Faith

I was hesitant to title my post, Faith. It's such a loaded word and yet it's quite innocent - it's really personal, I think. It's personal whether or not you have it and when you have it, it's personal about what it is in. Religions seem to take that part of the personal out of faith - the part about what it is faith in. I think they are inextricably linked - to have it, you have to figure out what you have it in - I don't really see how you could have it before you knew what you had it in. I suppose that's why I haven't had it...until recently. Maybe that's where the concepts of finding and losing your faith come from. I guess, then, I could say that I recently found something to have faith in.

The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary has a definition of faith that I suppose I'd agree with: "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." By that definition, it feels contradictory to the purpose of a scientist - which is to not believe in something that has no proof. Well, I suppose that's not even true! In science, the concept of "proof" is mathematical. Scientists, when pressed, will never say that they've "proved" anything - they will say that they have dis-proven all the other thus far conceived hypotheses/explanations. Well, that's what I'd say as a scientist. [An aside - I just wondered if mathematicians were scientists - and I realized that the very reason some philosophers do not consider mathematics a science is because it cannot be falsified (or disproven).] In any case, that might be why there's room for a scientist to have faith: if you have disproven something, it can no longer be true, but just because you haven't "proven" it doesn't mean it couldn't be true. Therefore, something that has not been disproven is open for the possibility of being true. (I think I just made a logical reason for having faith!) Sweet. [Another aside - there's also a book on the "...Biological Basis of Faith..." - interesting, though, that the full title is: Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality. I think I may just have to buy that book...]

Anyway, that actually makes me feel a lot more comfortable with what I'm feeling lately - a strong faith in an explanation of both the physical universe that follows the laws of nature as discovered by science and math - particularly math - and which also explains more phenomena of our universe/existence than anything that has ever been explained previously by science or religion.  It would be the biggest paradigm shift to explain our reality since Einstein's two theories of relativity which completely blew the lid off our understanding of space and time ("spacetime"). Well, I'm still coming into the formation of what this new theory is, but I know it's there - that's the thing, the explanation is not firm in my head but with all the information/data that I know is out there in science and human experience and religion, I think we can come to a much more complete explanation/theory for some experiences that people have had for millennia! And also...maybe we could get rid of some of the shit that's been really fucking up our world for the past 2+ millennia. Well..I know that's not going to happen! Not everybody's into logical reasoning!

Oh...the other part of my personal faith is even more personal than what I was implying above about incorporating all of these different pieces of information and knowledge...this part is about those souls that I know who have died - particularly my sister,  Jodi,  and my good friend, Abby. Their deaths were untimely and I was close to them, but not the closest. I've mentioned them in several previous posts. My faith in anything non-material or that which has not been "proven" by not being dis-proven, has almost everything to do with these people that I knew and loved that died. Essentially, prior to their deaths I had no concept of what could happen at and after death - I basically believed in what I call the "null hypothesis".

The null hypothesis is the "default" hypothesis which, in science, usually refers to a question of whether or not there's a significant difference between two things - the null hypothesis being that there is not a significant difference. But again, as pointed out in the Wikipedia-linked article, that doesn't mean that there is definitely no difference - just that there isn't enough evidence to provide a significant difference. For me, in reference to death and after death, the "null hypothesis" is that all of our cells, molecules, atoms and energy that comprise us break-down and are recycled into the earth, the atmosphere and space, then other living creatures eat them and use them to build more atoms, molecules, cells, etc. And what happens to our "souls" or consciousness? Well, this is the sad part of the "null hypothesis" - it would be that we do not have "souls" and our consciousness is what forms from the make-up of our neural networks in our central nervous systems (brain & spinal cord) and once those are done and gone, so is our consciousness and thus it is also recycled into the earth, atmosphere and space. I believe this "null hypothesis" is probably what Richard Dawkins subscribes to in his book, The God Delusion. This is merely a projection because I have not read his book. From reading the Wikipedia page about it (linked), I think the book may be more of a rebuttal to religious dogma than to a real investigation into what may actually explain what we could call our "souls" and what happens to them when we die. I'm not personally interested in trying to argue with particularly dogmatic people, especially in either religion or scientific atheism. I don't think there is a point in trying to have a debate about two different things that hold the concept of "facts" and "evidence" on two very different value systems. Religion has nothing to do with "evidence" - that's the point of "faith" that I wrote about above. Science, however, is based entirely on evidence and being able to test hypotheses. So we're talking apples and oranges and yet they both attempt to explain many of the same things. Maybe it's time to stop fighting and just start accepting which is better at which - for instance, science is better at explaining everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and can predict in this material existence. Religion, spirituality and some human experiences are better at describing potential explanations for everything that cannot be explained by science. There - can't we all just get along if we accept those premises??

Ah..yeah, the other part is that we're imperfect human beings and the answer to that is no, we cannot all get along because we are all at different places in our development of acceptance, knowledge, understanding, compassion, etc. Then again, the fighting/killing is no good - it's still worth trying to get along! This reminds me of one of my favorite songs by XTC - "Dear God".

Anyway, I'm not going to attempt to explain this revelation I had and what it has led me to really "believe" about life/death/the universe(s)/consciousness/souls/etc....at least not in this post. I want to share the outline/skeleton of my profound discovery, but it will take up at least an entire post just for that. However, the point or thesis of this post is that I have found something to have faith in that is affecting me quite a bit these days - I think it's connected to my "personal growth" lately as I've been dealing with my love addiction and co-dependency issues. In fact, I'm beginning to see the link between faith and dealing with addictions - everyone knows the strong link between Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and faith. I've known about the success of AA for years and yet I have never really understood why it's been so successful! Honestly, I think the 12 steps were written really quite poorly. Just putting that out there - they read rather redundantly and extremely ambiguously. I've been to one AA meeting as a guest and a few Al-Anon meetings to test drive it and always left feeling like really? That works? But yes, it does...so I knew there was something I was missing from my understanding of the process. Now I'm beginning to understand. The faith is a huge part of its success.