Hey Rabid Atheist!

I’m glad that in the infinite wisdom possessed by your otherwise rather finite, rational mind, you’ve managed to establish – in a universe that’s estimated to be 13.7 billion years old and 550,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across – the absolute non-existence of a grand awareness that one might try to give a name, if even a simple one, like “god”. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I am however, a little unsettled by your unerring certainty, given the fact that you’re probably attempting to stake your claim on scientific grounds, and given that since just a few decades before man’s first powered flight about a hundred years ago, science has gone through at least two profound paradigm shifts, literally inverting many aspects of scientific understanding. But keep at it. Man’s reasoning has always served us well, hasn’t it? Okay. I confess I think you’re a numb-nut for being so unaware of what your little human mind is incapable of comprehending, but more power to you. It is indeed a little scary to try and think about things that exist beyond thought.

Hey Religious Zealot!

I’m glad you attend your place of worship as often as possible. Every day that you’re there is one less day that you’re out in the world fomenting hate while proclaiming your compassionate nature and generally telling the rest of us how to live based on your bizarre interpretation of the 2,000 year old documents you use to justify your behavior. By the way, if you’re one of those inflamed nutcases that thinks they have the inside scoop on the official date for the end of the world, I’d recommend you take a moment to talk to the Atheist mentioned above. They probably have some solid reference materials to bring you up to speed. I mean, you’re not exactly breaking new ground on that one; in fact you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a list of your predecessors. Ah hell. I’ll even help you. Here’s a list of 63 of them, spanning almost 2,000 years.

And What About Me?

Clearly, I embrace the fruits of science, technology, and rational thought; without them, I wouldn’t be able to type these little thoughts into a computer and transmit them over the Internet so that your computer can reassemble the electrons into text that is at least as coherent as I was able to make it at the time that I typed it. However, it’s this very fascination with the knowledge that science has opened our eyes to that helps me conclude that there may be something more than what we understand through this very system of perception. In fact, it’s my awareness of the amazing balance of chaos and apparent order revealed by science, combined with many personal synchronistic and numinous events that leaves me with a profound feeling that there is a greater awareness surrounding me, something that my limited tactile, visual, olfactory and auditory perception and limited neural activity and reasoning may never be able to process into something that can be expressed as a scientific concept, or oddly – for the same reason – a spiritual belief that I will try to foist off on someone else as the definitive answer to the meaning and purpose of life. I can sense it though, this awareness. I can feel it in moments of connectedness with nature, people, or even technology. Without it, my life would have almost no meaning, and I feel badly for those who find no mystery in existence, regardless of whether they got there through closed-minded rationality, or closed-minded faith.

I’d love to hear the point of view of anyone who proclaims complete confidence in either their faith, or their rationality. Both extremes leave me befuddled.