Logical certainty huh?
I have a different reference point that comes from direct experience. I had a personal experience of God and was acutely aware that all of creation need not exist at all - that God could have continued in BEING for all eternity. I had an interior illumination and understanding that all of creation including me existed only because it was THOUGHT and WILLED by God.
That experience of truth I know cannot be proven by science or logic. That is why I don’t think you have logical “certainty” as you claim to have. Logic in concert with scientific discovery cannot prove the truth that I experienced - it is a truth I know is at direct odds with your assertion of fact that “science and religion are incorrect.”
My experience tells me you are in for a HUGE surprise later on.
I was tempted to reply to your note with something snotty, like, “How nice for you.” My actual reply is, how wonderful that you have had such an internal revelation! I’ve not had such an internal experience.
I have had an experience, however, which is relevant to the way in which I think and the style through which I handle discourse. Many years ago as a devout Catholic student of physics in a secular university I was called upon by atheists to defend my beliefs. I failed to do so.
Why?
After 12 years of intense Catholic education I thought that I was prepared for every atheist, every philosopher that the secular world could throw against me. But my education did not prepare me for this question:
*Why did an omnipotent God create a planetfull of fools, jerks, pinheads, hypocrites, liars, thieves, and pretentious intellectuals? *
I could not answer that question at the time. I went to bed in my college dorm and stayed awake until about 4am, when I finally figured things out. Since then, I’ve been a believer in a different kind of Creator.
I cannot say that my personal experience was in any way akin to yours. I can only say that it was profound, and that it has affected my entire life. Since then my life has been about understanding the point and purpose of creation (in betwixt keeping a job to feed the kids, etc.)
I accept that I come across to people like yourself who have had a different kind or quality of internalization as “logical.” I’ve fed my kids by working in science and technology. If I wasn’t logical, they’d have starved. But that’s not an excuse; logic and reasoned analysis is what I try my best to do.
What I find it difficult to do is to convince people like you that you need the kind of thoughts my mind produces.
After all, I am not an atheist. After 20 years in the fields of astronomy, physics, and primitive microbiology, I believe that ours is a created universe. I’ve read Darwin, Charles— not the textbooks; and I believe in a created universe. I also believe in cold, hard logic and the laws of thermodynamics.
I believe in the validity of your internal experience, because you care to express it with force of feeling. But I know that neither your experience nor mine, nor those of the millions who have had extraordinary revelations about some aspects of the true nature of being, will stand in the way of the coming atheistic onslaught.
Logic will do that. And that’s my kind of job.
If you look into your own manner of thinking you will see that each new understanding is built upon prior knowledge. So it is with the entire human race. Suppose that space aliens had visited Judea at the time of Christ with a complete set of plans for building microchips and digital computers. Theyd have been laughed out of town.
Had space aliens wanted us to develop digital technology, they’d have been wise enough to introduce a few simple concepts, try to make them relevant to a primitive society, and get out of town before they’re stoned to death for heresy.
What if the truth behind creation is so awesome, so powerful, that the Jews of 30 A.D. could not possibly have understood or accepted it? The best that Christ could have done was exactly what he did— introduce ideas which were right enough to start a religious revolution, intending that revolution to lead to enough freedom of thought so that people can figure out what’s really going on— what the real purpose of the universe is.
People like me have a strange relationship to established religion. I came from within, and remain within. I’ll be attending midnight mass in a few days— but that’s the only religious service I will attend the entire year, except for those which I create within my own mind when I look out at the night sky, or inward at another human being, and marvel at the mind who created these things.
I am not your enemy, nor am I, or the handful of people like me, the enemies of our Creator. If there is a difference between us, it is in our choice of Bibles. Mine is the physical universe, certain to be the absolute word of its creator. Your Bible is the writings of human beings.
