(no subject)
Of all the discrepancies I see in my life, none is as great as that of my secular, rational, atheist perspective and my intuitive sense of peace. It seems that no matter which western religion you consider they all claim that there is no peace without god. Now whether or not they claim exclusive peace with their exclusive gods I'll never really know, but they all seem to make the same claim. I find myself experiencing the same kind of peace I did when I was religious, but without the sense of guilt that was attached to it. If I am to be as objective as I was in searching for answers to the inconsistencies I saw in religion, I must admit that there is this sense of someone still watching over me, some entity still guiding me - and I feel like I would be doing it a great disservice by ignoring or dismissing it. I sense a great deal of patience with and interest in me, genuine concern over my well-being. I don't know what it is but it's as real to me as anything I see. If my epistemological position is that I can't know who is right and who is wrong and thereby default to no theism whatsoever, it would be unfair of me to ignore my experiences. Part of me wants to once again consider that all of this is a mental fiction, but another part of me just screams that these experiences are so much bigger than I am. I don't know, maybe there really is a god. That seems to be the only sensible position to take, because if I am on a path to truth, I cannot really in good sense readily dismiss some things. If I do I may very well be missing out on the path to the truth. And that is what ultimately matters to me, and what I am ultimately searching for: truth, in whatever form it exists. It seems to me that I only have two tools by which I can discern truth, and they are reason and experience. I cannot exclusively cling to one at the expense of the other, and so I must find some way for them to be harmonious with one another. I don't believe they can by nature be so contradictory to each other, so I suppose a good way to measure real truth is to recognize when my reason and my experience both tell me the same thing, both lead me to the same answer. Therein lies not the truth but the means by which to recognize it, for truth exists independent of us. One might even argue that truth governs us, and if it does, I want to know it so I can embrace it and serve it.