Green Oasis

I would like to draw a distinction between faith which I think helps us and superstition which I think harms us.

Faith helps us to move out into the impossible as Arthur C. Clarke put it. It allows us to transcend current knowledge in order to find new knowledge. It gives to artists their vision, to scientists their hunches and their hypotheses, and to activists their hope for a better future. Faith speculates based on current knowledge but cannot guarantee success. It allows us to move forward in the face of uncertainty. It expands our horizons.

Superstition, by contrast, has no solid basis in current knowledge. It may even be refuted by available evidence. It may even lie beyond the reach of future verification. It propagates through our ignorance and fear. It confers a false hope in the face of uncertainty. Superstition stultifies and prevents our future advancement.

I see prayer as a commonly practiced example of a superstition. We’ve attempted to verify the efficacy of prayer on behalf of others. It’s not clear that such prayer has any effect. The example that helped me to give up my own superstition was prayer for those with amputated limbs. No one has recovered a limb, whether they were prayed for or not, without the intervention of human medicine. If prayer were effective, why are amputees left out of God’s mercy?

From what I can tell, religious faith often amounts to little more than superstition.

I am grateful…

1. … that all the math that is involved in my current class is soaking in. I’ve finally learned how to study regularly.
2. … for the generous spirit that pervades the intertubes and leads us to share our knowledge with others. Case in point: Academic Earth.
3. … for the family-focused attitude that I learned from my own family, and yes, the Mormon church.
4. … for all the wonderful books out there, more than I’ll ever be able to read.
5. … to live without constant fear.

April 12, 2006

Releasing myself from what I thought I knew about God and Satan has empowered me.

I was taught to be in perpetual combat with my adversary, Satan. This colored my life and perceptions with a tone of crisis. Putting down my weapons of war has given me the calm, inner clarity to see that the evil that I do comes from within, not without. I have the power to direct my actions, not an immaterial tempter. I alone bear responsibility.

Releasing my hope for a life beyond what I can see has made this life more precious. I do not know whether I will live beyond my death or whether my consciousness is a function of the biological processes of my body. I can no longer see injustice and pain and excuse it in the hope that it will be rectified in an afterlife. My best hope is to improve the human situation today, now.

Strangely, Alma the Younger’s word have more meaning to me today than I can ever remember:

“Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.”

My heart swelled with peace and confidence when I finally accepted the evidence that has been before my eyes my entire life. Still there lingers some shame for being disloyal to the community that nurtured me. If anything, the Mormon faith has taught me virtuous principles and a loyalty to the truth above all else. For that I am grateful.

[It is true that I learned the importance of truth from Mormonism. However, the LDS church for all its talk about the truth has a stilted, awkward relationship with it. Where I learned to value the truth from Mormonism, I learned how to find it from scientists, skeptics, and freethinkers.]

[I recently came across some journal entries from 2006, shortly after the lightning struck and I had acknowledged to myself that I didn't believe in God. They open a window on my efforts to pick up the pieces and survey the new landscape. I'll post some of these entries as they are germane to this blog and may be of interest. More to come another day.]

April 1, 2006

I find that my new honesty to self has engendered a few consequences. My time here in life has become more dear. My heart has become more open. My passions more intense.

April 5, 2006

I have recently been experiencing a calm but profound change in perspective. The virtue of self-honesty has become increasingly apparent to me. I am now admitting to myself that I have never had a firm belief in God, the divinity of Jesus, the prophetic call of Joseph Smith, and so on. I have never experienced the power of the Holy Ghost as others seem to have done. I have always doubted.

Something held me back. Admitting that I was wrong or [deceived] threatened my tender ego. I was afraid of what it might mean if there were no God watching over us protectively. I held out the hope that I might someday feel that rebirth of spirit held out for the faithful.

That day of renewal never came. I remained the same person with all of the fears, shames, and troubles as I ever was. That changed sometime around when I took a yoga class at [the university]. I don’t remember now which came first, the class or the change, but a radical change began at about that time. I became more self-aware. My mind quieted. I shed some of my fears and began to see light for the first time in my life. That process has proceeded in fits and starts since that day.

Shame has begun to fall away, too. I allowed other men to dictate the workings of my conscience for too long. I have no other testimony for divine displeasure aside from the deranged, fearful state of my own mind. I see no evidence for a Fiendish tempter who delights in the destruction of men. The most I can say with any certainty is that evil arises in the hearts of men. Perhaps there is an evil influence out there, but it pales in my view when compared to the strength of the will of man. My worries about Satan [have] kept me in constant crisis since my childhood. Giving up belief in what appears to be a late creation of the Christian community has freed me from unnecessary guilt which weighs me down. I can go no further while looking back to Sodom.

I no longer take for granted that God exists. Some part of me still hopes that I am wrong, that this change is merely my divestiture of unworthy beliefs in order to be reborn, naked and infantile before God. I begin to feel some of my childlike newness return to me. I see with new eyes. I decide for myself what I hold to be true.

Some things other than hope are holding me back. The first nobler cause is that I have made vows and promises to my beloved Lacey. I fear that her heart would be broken if I revealed these innermost thoughts to her. Relatedly, I believe the Mormon faith to be excellent in teaching a man to find happiness and think critically. I want my children to be guided well, and don’t think they would find good guidance in the aimless secular world.

The other fear holding me back from a public avowal of my change of heart is my fear of how others would judge me. I politically hope to change my public positions slowly.

May God, if He exists and is favorably disposed toward me, guide me in this uncertain territory. If He doesn’t exist, may I find the faith and strength to follow the truth wherever it leads.

[It's interesting that I still felt like Mormonism encouraged critical thinking and happiness. If I'm fair, I believe that some aspects (e.g. clean living, frugality) may help some of us lead a happier life. I no longer believe that everyone will be happier on that path.]

“I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because I’m too worried about whether you like me.”—David Foster Wallace

This has been rattling around in my brain, a subject of subconscious meditation, bobbing to the surface of consciousness from time to time. Shyness as a kind of self-absorption.