and it has increased my faith in a Creator God.  It would take quite a bit of faith for me to believe that all that happens at the cellular level and with these amino acids (protein synthesis, DNA replication, oxidative phosphorylation, etc.) is a result of chance and evolution. It's just too complex to have developed slowly over time happen by chance. Maybe something like that. 

[Rosie_0801]

The faith required to be an atheist may be alternative wording for a fear of hell, or what ever other consequences there could be for being wrong.

[Kaleidoscope]

I've heard other people say this, but I don't really understand it.  I was wondering if you might be able to elaborate a little.  What do you need faith "in" to be an atheist?  How is that more demanding than having faith in Christ? 

 

Not the original person who made the comment but it was my experience too.  

 

I spent a couple years trying to convince myself there wasn't a God.  I didn't want to believe in Him.  I felt so betrayed by God that I longed to just turn my back and run the other direction.  

 

I can't explain it but I just couldn't make the change or accept it.  

 

Perhaps it's because it was just too much part of the core of who I was at that point?  Perhaps it was because my sense of betrayal was so strong that to no believe in God meant there was no basis for my own feelings and I just couldn't reconcile that.  (I'm not sure if that sentence even makes sense.)

 

I actually felt like I was trapped.  Either way I turned took faith and Christianity was the smaller leap of faith.  Though I still have so many things I can't reconcile within Christianity.  

[melmichigan]

I've heard other people say this, but I don't really understand it.  I was wondering if you might be able to elaborate a little.  What do you need faith "in" to be an atheist?  How is that more demanding than having faith in Christ? 

 

Could it come from this popular book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist?

 

 

[WishboneDawn]

I'm not the one who made the statement, but I've been transcribing an upper level college biochemistry class this summer, and it has increased my faith in a Creator God. It would take quite a bit of faith for me to believe that all that happens at the cellular level and with these amino acids (protein synthesis, DNA replication, oxidative phosphorylation, etc.) is a result of chance and evolution. It's just too complex to have developed slowly over time happen by chance. Maybe something like that.

I wouldn't think it would take faith at all. I would likely think I just need a deeper, more complete understanding of chance, evolution, and the other processes involved. Faith wouldn't even enter the picture.

[milovany]

I wouldn't think it would take faith at all. I would likely think I just need a deeper, more complete understanding of chance, evolution, and the other processes involved. Faith wouldn't even enter the picture.

 

Not for me.  It's too complex of a design, which for me indicates a designer.  I know that sounds cliche, but that's what the reality is for me.

[Veritaserum]

My former religion has a laundry list of various ordinances/rites that it teaches are necessary in order to return to God. On top of those, there are additional requirements regarding attire (including underwear for initiated adults), diet, a stipulated percentage of income to be donated to the church, pressure to spend many hours per week serving the church, etc. Logically, I just can't see God requiring any of that. If a particular person finds that framework meaningful or helpful, fine. It just was a terrible fit for me. Further, it is a patriarchal organization that justifies its male-only priesthood as dictated by God. Again, I just can't see any God worth worshiping as favoring someone for leadership simply because that person has a penis. The gender role rhetoric within the church is not something I could bear any longer.

 

An additional reason my faith of origin is no longer a good fit for me is because I want to focus more on the loving message I see when I read about Jesus. My "faith" has simplified drastically: Love others. I couldn't do that when I adopted a framework with so many useless requirements and rules.

[Corraleno]

And I leave you with this quote from Lewis:  â€Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.â€

—C.S. Lewis

 

That is some of the weirdest, most convoluted logic I've ever read. Why would an evolved brain be any less capable of rational thought than a created brain?  His whole argument is predicated on the assumption that a brain that evolved over time cannot be trusted to think rationally — where's the "proof" of that? Basically he's saying "Only brains created by God can be trusted. I trust my brain to think rationally. Therefore God must have created my brain. Since God created brains, it's impossible to use brains to doubt God." The only thing this circular argument "proves" is that in order to logically "prove" the existence of God, you need to assume the existence of God to begin with.

 

Basically it all comes down to "the world looks pretty well-organized and well-designed to me, so someone must have done the designing and organizing." That's fine if that's what makes sense to you, but other people can look at the same world and think "Wow, it's all so random and crazy, and what order is there is pretty well explained by science, so there's no reason to assume that some magical being in the sky controls it all."

 

Jackie

[albeto.]

the denomination is bound as much by reason (stifle that laugh!) as scripture and tradition

I keep reading this sentiment (throughout this thread and others), and I confess, it doesn't make sense to me now that I no longer believe in the claims of the religion of my past. Faith simply cannot be bound by reason, because by definition, faith requires accepting something as true without reason. That's what faith is, after all. Reason is the objective, analytic argument that supports a claim, it's the consideration that justifies or explains why a particular premise is plausible. Religious denominations may incorporate reasonable beliefs into their belief system, but ultimately they are founded on unreasonable claims. They are so unreasonable, in fact, that they require faith to accept them as true.

 

 

I do tend to gravitate toward atheists online though. And I married an atheist. And I think Richard Dawkins is right sexy. Maybe one of these days. Who knows.

 

I'd like to introduce you to Sam Harris, and Brian Cox.   

 

*swoon*

[albeto.]

That is some of the weirdest, most convoluted logic I've ever read. 

 

Every time I hear CS Lewis or Lee Strobel being suggested as examples of reason, I cringe. They really do leave tremendous holes in their arguments.

[LAS in LA]

Could you ask God, if he's there, to give you faith?

 

I know that sounds simplistic, but it's really the most rational thing to do.  If you don't have something, you ask for it from the person who can give it to you.  I believe (and think that the Bible teaches) that faith is a gift from God, not something we have to summon up from within ourselves.  So when God gives a person faith, they fall on the floor crying and never have any questions again?  Umm, no.  Feel instant, overwhelming certainty about it all?  No, it's not primarily about the feelings.  It's more the beginning of a certainty that grows over a long time, IME.

[BrandieRose]

I'm not the one who made the statement, but I've been transcribing an upper level college biochemistry class this summer, and it has increased my faith in a Creator God.  It would take quite a bit of faith for me to believe that all that happens at the cellular level and with these amino acids (protein synthesis, DNA replication, oxidative phosphorylation, etc.) is a result of chance and evolution. It's just too complex to have developed slowly over time happen by chance. Maybe something like that. 

 

Yes, this.

[jar7709]

INTJ as well, if that matters. (I am not sure it does.) I think I am incapable of "faith" as most religions demand. I can't believe in something intangible and without observable evidence. Yes, I have tried, I have asked, but nada and I don't think I am wired for it. But I know I am far from the only one like this. I think, that if there is a god, and he or she or they made me and others this way, then that's the way we were meant to be and he/she/they would be fine with that.

[Incognito]

From my background, I have understood faith as beliefs in action.  I believe Tylenol helps alleviate pain, so I take it when I have a headache.  That's faith in Tylenol.  Faith in God and spiritual things then is action backing up beliefs about God and spiritual things.  It isn't feeling a certain way about the belief system, it is acting a certain way about it.

 

Now I should admit I am in a bit of my own crisis about the whole thing, but I think once you have figured out what you believe, then faith isn't something you have to wait for, you just act on those beliefs and there is your faith. :)

 

 

[albeto.]

I actually felt like I was trapped.  Either way I turned took faith and Christianity was the smaller leap of faith.  Though I still have so many things I can't reconcile within Christianity.  

 

Could it be that what you found wasn't a lesser leap of faith, but a perceived lesser degree of comfort? I think that's at the root of most people's desire to maintain faith in the face of rejecting it - people think there will be no comfort in a life lived through a secular lens. 

[Kaleidoscope]

Could it be that what you found wasn't a lesser leap of faith, but a perceived lesser degree of comfort? I think that's at the root of most people's desire to maintain faith in the face of rejecting it - people think there will be no comfort in a life lived through a secular lens. 

 

I am not comforted by my faith.  I know that probably makes it seem ridiculous to choose faith. 

[albeto.]

I am not comforted by my faith.  I know that probably makes it seem ridiculous to choose faith. 

 

It must be a source of comfort in some way. Perhaps the alternative ("what if I'm wrong") is so frightening, that faith is unsettling enough that rejecting that faith creates more angst. Whatever it is, there's a reason.  

[Joker]

Could it be that what you found wasn't a lesser leap of faith, but a perceived lesser degree of comfort? I think that's at the root of most people's desire to maintain faith in the face of rejecting it - people think there will be no comfort in a life lived through a secular lens. 

 

For some there isn't. My dh is an atheist and was when I married him, but he is constantly looking and searching. He doesn't find comfort living life through a secular lens. I love him so much and would honestly be okay if he was content in his disbelief, but he is not. So, he keeps searching. What keeps him searching? What keeps him hungering and hoping for something more?

[albeto.]

For some there isn't. My dh is an atheist and was when I married him, but he is constantly looking and searching. He doesn't find comfort living life through a secular lens. I love him so much and would honestly be okay if he was content in his disbelief, but he is not. So, he keeps searching. What keeps him searching? What keeps him hungering and hoping for something more?

 

Perhaps he lives in a society that continues to reinforce the idea that there is something more, and people who have it are more fortunate than people who don't. 

[Kaleidoscope]

Could you ask God, if he's there, to give you faith?

 

I know that sounds simplistic, but it's really the most rational thing to do.  If you don't have something, you ask for it from the person who can give it to you.  I believe (and think that the Bible teaches) that faith is a gift from God, not something we have to summon up from within ourselves.  So when God gives a person faith, they fall on the floor crying and never have any questions again?  Umm, no.  Feel instant, overwhelming certainty about it all?  No, it's not primarily about the feelings.  It's more the beginning of a certainty that grows over a long time, IME.

 

 

I think that would pretty much sum up my experience.  

 

After my experience where I felt completely betrayed by God I daily demanded He give me faith or reveal himself.  

 

Meanwhile I did everything I could to walk away from God.  I wanted nothing to do with him.  I wanted any reason to never look back.  

[Joker]

Perhaps he lives in a society that continues to reinforce the idea that there is something more, and people who have it are more fortunate than people who don't. 

 

My dh is too rational and intelligent to fall for the 'because everyone else does it' routine. He feels deeply that there is something more and is searching for it even when those who love him are more than okay with his disbelief. It's also not about others being more fortunate, it's very personal.

[Kaleidoscope]

It must be a source of comfort in some way. Perhaps the alternative ("what if I'm wrong") is so frightening, that faith is unsettling enough that rejecting that faith creates more angst. Whatever it is, there's a reason.  

 

 I don't know.  There could be some fear of being wrong. 

 

Being able to walk away from my faith would open some options up for me though.  I have good motivation to want to abandon faith in God.  Yet I couldn't.  

 

Honestly, I wouldn't say I'm not still questioning constantly.  Some days I don't think the faith I have is worth enough to be called faith but there's definitely too much to say I have no faith.  

[Anne in CA]

At the end of the day it would require more faith for me to be an atheist than a Christian, because I have had too much evidence that God wants to work in my life by using the mechanism of Christ. Renouncing personal experience for scientific theories I don't understand would be irrational for me. If I spent years learning the theories behind evolution and I understood it perfectly, it still would not negate the fact that God has made it plain to me that my place is in the Christian church, as uncomfortable as I often am there. My experiences are not coincidence or wishful thinking, and giving them up to embrace atheism so that I could believe that only today and this life matters would not fix anything. I have tried. Atheism would be more comfortable than my own beliefs. It would be comforting to believe that if all life were an accident I do not have responsibility to my spiritual side. But I have tried that belief and it didn't go well for me. I was the world's most brief atheist. I can't ignore what I know to be true. I try to be respectful of people  of other religions and atheists who also feel exactly the same way. No one should have to ignore personal experiences because someone else has not had them, denies them, or will never have them. If we all respected the experiences of others religion would not be a problem in the world. I have Muslim and New Age and Jewish friends, but no atheist friends, I have not met atheists that respect my experiences. I am not counting atheists on the board, only ones I know IRL.

[albeto.]

My dh is too rational and intelligent to fall for the 'because everyone else does it' routine. He feels deeply that there is something more and is searching for it even when those who love him are more than okay with his disbelief. It's also not about others being more fortunate, it's very personal.

 

That makes sense. Some people are just more hard wired to believe in "something more," and some people are hard wired in the other direction. 

[MamaSheep]

[Prologue: I have been writing this a little at a time in between many interruptions, so it may or may not be cohesive. Sorry about that. Please ask if you need me to clarify something.]

I don't give great importance to the Myers-Briggs classifications either, but I do appreciate the rational attempt to give a commonly understood point of rererence. I have only taken online surveys, not done an actual, formal Myers-Briggs assessment evaluated by a professional. The informal online surveys inevitably peg me as INTJ, with I as the strongest and the rest at varying degrees of moderate. So, for whatever that is worth.

I tend to be somewhat skeptical of psychological evaluations in general (stick with me, this is relevant in a tangential sort of way). I've filled out an awful lot of the darn things about my son in several professional evaluative settings. I have found that the way the questions are worded often does not allow for me to give a response that accurately describes my experience of whatever the question is supposed to be asking about. I have also found that in spite of valiant efforts to standardize and remove bias from such evaluations, some bias is still present in the questionnaires and some subjectivity enters into the process of interpreting the data. In general I regard them as interesting tools to be used with a "grain of salt". With regard to my son, it is clear that there is SOMETHING out of the norm going on with the child. Various professionals have at various times over the years conducted various forms of (imperfect) evaluations. After the data have been collected and evaluated, the general consensus is that his constellation of behaviors and characteristics place him within the somewhat arbitrary and subjective category of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now, I would say that I am "certain" that what is going on with my son is very real and includes both physiological and psychological components. I am "relatively certain" that there is a strong genetic component, but this is based on observations of extended family members on both sides, not on extensive genetic testing and comparison in a laboratory (which would be prohibitively expensive and not really help in a practical sense). I can agree upon the use of terms like "autism spectrum disorder", "autistic", etc. as useful descriptors and points of reference so that I can communicate with others about his needs. However, there is currently no laboratory test that anyone can perform where they can show me concrete, physical, irrefutable "proof" that my son has something called autism. No test like that exists. So while I have sufficient "evidence" that I feel "certain" that he is autistic, and while I find using that label/model convenient as a frame of reference in forming plans and evaluating responses, I would also say that I have no actual "proof" that my son is autistic, and that, in fact, at present there is no such thing as a way to "prove" either the existence of "autism" (even if the experts could agree on a definition) or that my son "has" autism or "is" autistic. There are people out there who argue that there's no such thing as autism. I can't "prove" to them to their satisfaction that autism is a real "thing", and not just bad parenting (or whatever their pet theory is), but because of my own experiences with the phenomenon I am sufficiently convinced for myself that there is "something" real going on with him (and others), and that it includes certain physiological and psychological components, and that it doesn't really matter what you CALL the thing, or where exactly you draw the boundaries for applying your label, the whatever-it-is is still real, and denying its existence won't make everything suddenly "all better". 

I'm not sure what you mean about the difference between certainty and proof, but for me that's kind of how it works. There are a lot of areas of life where there is no black and white, clear-cut, absolute, objective, irrefutable "proof", and in those cases I gather the best data I can, and when a large enough preponderance of it fits a particular pattern I might put a label on the pattern and establish a degree of "certainty" (which may exist somewhere along a continuum between "certain" and "unlikely" or whatever terms you want to use, and not as a specific, definable state) with which I regard that pattern as being stable and predictable. 

For me, this applies both to matters of secular/scientific investigation, and to matters of spiritual/religious investigation. Some things I'm certain of, some things I'm fairly sure about, for some things I can see equal merit in two or more theories and do not yet have any solid evidence (which is not the same thing as proof) that sways me heavily one way or another, and for other things I just don't feel there's enough data available yet to draw any particular conclusion at all, though it can be fun to speculate (but I don't regard speculations--mine or other people's--as "truth" either scientifically or spiritually). 

 

As some random examples that spring to mind, I am "certain" about the existence of the universe (people will argue that it could all be a gigantic super-computer simulation, but I think that seems unlikely). But I am not "certain" about the shape of the universe. I have seen mathematical models from different learned individuals that demonstrate that depending on some variables that are just not yet known to science (largely dealing with density), it might be sort of saddle-shaped, or it might be spherical, or it might be flat. Or it might be some other shape, though those seem to be the most common mathematical models I've found (and I fully admit that the math is well beyond my own skills to parse). Also, the general scientific consensus is that the universe had a "beginning" and is expanding, but science does not even really speculate about what (if anything) existed before the universe, or what (if anything) exists outside the expanding universe (f there is such a thing as "outside"). Scientists are not even able to observe the entire universe, just the portion of it from which light has had time to travel to Earth. We really have no "proof" that the entire universe is the same as the observable universe. We have no way of gathering data about it (yet). There are smaller mysteries too. I was reading an article the other day about a little critter called the "mad hatter caterpillar. When it sheds its old skins as it grows it retains just the head portion of the skin, stacked on top of its new skin's head. By the time it is fully mature, it has this whole little stack of empty head cases on top of its head. Nobody really knows why this is. There are, of course, speculations; it might be a defense mechanism in that a predator might go after the stack of empty heads first, perhaps giving the critter time to escape; it might just be one of those biological "errors" where some random purposeless, or even dangerous, mutation gets incorporated into a population because the individuals with it also have some other biologically advantageous mutation. The mad hatter caterpillar also has stinging spines. Anyway, it's interesting that the caterpillar retains its head casings, but we don't really know why that happens, and it isn't likely to be particularly earth-shatteringly important that we find out. 


So anyway, I guess part of it for me is that rational inquiry has observable limitations whether one is dealing with spiritual issues or physical ones. Also, whether one is seeking truth about spiritual things or about physical things, the data is ultimately limited, and what data there is might be misinterpreted even by experts in the subject. Aristotle's explanations about how the world worked were considered by rational thinkers to be quite brilliant for a very long time. Isaac Newton's explanations were different, though. And then Einstein came up with some more refined explanations, and now Hawking and others are taking a stab at it. But it would seem irrational to me to say that if Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, et al. seem to contradict each other in any way, that must mean there is no such thing as a physical world, no such thing as physics, no such thing as the law of gravity. And it would certainly seem irrational to me to conclude that if they don't all agree and there's no such thing as physics then I cannot possibly be affected by gravity. And to me, the same would be true of God and religion--the fact that different experts have different explanations, and that the accepted explanations are different in different times and cultures, doesn't mean that there's no such thing as God. Poor conclusions based on Incomplete information, misinterpreted data, inadequate tools, and assumptions that turned out to be inaccurate (and which are still not regarded as aboslutely understood even now) don't prove that there's no such thing as God any more than they prove that there's no such thing as a physical world. (Nor do they prove that there is--but they're still in the same boat there). With both faith and science there are going to be people who "preach" theories that are not sound, but their ignorance and/or intentional misdirection don't constitute useful data. There will also be people in both fields of inquiry who genuinely don't understand what they're experiencing and very sincerely misinterpret it as something else and unknowingly "corrupt" the general data pool.

The trick (I think) in both matters of science and matters of religion is to sort it all out--figure out what the real data are, how they really interact with each other, what they really mean. For me, a big part of that is as much as possible to look at the original data. Generally when I hear about a scientific study or when someone tells me about a religious experience I can't go back and HAVE the experience in question, or even observe it. I was not a test subject in the study, and I was not the religious person in question. Generally I can't even go back and OBSERVE the experience. Sometimes I can look at data and an explanation of the manner in which it was gathered, and that is very helpful. Often I can read a scientific paper describing the experience, observations, and data, along with the conclusions drawn by those observing the experience. Sometimes when I review the data I find that I disagree with the conclusions drawn by the observers. For example, one report I read several years ago stated that a scientific study had determined that people with background X are "more intelligent" than people with background Y. When I dug up and read the actual data, I found that the test had been one that measured which subjects responded to a stimulus the fastest without stopping to think about it. To me, that is not a measure of what I would consider "intelligence", but I've seen the "scientists'" conclusion of that study used to mock and belittle as unintelligent the group who stopped a moment to think instead of issuing an instantaneous knee-jerk reaction. The same thing has happened with religion for me. A person might authoritatively state their conclusion that the Bible says X, but when I go look it up and read the actual data (the Bible) I sometimes find I disagree with the authoritative person's conclusion. That doesn't mean the data is flawed, and it doesn't mean there's no actual reality that the data relates to, it just means that the authority and I disagree about the conclusion to be drawn from the data in question. 

We live in a time when science has more agreed-upon definitions, methods and standards of measurement, base assumptions (which still sometimes turn out to be wrong), procedures, and so forth than does spirituality. It's EASIER (to a point) to engage in rational exploration of scientific thinking and experience than it is to engage in rational exploration of spiritual thinking and experience. But the fact that one thing is easier than the other doesn't mean it's superior or somehow more "real", it just means that more exploration is needed. And I say it's easier to a point because if you follow any field of scientific exploration far enough you still come to those blurry edges and dark places where we just don't know. And you still come to points where you have to make a "leap of faith" based on the best assumptions you can draw from incomplete data sets. They are different KINDS of leaps of faith, but they're not always based on better information. 

 

I guess ultimately for me, extreme rationality in some ways REQUIRES faith. Otherwise there's no way to tentatively bridge a gap and continue rational exploration from there to see if the hypothesized bridge actually "works".  And faith, in some ways, for me, requires rationality. I like to base my leaps of faith, whether in science or in spirituality, on some kind of data, even if I know it's incomplete and that I might have to go back and scrap those (tentative) conclusions once better data becomes available (and this has happened to me in both scientific and spiritual learning). 

With regard to emotions and emotional responses, I think that there is a difference between an internal, subjective "experience" of something, and an emotional response to that experience. They often happen really close together, but I think there is a distinction. For example, I think there is a difference between my internal realization that I cannot (or at least really should not, and will not) have children anymore, which is a subjective (in that nobody but me can directly observe it) but rational experience, and my emotional response to that realization (which is, quite frankly, rather a jumbled mess at present). I've needed a few CT scans recently, and beforehand the technician told me that the contrast they were giving me might make me feel very warm, and I might experience a sensation that felt like I'd wet my pants, but to please be assured that I hadn't. Some patients report these experiences, but others don't experience anything like that. The technician could observe my external reactions to my internal experience (caused by an external stimulus), but (s)he couldn't directly observe my subjective experience or my emotional reaction to it. The first couple of times I just felt a slight warmth. The third time I got the full pseudo-bedwetting experience and was glad I'd been warned...lol. Anyway, the point being that I distinguish between an internal experience based on internal factors (like self-talk or study), an internal experience caused by an external factor (like the sensation of wetting my pants caused by a physical reaction to the contrast chemical), and an emotional response to an experience, whether the experience is internal or external. 

For me, emotion is a valid consideration when making decisions in that I know I will have an emotional response to the decision and to the consequences of the decision and I think I should make a rational decision about whether I want to experience that response, taking into consideration that sometimes a negative emotional reaction is rationally worth it in pursuit of a greater happiness down the line and so forth. It's not totally irrelevant. But I do not consider an emotional response to something to be EVIDENCE that a thing is true or false, real or imaginary, only of whether I subjectively "like" or "dislike" the thing...or whatever--how I emotionally respond to X. I know I can "dislike" or "fear" or be anxious or angry about something that is true, and I know that I can feel all warm and fuzzy inside about a nice idea that bears no relation to objective reality (watching actors pretend to fall in love on a movie can make me tear up even though I know it's not real; I know what "willing suspension of disbelief" is, and it's not the same thing as faith, though I think people do try to substitute it sometimes). But I DO think that an internal experience can qualify as evidence, even if I am not able to "show" that experience to another person in a way that would be meaningful to them. The sensation I experienced with the CT contrast was very "like" wetting one's pants, but it differed from that experience in a number of significant ways that I don't think I could adequately put into words.  Probably someone else who'd had that experience would agree with me, but I don't know that for sure. A cantaloupe and a watermelon are similar in some ways but completely different in others, and someone who doesn't generally eat melon wouldn't understand much if I tried to explain the difference. If I knew that the person had eaten watermelon but had never tasted cantaloupe I might use watermelon as a reference point and say that it's somewhat "like" watermelon, and in some ways it is, but it's not just a watermelon that happens to be orange, it's a whole different kind of food. So sometimes when I describe what I consider to be an internal spiritual experience with an external cause to another person who has not had the same experience, they might say "oh, that's just an emotional response"--especially if I said it was a "feeling" because that might be the closest analogy I could think of at the time. But consider trying to describe cantaloupe to someone who had been fed corn on the cob and had been TOLD that it was cantaloupe. Or who had been given a wide variety of different kinds of food and told that one of them was cantaloupe, but nobody knew which one. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as cantaloupe and that people who have experienced it are making things up. But sometimes I think people do that sort of thing with spiritual experiences. Maybe they've never experienced something like that and they don't understand the description so they substitute something else in their mental picture of what "spiritual experience" means and then write it off because they don't like "watermelon". Maybe they've had a spiritual experience but didn't know what it was, and it was mixed in with a lot of other experiences or sensations at the time, and they didn't know that's what it was. Maybe someone provided them with entertainment or an intellectual experience and told them that was a spiritual experience, and they think they know what a spiritual experience is, even though their definition may not reflect reality. Rationally, none of that would mean that there's no such thing as a spiritual experience. 

I think questioning is actually a good thing when it comes to discovering truth about spiritual things, just like asking questions is the start of discovering truth about anything else. But I do think that there are some questions to which a useful answer has to be more experiential than "rational", though once you've experienced the answer it fits into the universe of rational thought very nicely. For example, what is beauty? Or, what is the taste of a mango? I think that some spiritual truths are discovered only in that way, and I don't think that hearing about someone else's experience is sufficient to adequately answer the questions involved. Rational intellectual exploration is absolutely an invaluable piece of faith, in my experience and opinion, but I do think that there are some components that only fit the rational construct after they have actually been directly experienced by the actual individual undertaking the inquiry. 

With regards to seeking answers, and feeling like you're getting farther away from answers instead of closer, one thing I've noticed, again both in spirituality and in science, is that sometimes what that means is that you're getting farther away from the "wrong" answers, or from the "anticipated" answers, but that you are actually getting closer to the "real" answers, even though you do not yet recognize them as such so you have no way of measuring your progress toward them. Perhaps you're in that kind of in-between stage. 

Another "trap" I've seen is when people get their mind set that the answer HAS to be either X or Y and they forget to entertain the idea that there might be seventy-two other answers they haven't considered yet, so when X and Y both turn out to be wrong, they conclude that there is no answer. If God isn't like Pastor Bob said, then there must not be a God. (Or possibly you misunderstood what Pastor Bob was saying, or maybe he's just wrong about God--and that goes for the minister down the street too.) This FEELS like rational thought in some respects because it FEELS like one is objectively considering all the possible answers and drawing the only logical conclusion. Looked at objectively, though, you can see that there is an irrational aspect to creating a false duality and then knocking that straw man down and feeling like you have thoroughly explored the issue. (I find the age-old argument about faith versus works to be a false duality of this nature, for example, though I'm sure others would argue. :) )  It's a little like saying that if anyone can find a single flaw in the Newtonian model of physics then there's no such thing as gravity. Simply proving that God isn't what one thought God was doesn't prove that there's no such thing as God. Logically speaking.

Anyway, for me, faith and rational thought do not seem incompatible. 

As far as your question about how I got where I am with regards to belief systems, I would say that the seeds of both faith and rational intellectual inquiry were present in my upbringing. I sometimes joke that I was raised in the wild by feral scientists, but there's kind of a lot of truth in that joke. My father was a well-respected research scientist for the U.S. Park service and I grew up in a small employee housing development in Yellowstone Park. Dad is very well respected by other scientists in his field of expertise, even though he is now retired and serving as a missionary in Germany. Which is the other thing about Dad, he is a very spiritual man as well. (And mom is a good match for him intellectually and spiritually--but she chose to employ her bachelor of science degree in raising seven wild children--who grew up to have degrees and careers in things like electrical engineering, optometry, history, journalism, computer science, and medicine--and art, which would be me, though I've kind of been pursuing autism as a career lately...sigh, and who are also some of the most spiritual and logical people I know). Anyway, growing up I was never told I had to choose between spirituality and logic until I got into school, and by then the argument didn't really make a lot of sense to me (though I toyed with the idea for a while) because I had already seen how nicely the two fit together, and it's kind of hard to convince somebody they didn't see something they've lived in the middle of their entire life. 

Beyond that, I was raised in a particular "belief system"/religion, that being Latter-Day Saint (aka Mormon), which is where I still am. And I love it. But I was always told that I should not just take someone else's word for spiritual things, I should go after my own answers. And I did. So maybe part of it was cultural in that I am still in the religion I was raised in...but the beliefs I was raised with at home were definitely at odds with the broader culture in which I lived, which included lots of secular intellectual types from Dad's work, as well as a more evangelical/protestant type of Christianity with a few Catholics and JWs thrown in for flavor in the wider community (we were bused to school in a larger--but still small--town down the road). So...family culture yes, community culture definitely not. I started college in Georgia right after I turned 18, and the overarching culture there also served to challenge rather than support my beliefs. But I have always been interested in other religions and belief systems, and I have done a lot of discussing, and a bit of visiting, and a ton of evaluating and comparing over the years. So in some ways it is also process of elimination. I find the LDS belief system to be the most internally rational and cohesive of the belief systems I've learned about, as well as the one that fits best with my observations of how the world works, human behavior, historical information, and the actual text of the Bible. But I do realize that this is my own personal conclusion based on my own personal experiences and inquiries, and I fully acknowledge that other people with different experiences have come to different conclusions, and I'm fine with leaving that between them and God. But yes, there has been some process of elimination. 

Have I had ALL my questions about spirituality answered? Of course not. Just like I haven't had all my scientific questions answered. But I am satisfied with the answers that I HAVE gotten to the point of being "certain" about a lot of spiritual things. A large portion of my unanswered questions fall into the same sort of categories as what shape is the universe and why do mat hatter caterpillars collect head cases. They're things I can't know yet because of a lack of data, or things that really aren't important in the grand scheme of things--it's not the same as wondering whether caterpillars are real or mythological creatures. 

Another aspect for me is related to a number of what I consider internal spiritual experiences with external causes--not a "feeling", exactly, in the emotional sense (though certainly I have various emotions, positive and negative, about the experiences)--but also not something I could set on a table and say, "Hey look at that cantaloupe! Have a taste!" I kind of just have to say....so I tasted this cantaloupe....with the understanding that not everyone will think it means anything important. I'm okay with that, I was there, I know what happened, and I don't actually care that much whether other people believe me. Some of them were subtle, and some were so blatant that I don't think I could deny them any more than I could deny the sun in the sky. But that doesn't mean I expect them to mean something to other people. They're personal evidence, not universal evidence. And I'm okay with that. 

And yes, there is a decision. It's more of an ongoing decision than a single irrevocable moment of choice. I decide every day how I will live, what beliefs I will keep, and which I will revise or discard based on new information. And I like it that way. :)  

Well...that might not be what you're looking for with your questions here, but that's more or less how it works for me, which I think was what you asked us to share. I hope you find good answers. And more good questions. :)

[Free]

For some there isn't. My dh is an atheist and was when I married him, but he is constantly looking and searching. He doesn't find comfort living life through a secular lens. I love him so much and would honestly be okay if he was content in his disbelief, but he is not. So, he keeps searching. What keeps him searching? What keeps him hungering and hoping for something more?

 

The deep desire to search for meaning and purpose does not have to be fulfilled through a belief in an external supernatural being. The search can take you within...deep inside yourself and IME, that can be a very powerful and fulfilling journey as well.

[EthiopianFood]

Thank you again for all the responses and for the willingness to share in a public forum. :) I've taken note of all the suggestions for books, readings, and videos and will work my way through them. I've also taken in all the shared stories and experiences and they'll become part of my mulling process. :D I'm not one to "talk things out" but more to think and think and then a while later come out with my thoughts so if I don't reply to each post, please don't think I didn't like it or it wasn't important to me!

 

I was surprised at how many of you are INTJs - I wasn't expecting that! I have done some Googling and it seems as though most INTJs are either atheist, agnostic, or UU. Again - I don't want to place a degree of importance on the MBTI that it doesn't warrant but it does give me something else to add to the mulling.

 

A PP asked if I had taken one of the belief quizzes. I did take one a little while back. My results were (if I remember correctly):

1. atheist/agnostic

2. UU

3. Reformed Judaism (which surprised me greatly!)

4. Reformed Quakerism

 

To further clarify, I think what I'm struggling with right now is what I call faith, not with religion. To me, faith is an internal belief system. Religion is the external trappings of that belief system. Does that make sense? If I don't know whether or not I believe in a deity, it's pretty tough for me to pick a system of how to worship one. If I don't know whether I believe that Christ existed, was the Son of God, and died for my sins, it's kind of "putting the cart before the horse" to try to decide on a particular Christian denomination. Once I get my faith (or non-faith) sorted out, then I can think about religion (or non-religion).

 

I tend to solve problems by going back to "square one" and then moving forward from there, so that's what I've done with my faith problem. If I distill everything down to two questions, then (for me) it comes down to this:

Does a supernatural (meaning outside the natural world) deity exist? Even if I can't find irrefutable proof one way or the other, can I find enough evidence (whatever that might mean to me) to be fairly certain one way or the other?

 

A PP was wondering what I meant by certainty. I don't use the word to mean "absolutely sure" (although I'm probably not using the word correctly, in that case ;)) - I guess I meant "fairly certain". I'm assuming that most people, when asked about what they believe (or don't believe), would say that they're fairly certain that what they believe (or don't believe) is correct - otherwise why would they believe (or not believe) it? They might not have irrefutable proof that they're correct, but they have a relatively high degree of certainty. That's what I'm looking for. For me, I think peace will come if I can get to the point of "fairly certain" about what I choose to believe (or not believe). I hope I will always still have questions and still want to be reading and searching because I think questions are what makes life interesting but I would like to come to that place of "fairly certain" and then go out a-questioning from there. :)

 

As I said above, I've taken note of everyone's suggestions in the thread. This is a list of the books that I've either read, are currently reading, or have at home and intend to read soon:

The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns

The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel

Imagination and Spirit: A Contemporary Quaker Reader edited by J. Brent Bill

The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life edited by Scott Savage

Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity written and collected by Catherine Whitmire

The Quaker Reader selected by Jessamyn West

The Oxford Authorized KJV Bible with Apocrypha

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The Dawkins Delusion by Alister and Joanna McGrath

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and For Humanism by A. C. Grayling

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

The Language of Science and Faith by Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins

 

This is a list of books that I currently have out of the library and have been glancing through. The only one I've started actually reading is "I Don't Believe in Atheists" by Chris Hedges but if any of the others strike me as helpful, they'll get a read as well.

I Don't Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges

Divinity of Doubt by Vincent Bugliosi

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Tomorrow's God by Neale Donald Walsch

The World As It Is by Chris Hedges

 

If anyone has any suggestions that I haven't listed above or haven't been mentioned in the thread already, I'd love to hear about them. In looking at my lists, I realize they do tend to be heavier on the atheist/agnostic side of things but I think that's because I tend to find most theist books very "touchy-feely" (KWIM?) and that turns me off almost immediately.

 

It would be interesting to do a poll on the forum that looks at posters' Myers-Briggs type, religious/faith affiliation (or non-affiliation), and their most prominent method of homeschooling just to see how the numbers play out. I don't know how to do that, though. :( If someone else does, I think it would be great fun. :)

I'm in a similar situation, that's all I'll say. I recommend Greg Boyd as a theist who used to be an atheist, and is well-educated.He writes books for the lay person, but also books for the serious theology "student." Letters from a Skeptic is his lay person apologetics book. He also has podcasts.

[Laura Corin]

I'm not the one who made the statement, but I've been transcribing an upper level college biochemistry class this summer, and it has increased my faith in a Creator God.  It would take quite a bit of faith for me to believe that all that happens at the cellular level and with these amino acids (protein synthesis, DNA replication, oxidative phosphorylation, etc.) is a result of chance and evolution. It's just too complex to have developed slowly over time happen by chance. Maybe something like that. 

 

I can see coming to that conclusion.  To me, however, that makes it sound as if ending up where we are, with this exact human brain and that precise pattern on a butterfly, was an inevitable destination.  Billions of individual chances over a - to me - unimaginable timescale could have come to this, or to blobs of glup, or to nothing.  That's a very exciting picture and not one that involves a designer.

 

I'm reading Kate Atkinson's latest novel at the moment.  It's mostly concerned with roads (often accidentally) not taken.  I'm seeing the world as a garden of forking paths.

 

L

[WishboneDawn]

Not for me.  It's too complex of a design, which for me indicates a designer.  I know that sounds cliche, but that's what the reality is for me.

I don't think it's cliche. I think it's a line in the sand you've drawn and declared that beyond that, you shall not step. But you're dealing with issues of randomness and probability to which there IS a better and deeper understanding. It's not unknowable or a mystery, it's simply challenging some gut feelings that people tend to have that actually run counter to the way things can actually work. Innumeracy by Paulos is a great start in unraveling that

[Aspasia]

I do something kind of like this with Mormonism of all things. I actually blog about it: http://agnosticmormonmom.blogspot.com/p/my-story.html.

[WishboneDawn]

I keep reading this sentiment (throughout this thread and others), and I confess, it doesn't make sense to me now that I no longer believe in the claims of the religion of my past. Faith simply cannot be bound by reason, because by definition, faith requires accepting something as true without reason. That's what faith is, after all. Reason is the objective, analytic argument that supports a claim, it's the consideration that justifies or explains why a particular premise is plausible. Religious denominations may incorporate reasonable beliefs into their belief system, but ultimately they are founded on unreasonable claims. They are so unreasonable, in fact, that they require faith to accept them as true.

 

 

 

I'd like to introduce you to Sam Harris, and Brian Cox.   

 

*swoon*

 

Sorry, I meant reason in regards to the life of the church and how that faith is discussed and practiced, not faith itself. CoE has as it's 3-legged stool, reason, scripture and tradition. So I look at the first creation story in Genesis and I've got tools of reason to consider it like science and textual criticism. I've also got examples from tradition, like Augustine, that did not accept a modern literalist view. In the end I conclude it's likely a liturgical statement that lists core values of the Ancient Hebrews. It works the other way too. It might be perfectly reasonable of me not to go help a neighbour in some way since I'm up to my eyeballs in kids and housework but I picked a paradigm that demands I get my ass in gear and go pitch in (she says as if she always attends to the demands of scripture). In that vein if I were an atheist I'd likely be a humanist. Reasons good but I think I need some moral framework on top of it to reign it in. Anyhow, the 3-legged stool (no giggling) informs my faith but doesn't dictate whether I believe or not.

 

And yeah, I am NOT a Sam Harris fan so it hurt me deeply to discover he was hot. > :(

 

Neils deGrasse Tyson is my second fave though. Reasonable, rational science-loving man and friendly as all get out to little old liberal Christians like me. 

 

DH rates number one. I have not seen another atheist with his lumberjack shoulders and big brown eyes. :D

 

Really, I've got tons more on my list. We need a sexy atheist thread. 

[Onceuponatime]

I am an ISTJ, usually rational, detailed, by the book, driven by a need to be right. In the past, I studied constantly to make sure I maintained my "rightness." Ironically, my study of the details of Christianity, and my desire to be rational, led me away from belief in the Bible as the literal word of God.

 

I know INTJ's are big picture people which shows in your book list. The books I've read tend to be more detail oriented:

The Bible - Karen Armstrong

The Battle For God- Armstrong

Books by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Bart Ehrman.

 

Many of these are more focussed on history than on theology, but you'll find some of that too.

 

 

[Free]

So anyway, I guess part of it for me is that rational inquiry has observable limitations whether one is dealing with spiritual issues or physical ones. Also, whether one is seeking truth about spiritual things or about physical things, the data is ultimately limited, and what data there is might be misinterpreted even by experts in the subject. Aristotle's explanations about how the world worked were considered by rational thinkers to be quite brilliant for a very long time. Isaac Newton's explanations were different, though. And then Einstein came up with some more refined explanations, and now Hawking and others are taking a stab at it. But it would seem irrational to me to say that if Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, et al. seem to contradict each other in any way, that must mean there is no such thing as a physical world, no such thing as physics, no such thing as the law of gravity. And it would certainly seem irrational to me to conclude that if they don't all agree and there's no such thing as physics then I cannot possibly be affected by gravity. And to me, the same would be true of God and religion--the fact that different experts have different explanations, and that the accepted explanations are different in different times and cultures, doesn't mean that there's no such thing as God.

 

Poor conclusions based on Incomplete information, misinterpreted data, inadequate tools, and assumptions that turned out to be inaccurate (and which are still not regarded as aboslutely understood even now) don't prove that there's no such thing as God any more than they prove that there's no such thing as a physical world. (Nor do they prove that there is--but they're still in the same boat there).

 

 

With scientific models we are not trying to prove the existence of observable phenomenon, but rather to find an explanation for it. It would indeed be irrational and silly to claim that the physical world does not exist when it is so plainly observable to all. God on the other hand is not. While there may be subjective evidence (personal anecdotes, etc.), there is no objective evidence at all for the claim that God exists.

 

The trick (I think) in both matters of science and matters of religion is to sort it all out--figure out what the real data are, how they really interact with each other, what they really mean. For me, a big part of that is as much as possible to look at the original data. Generally when I hear about a scientific study or when someone tells me about a religious experience I can't go back and HAVE the experience in question, or even observe it. I was not a test subject in the study, and I was not the religious person in question. Generally I can't even go back and OBSERVE the experience. Sometimes I can look at data and an explanation of the manner in which it was gathered, and that is very helpful. Often I can read a scientific paper describing the experience, observations, and data, along with the conclusions drawn by those observing the experience.

While it is true that you and I, as lay persons will not be able to repeat highly technical experiments, it does not mean that scientific experiments and observations are not repeatable at all. That would not be science.

 

Spiritual experiences on the other hand cannot be repeated under controlled conditions. That does not make the experiences false, but you cannot use that data to come up with a reliable explanation for the experience either.

 

We live in a time when science has more agreed-upon definitions, methods and standards of measurement, base assumptions (which still sometimes turn out to be wrong), procedures, and so forth than does spirituality. It's EASIER (to a point) to engage in rational exploration of scientific thinking and experience than it is to engage in rational exploration of spiritual thinking and experience. But the fact that one thing is easier than the other doesn't mean it's superior or somehow more "real", it just means that more exploration is needed. And I say it's easier to a point because if you follow any field of scientific exploration far enough you still come to those blurry edges and dark places where we just don't know. And you still come to points where you have to make a "leap of faith" based on the best assumptions you can draw from incomplete data sets. They are different KINDS of leaps of faith, but they're not always based on better information.

But when it comes to proving the existence of God, there are no data sets, are there?

[OhM]

I'm an INTJ - very I, moderately N and T, and like you, fluctuate between J and P - for me, depending on the day and my mood. : )  I'm also an engineer.  The existence of God is a fundamental given for me at this point in my journey.  The most useful and convincing source has been the Bible.  It's taken me struggling out of my N and T modes to sense and feel a bit, but the truth in the Bible is confirmed by my observations of the world.

 

Some other writers who have been influential have been mentioned alreay - notably Lewis, Shaeffer, Aquinas.  Some others I may not have seen: Sheldon Vanauken - A Severe Mercy was hugely meaningful in my search; listening to Ravi Zacharias is also helpful.

 

Best wishes!

[Veritaserum]

I do something kind of like this with Mormonism of all things. I actually blog about it: http://agnosticmormonmom.blogspot.com/p/my-story.html.

I poked around on your blog. :) My husband continues to believe that the LDS church is "true" (meaning the only belief system and set of religious rites that will get someone back to God). He really, really hopes that I can find a way to return to the church without it again sending me into a state of depression. I'm so much happier *not* attending 3 hours of church during which I disagree with 70-80% of what's taught/discussed on a typical Sunday. Do any of the lessons bother you? What is your coping strategy?

 

I have concerns with attending a church I don't believe in/agree with. I don't want my children to be told they have to go through the temple in order to reach God. I don't want them to be told the lie that men are like *this* while women are like *that* and obviously God wants us all to stay neatly tucked into our gender-labeled boxes. I hate the modesty rhetoric and I was furious when my children were explicitly taught to look at photos of people and judge fhose people as "modest or not." My sweet, sensitive second daughter cried after a lesson on the priesthood because it was just so obvious to her that God hates girls and loves boys because otherwise both sexes would be given the authority to use His priesthood power. I told her that I believe God wants all of His children to have it and that the church is just wrong.

 

Mormonism is just too one-size-fits-all for me. Obey and conform. Sure, there are scriptures about getting personal confirmation, but if you get a different answer from what is printed in the church manuals or spoken in General Conference, everyone knows who the wrong one is. (Hint: It's not the men of authority.) My experiences with the temple, for example, were universally negative (traumatic and frightening, intellectually and spiritually painful). Yet it is doctrine that every person who ever lived or ever will live must receive the temple ordinances either while living or through a proxy. If I got up in church and said that God told me that not everyone needs the temple, that the temple is *a* way for *some* people to gain spiritual knowledge and peace, I would be accused of teaching false doctrine. People would assume that my temple experiences were bad because *I* was unworthy or just didn't understand or whatever. People would insist that the temple is perfect and necessary.

 

There is no place in the LDS church for someone like me. I like some of the ideas Joseph Smith came up with. I like some of the stories from the Book of Mormon. I don't believe that either has a monopoly on truth. I believe that both got some things wrong (Joseph more than the BOM). I don't believe even a little bit in the idea of ONE True Church. It's absurd to me that a loving God would make The Way Back be through an obscure and small religion. I think the LDS church can be *a* way for *some* people to return to God in that the church provides the framework that meets their particular spiritual needs.

 

For awhile I thought I could stay in the church and just ignore the bad stuff (the sexism, homophobia, and legalism). I loved the church. It has played a HUGE role in my life. I was a very dedicated and devout believer for many years despite the pain I experienced from some of its practices and teachings. I held onto hope that it would someday change and reflect the loving and intellectual inclusivity of the God I believe in and worship. The pants event in Decemeber killed that hope. The ridicule and hostility from the more conservative and traditional members over something as simple and non-threatening as PANTS on women made it so clear that the church as a body of members and as an organization is not open to anyone who holds a different opinion.

 

There really aren't any social or community reasons for me to go. I don't make friends at church. I'm too much of an introvert. :-P I make friends based on common interests. I may start attending occasionally to support my husband, but I will carefully screen the lesson topics first. There are some I just refuse to sit through or have my children sit through. :-/

[kentuckymom]

Here are a few thoughts that have come to my mind as I've read through the responses to this thread.

 

First of all, I've always thought it was insulting for Christians to insist that it takes more faith to be an atheist or an agnostic. My mother is a Christian. My father is an atheist. I think my mother's Christian faith (particularly her very conservative brand of Christian faith) takes a whole lot more work than my father's Atheism. What I do think atheism, agnosticism, and all nontraditional DIY faiths are missing is the component of automatic  community. Community is another part of what has kept me in the Christian faith. Sometimes the Church does an absolutely horrible job of being the community it's supposed to do, but, when it does this right, it's a beautiful thing.

 

In addition, there's another line of reasoning in favor of faith I haven't seen mentioned here that I've heard and really like. It's not proof, but it's something worthwhile to reflect on.  The gist of the argument goes like this:

 

1) Everyone in the world has the same set of data to work with. 

 

2) The world is beautiful and wonderful in many ways, but everyone is going to experience pain, bad things are going to happen to good people, natural disasters are going to destroy schools full of children, etc.

 

3) There's a variety of possible ways to look at this data, including:

 

a) The Atheist way: The world is what it is. It's the product of scientific processes and is affected greatly by the actions of humans, the most evolved of the animals (at this point). We should live our lives well because they're all we have. At the end of our lives we'll die. Eventually humans will make such a big mess of this planet we'll either drive ourselves to extinction or we'll have to leave an settle elsewhere, which might not be too bad since eventually the sun will go red giant and destroy the Earth anyway.

 

b) the Christian way: The world is broken because of sin. Sometimes horrible things happen because of our own sin. Sometimes horrible things happen as a result of the sins of others. Sometimes horrible things happen simply because we live in a broken world. But there is hope because God's plan is to redeem the world and bring a new heavens and earth, which will be free of all the flaws of the old earth. In the meantime, God calls us, with the help of Jesus, to be a redeeming influence in this world.

 

I vastly prefer the Christian way of looking at the world. I just can't see the atheist way as anything but depressing. Now, I'm sure all the other world religions have their own ways of interpreting the data, some similar to one of the two ways I've outlined, some quite different. I think it can be helpful to reflect on what view your current belief system or one you're considering takes and whether or not you're comfortable with that.

[fairfarmhand]

Ravi Zacharias has some excellent stuff on the logic of faith.  I love that he does not tell people that you must check your intellect at the door to become a Christian.

 

He is a Christian apologist who respectfully answers the big questions of faith. Some people believe that those who question are trying to be a smart aleck or argue, but I do believe the Christianity can answer those questions respectfully and gently.

 

Here is a reading list to guide you, especially the bottom listing about apologetics.

 

http://www.rzim.org/recommended-reading/

 

 

His youtube channel may help you too.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/rzimmedia/videos

[albeto.]

Sorry, I meant reason in regards to the life of the church and how that faith is discussed and practiced, not faith itself. CoE has as it's 3-legged stool, reason, scripture and tradition.

 

What I'm saying is that I can't see how reason, as one of the three legs, exists within the framework of religion. The reasons you apply to stories like the creation myth are not religious reasons, they're based on knowledge; no faith required. An example of Christian reason might be something like, it's reasonable to conclude sin explains problematic behavior. What I'm suggesting is that it's not reasonable to make this conclusion. It's not reasonable because the basis of this premise rests on a claim accepted as true by virtue of believing its true (sin exists, and influences behavior).

 

In that vein if I were an atheist I'd likely be a humanist. Reasons good but I think I need some moral framework on top of it to reign it in.

 

You make it sound like atheism is morally equivalent to sociopathy. These are unrelated.

 

And yeah, I am NOT a Sam Harris fan so it hurt me deeply to discover he was hot. > :(

 

Aw. I hate when that happens. :(

[Mom-ninja.]

Could I ask another question?  How did you (meaning the general "you") decide what belief system (or non-belief system) was right for you?  Was it just a feeling?  Was it by process of elimination?  Was it cultural?  Was it because of history?  Or was it not really a decision?

 

 

I "decided" to finally stop denying that I'm atheist. Once I let go of all the what ifs and shed off the warnings of the cultural society I was raised in, I felt relief and peace. There's a long list of impressive atheists so I'm in good company.

 

 

 

 

I'd like to introduce you to Sam Harris, and Brian Cox.   

 

*swoon*

I love Sam Harris. I'm swooning with you. Off to check out Brian Cox.  I have a super crush on Gervais as well. He has the best laugh ever.

 

 

 

For some there isn't. My dh is an atheist and was when I married him, but he is constantly looking and searching. He doesn't find comfort living life through a secular lens. I love him so much and would honestly be okay if he was content in his disbelief, but he is not. So, he keeps searching. What keeps him searching? What keeps him hungering and hoping for something more?

His brain wiring keeps him searching. Humans are wired on a DNA level to want to believe and belong to some group, some idea that bonds either to real people or objects or real only in the mind. 

 

As a pp mentioned Michael Schermer's book is pretty good. There are many other books that are about the same.

[Guest]

For some there isn't. My dh is an atheist and was when I married him, but he is constantly looking and searching. He doesn't find comfort living life through a secular lens. I love him so much and would honestly be okay if he was content in his disbelief, but he is not. So, he keeps searching. What keeps him searching? What keeps him hungering and hoping for something more?

This is me, too. Not content to throw out the whole notion of faith, not content to identify as a Christian when I disbelieve nearly everything that is considered essential in that faith system. I am a Deist. That's really the truth of it. So why can't I just be satisfied that that's the end? It isn't hell. I have long since stopped believing in hell; I may not have ever really believed there was a hell to begin with.

 

For me, it's mostly social constructs. I don't want to be an atheist. The atheists I've known well enough to comment on are so angry and hostile and self-centered. I accept that that is anecdotal, but there it is. But, OTOH, when I listen to someone who is a Serious Believer - my mother, say - so many things out of their mouths sound patently absurd. I can't imagine how someone so intelligent can believe such things.

 

*sigh* It's a hard spot to be in, I think.