At age 16, when I questioned an ordained cleric on religious doctrines I was told that I should simply accept the beliefs without question. But I could not reconcile what they expected me to believe from the Bible with what I was actually reading. That began a lifelong review of world religions and my rejection of religion as a source of truth. I am not an atheist or an Agnostic, but religions were not giving me the answers I sought that my scientific and spiritual mind wanted. My innate concept of God was nothing like what the religions said. I was spiritual, but what I knew innately didn’t match what the cold, hard, facts of science kept telling me either. Spirituality and Science seemed mutually exclusive, so I kept them separate for much of my life.
Open Minded means to listen to new information without judgement, then to discern the validity of the argument based on logical rational and also perhaps a trusting intuition. Why do we fear new ideas, even when they advance the knowledge of the field in view? For instance, a central tenet and sacred cow in Biology is Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection known popularly as Evolution. When I taught Evolution in a class, inevitably I would get Fundamentalist Christian students come see me to debate that reality. They would always bring their Bibles and tell me why I was wrong. Curiously, they could never show me in the Bible where it actually said evolution was wrong. Naturally they would go way disappointed they hadn’t convinced me of their truth. My biology colleagues would laugh and just accept it as another win for science. Yet reading Darwin’s notes shows he had concerns about his own conclusions – he didn’t think they would apply across the board so to speak. As I studied the sciences at school and then college, I accepted what I was told as known knowledge, but I always had questions of those sciences that could never be answered – we didn’t know enough. After high school I had to drop biology in favor of math, physics, chemistry and engineering – very precise and mechanistic sciences. When I took up biology and biochemistry after 4 years away, the electron microscope had opened up a whole world of things that were now visible. What were once cells as circular bags with squiggly things in them were now seen as highly complex organelles with more complex structures within them. But still my questions of science went unanswered.
I was a shy nerd as a child, although school never worked for me. I craved knowledge but I am a big picture person and classes always kept doing reductionist and compartmentalized learning with a focus on what I should know. For my work within the academic world of science I of course always read within the accepted boundaries of what was acceptable, but outside that world I was always reading esoteric and occult (meaning hidden) material beyond the boundaries. A lot of junk yes, but a lot of stuff that was fascinating and even verifiable!! Gnosticism revealed so much. I read science fiction and science fantasy. I even read encyclopedia’s for fun. I tell you this here to emphasize that I was always dreaming outside the box even though I was socially constrained with it. Having a foot on both sides of the box walls allows you to see different perspectives about the universe. To have a voice outside the accepted science or religious doctrines can invite ridicule and harsh blind skepticism, but the truth is out there as the show ‘X-Files’ always stated each week. Remove the blinders and see what is all around. The world, the universe, do not work the way we have been led to believe. I’ll go down the Health branch of the rabbit hole next.
0 Comments