I believe in God. I could attempt to prove and justify and convince you to believe the same, but it would be a wasted effort. My belief is subjective to my cognitive and emotional experiences. Call my faith blind if you please. I am not blind to what I feel. A major misconception of the Christian faith is that its goal is to unify the world’s beliefs with its own. In Christianity, there are many denominations, some more “strict” than others. There are Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Assemblies, Protestants, Lutherans, Adventists and each group’s bible, beliefs, morals, values, and practices vary. But these are all just labels. I realize the problem concerning accepting supernaturalism in that there are infinite possibilities, and theories that we cannot understand fully or prove because they aren’t a part of the common physical and scientific world. I for some reason, however, cannot comprehend specifically why so many religious believers want to prove the validity of their beliefs.
One (especially a naturalist) may be surprised to learn that labeling myself as a Christian is not the core of my being or purpose or search. I wouldn’t call myself a Christian if there were a better word to describe my lifestyle. I believe in God, yes. I believe in creationism, yes. I believe that the Bible is a good guide to moral and ethic values, yes. Do I hold it to be concrete? No. Do I force my beliefs upon anyone? No. Some would call me a bad Christian because I am not spreading God’s word but I truly believe that spirituality of any sort should be personal. It should beyond subjective; it should be inexplicable. I mean this in the best sense, but I don’t care what you believe as long as you let me live according to my faith. As I said, I am a Christian. But I am a Christian who believes in karma like Buddha did. I am a believer in karma who holds science and tangible evidence close when considering the reality of now. I believe there are natural limits and some supernatural experiences are only subjective and impossible beyond our minds. I am a believer in science who meditates and prays. I believe, as Empedocles did, in the capability of such forces as Love and Strife to alter a person’s life without a person knowing. I believe, like the Native Americans that nature is sacred. I believe in basic human rights. I believe that culture greatly influences worldviews, as does childhood, status, time, and gender. My path is no path and I don’t know how to label it; I don’t think I should have to. I simply want to know ‘who’ and ‘why’ and ‘how’. My search is the same as everyone else’s. I believe, as a student pointed out in class today, that “the world as I experience it is as it is beyond my experience of it.” I believe that the only person I can trust is myself and the only experiences and evidence I can rely on is my own. I don’t want to justify my beliefs because I know I have reason to keep them. I don’t want unify naturalism and supernaturalism or any spiritual notion. My mind is a canvas and I’ll consider painting with your colors if you give me good enough reason. If some of my views aren’t normally associated others, so be it.
Perhaps, thinking as a radical constructivist, we create our own truths and instead of believing what we see, we instead see what we believe. I do not deny the existence of the common and roughly similar experience of the natural world that we all encounter. I am merely suggesting that epistemology and worldviews WITHOUT justification (while still maintaining an openness to change and variety) might very well be an effective way towards peaceful coexistence.
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