Decisions and Power: the Intellectual and the Intuitive

I believe what I do about life because I feel that it is true.

Automatically, in the culture I live in, this statement is regarded with suspicion at best. Most people I've talked to are looking for proof, whether it be through sacred texts, historical context, the sciences, or philosophical argumentation. It is important to note, however, that with proof comes a natural imperative on the part of whoever something is proven to.

That is, if I prove to you that my beliefs are true, you have an imperative to agree with me or live in willful ignorance. I say that gravity is true, I drop a box, and use that as evidence that it is true. For you to say it is not true is regarded as stupid. This analogy, however, is interesting for two reasons.

Firstly, when I give evidence of gravity, I am showing you its' effects. Gravity itself is a theory, an explanation for a consistent pull of objects toward the center of our planet. For me to say "no, gravity isn't something I believe in" would not make me fly off into space, because reality is consistent despite our beliefs.

Secondly, to enter into discourse is much more intelligent than to agree or disagree. Perhaps you have a different explanation for why a box falls when it is dropped, or perhaps you wish for the terms to be redefined or you think that on some level, the standard understanding of gravity is flawed.

So either way, when making assertions about reality, you are in a position of power, and if people have other inclinations, then they enter into a power struggle with you. Ideally, if your allegiance is to the truth as opposed to being correct all the time, you are willing to back off if proof is offered otherwise.

The problem, however, is that proof only goes as far as our senses and our knowledge go. This is why our understand of reality continues to evolve as we as a species evolve. Yet still, we cannot explain things like consciousness and miraculous occurrences and a lot about our universe. These things have implications for how we understand all of life.

As incomplete beings, humans fill in the blanks where proof is lacking with their own experiences and personality. This is natural, and can lead to beneficial and detrimental consequences. One's culture, experiences, emotions, flaws and places they excel are all a part of this, as is one's biology and family.

In a way, philosophy is just as much about one's intellect as it is about one's experience and feeling. If a person doesn't understand themselves or the source of their feelings, then their philosophy may be filled with all sorts of unwarranted cynicism, reductionism, or it might be full of empty ideals.

In the same way, if people understand very little, then their philosophy will be full of inaccuracy and assumption. Ego makes this worse.

So you end up with people making absurd factual declarations or becoming anti-intellectual, and people choosing to ignore any aspect of life that isn't analytical. The problem is, since every person is human, they are a fusion, on some level, of these aspects of life.

Whether intuition and feelings are products of brain chemistry and instinct or an indication of higher reality (or both), they exist and have to be dealt with. Whether the universe is a naturally occurring phenomenon or a created existence, it exists and has to be dealt with. On a practical level, this means that we feel and we think. To ignore one is to ignore part of what it means to be human.

I find Christianity to align with something I feel to be true about reality. That is, that the best way is one of reconciliation, respect, love, and value of everything around me. Obviously, I have to sort through a hell of a lot of baggage to even make that statement in the first place, because Christianity means so many things that its' definition has begun to break down. I also believe that part of being a Christian is listening to the beliefs of everyone around you with respect, and allowing for the possibility of being wrong. If someone says my religion is a moral failure or some tenants of it (such as the existence of God) are wrong, I need to take that seriously and look at those things. I believe I do this well.

However, I must also always look at the evidence around me as well. This is why, once I began to really question things, I realized that a lot of the talk about scientific theories like evolution and abiogenesis at my religious schools was not founded in reality. One must always pay attention when reality interrupts your religious thoughts, and one must always investigate deeply before throwing out something you feel is true.

Sometimes a feeling is a product of a simple emotion and can be valued as such without needing to blindly believe religious tenants. Sometimes a fact is a product of simple observation and can be valued as such without needing to blindly accept it without a full explanation.

Both of these things have been and will be used to hold power over others. I encourage you, never settle for this. Investigate for yourself, think and feel for yourself, listen to others and really consider what they say, and make your own decisions.

The Beginning: Fear, Hell, and Deterministic Philosophy

Disclaimer: Writing about this section of my life has brought back a lot of memories and emotions. Indeed, I contemplated deleting this entire post and creating a summary of it for my upcoming college experiences post. However, I think this part of the story is beneficial, and I stand by it, despite being not proud of a lot of the person I was.

Like all stories, this one has a beginning. This is the closest thing my fragile memory can deliver to that beginning.

I was raised in Conservative Evangelical Christian subculture. I said the Sinner's Prayer at age 7 because I was afraid of burning in hell because of a sermon from the Fundamental Independent Baptist Church I went to at the time. For those not aware, the Sinner's Prayer is a fundamental admission of guilt to God and accepting of Salvation in a prayer. Some believe God hears no prayers of anyone until the Sinner's Prayer. My understanding of reality at that time was that I was probably going to die at any moment, and if I didn't say this prayer, I would suffer for eternity, and there would be no way to stop it.

I vaguely remember having a few thoughts after that experience, such as wondering why God would do such a thing, what made me such a terrible person, and wondering what hell was like and why it existed. I even had a dream about hell once. I thought I was in heaven, and then I discovered that this beautiful celestial (stereotypical) heaven was not what I thought it was and that I was actually in hell, at which point I was thrown into a void and ceased to exist.

The thoughts of a child are powerful, illogical, and often-times they shape who they are. For me though, this was only the beginning.

Besides this underlying fear, I don't remember a huge amount of my life before age 15. I remember having friends in elementary school, moving schools in the 7th grade, and then moving states from North Carolina to Georgia in the 9th grade. Note that all of these schools were Private Christian Institutions, and I'd moved from a more Fundamentalist institution to a standard Southern Baptist one in the 7th grade. I then went to a standard Evangelical high school. I figured I'd be the popular and happy person I was in my new school.

I was totally wrong. I could not have been more wrong. I spent the first week of high school being made fun of and made to feel like an outsider. I didn't dress correctly, I didn't fit in, most of the teachers were angry about one thing or another, and I generally came to believe I was scum and no one liked me. I came home after the first week crying saying I hated it, but for one reason or another I stuck it out. I had one good friend in the 9th grade (who is still one of my best friends to this day), and the rest were either acquaintances, tormentors, or didn't care that I existed. The only other exception to this is someone I met in the 10th grade who strongly influenced me, who I will get to in a moment.

We were required to go to Chapel every Wednesday at this school. One Wednesday after my 15th birthday a guest speaker came and gave a message about hell and encouraged fear. He called himself prophetic, and was accusatory and derogatory in every sense of the word. I was once again seized by fear, thinking my decision was not genuine enough when I was 7 years old, that I didn't understand enough and didn't know enough to really be saved. So he gave an altar call and I performed. I gave an emotional display and prayed to be saved. People were happy for me. He came back when I was in the 12th grade and gave the exact same message and I thought he was an emotionally manipulative jerk. But I digress.

Nothing really changed for me that first year. I hung out with my one friend a lot, and he eventually left the school, along with a lot of others. I made another friend in the 10th grade, and he challenged me over the next several years in every possible way. The rest of my high school experience was basically meaningless, as it was an endless attempt to deal with not fitting in. I became involved in a few music scenes, got very angry, and expressed that a lot by acting out, as a teenage boy who doesn't know his place is prone to do. My parents are incredible for putting up with me, especially the "I will listen to hate-filled angry music all the time and be a jerk to everyone" stage.

As you can imagine, with all of these circumstances and changes going on my theology and purely emotional religious convictions changed a good bit. I became Reformed and believed in 7 point Calvinism, having been inspired to do so by one of my teachers. For those who don't really understand what 7 point Calvinism, it is the TULIP anagram with two extra clarifications. Total Depravity - man is incapable of any moral or spiritual good and is completely broken. Unconditional Election - people are chosen by God according to His good pleasure to be part of the elect. Limited Atonement - Christ's sacrifice on the cross paid only for the elect's sins. Irresistible Grace - the elect will choose to be saved and cannot resist doing so. Perseverance of the Saints - once you are elect, you will persevere to the end and cannot possibly fall away. Double Predestination - God predestines all who are not elect for Hell, and they have no choice in the matter. Best of all Possible Worlds - God's absolute sovereignty over history is exercised to display his glory to the fullest, and he governs every detail to this end.

I believe the craziest moment of all of this was arguing in front of my class that babies go to hell if they die because of original sin, predestination, and their lack of saying the sinner's prayer. If you're not horrified by that, I can still feel plenty of horror over it for you. At the time, it made perfect sense because of God's sovereignty. I had a very deep problem with people in general at that time, so I did not care if anyone hated me for my beliefs or thought I was terrible, citing that "true Christians" are persecuted.

I was basically reformed until I graduated from high school. During this time, I'd had a falling out with the friend I met in the 10th grade, but we became friends again after I graduated. He had gotten into some things I could not agree with, and we kind of went opposite directions. However, once we began associating again, we started a Bible Study group about the fundamentals of Christian faith. Prooftexting the Bible, we talked about who God is and some of the core beliefs, seeking to educate people. I then went to my first college and discovered it was not what I wanted to do, and left after one semester.

At this point we restarted the Bible Study, but with an entirely different tone, one that I feel really changed my direction from where I had been religiously. I recall the exact moment of this change vividly, because my friend was the first person to ever tell me that the Bible is not inerrant.

As you can imagine, I argued with him immediately. My religious world not only had its' foundation kicked out from under it once I realized he was right, but everything else crashed down, got set on fire, and I was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what was going on. I was then even more angry and did a total 180 right before attending another Christian institution. Readers may be forced to ask at this point...do I ever learn? The hard way, always. My college time is a whole other post, and I will talk about the shift my personal philosophy and religion took in that post as well.

So, to sum this up. For the first 19 years or so of my life, I was intensely afraid and often felt alone, angry, or both. The exceptions to this were my family (always) and the one really good friend I met when I first went to high school. This time was full of thinking about hell and God's wrath and sovereignty over all things. I went from one church to another, but essentially the core of my beliefs was centered around these things. I don't see it as a coincidence that I was Reformed in high school, as it was a method of not only rebelling, but also of trying to hold onto something solid (God's sovereignty) in a time when I didn't know what to do and felt powerless. In retrospect, it didn't help that much.

Upon initially drafting this post, I began to talk about why I disagree with Reformed Theology and Determinism. I don't find that to be a helpful direction to go at this point (if you would like me to talk about this, please say so in the comments). I didn't make the decision to be Reformed for any logical reason. I did so out of a need to rebel because I was afraid. This tone of fear in my life would continue until it was addressed, but what I find interesting is that my philosophy became one that made everyone powerless. Just as I was powerless to stop the injustice I faced on a daily basis, I decided everyone else is powerless too. I clung to the God of vengeance and anger and when I was treated unfairly, I believed that God would get revenge on them for it and that they also could not stop it. One might accurately observe at this point that my God was really myself, and I was plotting deterministic vengeance, using theology as my grounds.

Determinism. The view that choices, actions, and events are a natural and inevitable result of an initial cause. Theologically, God is the initial cause, and all choices and all of history are illusionary and destined from the beginning of time. Psychologically, a person is who they are due to their first 3-5 years of their life, and can be no one else.

In contrast to this view, I believe that a person is shaped continually by their view of truth, just as much as they shape it. Our actions are not determined by our initial experiences, but by our continual interaction with life and the choices we make in it. One could probably argue that my high school experience made a lot of sense in light of my initial experiences with religion, but I would hope that you the reader do not think this as you continue to read this series. That's your call though.

Regardless, my view of truth in high school made me a very angry person, and I imagine that while a lot of my problems were due to ignorance and the atmosphere I was surrounded with, I believe that I caused just as many of them with my divisive beliefs and my hateful attitude. When my beliefs came crashing down after high school, it was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. I was free from needing to justify myself to anyone, and I was able to move beyond the foundational philosophical framework of Conservative Evangelicalism and explore some other beliefs.

I would come back to my origins as I moved onto college, but suffice it to say, it was apparent to me at this point that I had learned more in spite of my experience with religion than through it. If only I had known what would come next...

A Prologue: The Groundwork of a Story

It is my intention to share with you, my readers, a bit of my life over the next few weeks. I have a few reasons for doing this.

I believe that Philosophy and who a person is are inescapably linked. We create from our experiences, and I think it's a good idea to be transparent to be a good writer. I have always intended to provoke thought on this blog, to have it be a place for me to be a Philosopher above all else.

A lot of people I've talked to tend to fall on two different sides of things. They are either atheistic or they are very religious. In the process of doing something as simple as check the weather for my area tonight for details on tornado warnings, I saw a debate about religion being started. On weather.com. This is relevant to all.

Religious experience is a key part of who I am, but so is unyielding allegiance to the truth, whether that be scientific, philosophical, religious or any other method. I've never fallen into any camp very easily, and I like that about myself. I'd like to think that people are a lot more than just these belief systems too.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this is to help me figure out what's going on with my beliefs. To that end, I appreciate input and discussions conducted in a respectful manner. Please, feel free to respond to what you read here. I am at a crossroads in my beliefs at the moment, and this is one of the methods I choose to explore that crossroads and figure out what's going on.

To that end, here is my understanding of a few terms just so we're all on the same page.

Religion. There are a few kinds of religion, in my understanding. The modern common understanding of what religion is is an institution designed to communicate dogma and doctrine about cosmological, theological, and metaphysical truth. The religious institution I have most interacted has been the Protestant Christian Institution, stemming from the Roman Catholic Church and the early Christian movement being formed in the first several centuries by the early Church councils. I'll have more to say on this as I continue.

This definition is not what I mean when I say I am religious. Through my experiences and personal development I have come to reject and dissociate myself from the Protestant Church as an institution. This is not to say that I do not have a similar or the same faith as some within this movement/institution, but I do not fall within the bounds of this particular institution.

When I talk about being religious, what I mean is that my experiences have lead me to believe that there is something more than what my base senses tell me about the physical world. I am this way because of and in reaction to how I was raised, and through various explorations, still seek to understand what I feel about the universe. I believe I am not alone in feeling this way, and that the Protestant sensibility of "just reading the Bible" is inadequate to understanding this, as the thousands of contradictory denominations of protestantism show.

I also believe that religion, in some fashion, is relevant to any person, even if they are not religious in any way. This is due to it being so ingrained within culture and due to religion being about things that anyone can have a conversation about, whether they are all true or not.

Philosophy. Put simply, Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Philosophy is a currently dead discipline for seeking an often intellectual understanding of the nature of reality. I say it is dead because it has come to the end of itself in Nihilism, the system brought forth by the revolutionary Nietzsche as the logical progression of Modern thought. Philosophy is also dead in current Western culture, as it is viewed as merely an "academic" exercise with little practical uses.

Every person has a philosophy, even if it's something as simple as "have fun and live for the moment," or "Love, and do what you will." In this sense, philosophy is an approach to life, what some have called a worldview. When we think of it this way, philosophy's groundwork is a combination of morality and epistemology. Morality is the philosophy of what is good and bad, involving intention, action, and belief. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and its' origins.

Philosophy is part of how I am as well, for several reasons which should become apparent through these writings.

Science. I hesitate to offer definitions on areas that I am not extremely well versed in, but this is also relevant to what I have to say. Science is a method for understanding more about the universe by hypothesizing, testing and theorizing. Scientific theory is the groundwork for our empirical understanding of the universe. Some popular theories are the theory of gravity, atomic theory, string theory, thermodynamics, evolution, relativity, and cell theory. Science is rationalistic by nature, seeking an understandable explanation for observable phenomena.

This is relevant to what I am writing about because I do not believe that science is in opposition to religion at all. Obviously, there is history of these two "forces" being in conflict. The most easily illustrated example of this is Galileo's Copernican astronomical theory coming into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church's Aristotelian assertions. Obviously, Galileo turned out to be correct about this, despite being censored by the church.

The problem with Rome's approach to this matter is threefold, in my opinion. Firstly, they were treading on ground they did not need to tread on. One can be a scientist and be religious, but both should be sought with objectivity to the best of one's ability, subject to correction by what is real. Secondly, Rome sought to impose their will upon a person speaking truth to the best of their ability. They did this not with contradicting evidence, but with imperative dogma. Science is a different realm than religion in this sense, though in the West that fact is unclear at best. Lastly, Rome lacked belief in the progress of understanding of the universe. This is problematic because the Church by its' nature is supposed to be concerned with truth.

It is important to note that I am not attempting to attack the Roman Catholic Church here, but facts are facts. I do not believe science, religion, and philosophy create anything more than a delightfully dissonant tension when brought together because they are all concerned with one thing. Ideally, all of these forces and the people involved with them seek truth.

Mysticism. This last definition is probably the most relevant to where I am currently. Mysticism is awareness and experience of states of consciousness beyond normal human perception. More than the religious are fascinated by this, which is why people enjoy horror stories and movies, and certain paranormal fiction. Some argue that a "spiritual" sense of things comes from our instincts that we are still aware of, and some argue that it is evidence of another reality. Obviously, no one's going to win this argument, since we are discussing something without scientific proof at this point.

Mysticism, I believe, is a way of embracing mystery. One need not have special esoteric knowledge or be initiated into certain rites in order to be a mystic. In fact, if we are to posit that mystical experience is experiencing another level of reality, then this necessarily means that peoples' experiences are not disconnected, but merely aspects of a singular thing.

Mysticism is also one of the scariest things to write about, and I do so humbly, recognizing that a lot of people will probably think I've lost it. Perhaps they are correct. More on this later. For now, this all leads to one conclusion.

I believe in God. The reasoning for this can be seen above. I think that religion, philosophy, science, and mysticism all add up to there being something more, a personality behind and within the universe. Please understand that I have never made an argument for the existence of God, as I think any such argument is merely a logical progression from an initial presupposition. This is merely my reasoning and intuition at work.

Faith. Faith is a process by which one's experience points in a direction, and you move there with all of the tools at your disposal. Faith is not evidence in the scientific understanding of the word, it is much closer to hope. This is the process I have gone through, and am still going through in life with regards to many many things.

I have been told to "just have faith" when asking questions about religion, as if my questions betrayed my lack thereof. This is a serious misunderstanding of faith, similar to the understanding that says atheists have more faith than the religious. What is being spoken about here is a presupposition. When we frame statements like "just have faith" or "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" in this light, we come upon a discovery that these are in actuality just condescending statements.

"Just have [my] presuppositions."

"I don't have enough [of their] presuppositions to be an atheist."

I would like to take this opportunity to distance myself as far as possible from this, as any person has a right to their own presuppositions and thoughts about reality. I will say no more about this, lest I begin to truly rant.

At this point, I've made several assertions and defined several things, as well as given several opinions and probably showed some of my irritation and bitterness, and hopefully some of my drive to move forward. I now wish to look back at some of the ways I've been influenced by institutions, people, and movements. Feedback is welcome. I'll have another update for you next week, if not sooner.