SCIENCE PHOBIA

[chad]

While discussing the detials of my de-conversion with my girlfriend, she

took special interest in the deppressive episodes I suffered from

afterwards--depressed because Atheism compelled me to relinquish the

psychological security-blankets of faith. Since she was raised within the

deep-rooted tradition of latino Catholocism and eventually rejected it as a

teenager, she also ocasionally struggled with the negative probabilities of

Atheism--particularly the notion that an all-loving, all-powerful heavenly

father held her life and the entire world in His nurturing embrace.

However, she maintained a generalized faith in some sort of "spiritual

force" that, in the very least, attempted to benevolently guide the course

of her life. So her emotional burden was not as heavy as mine...or so it

would seem anyway.

 

 

 

Similar to the analytical temperament that was a catalyst to my apostasy,

she would periodically experience an intense philosophical craving to seek

and know the most profound existiential truths (i.e. all the who's, what's,

when's, how's, and why's of her own and the cosmos' origins). But she

feared that indulging these cravings would beget the tragic conclusion that

the insensitivities of science possessed a monopoly on such answers, thereby

crushing the soothing effects of her spiritualized world-view. In a tone of

anger and despair, while shedding tears, she exclaimed, "can anything be

spiritual anymore...does science have to explain everything."

 

 

 

Shocked by the depth of her anguish, I realized at that moment, more

pointedly than ever before, that religion is truly a crutch; which solicited

a new sense of compassion. Compassion for those utterly repulsive Bible

thumpers. After all, underneath their deleterious drive for political power

and puritanical tyranny, evangelistic crusades to terrorize and convert

souls though guilt and condemnation, arrogant exclusivity, and plain Oll

"stick up your ass" syndrom lies an acute, science-phobia--that science will

brutally plunder their only source of coping with this big, bad

world...faith.

[Vigile]

I remember going through a time of greif over the fact that I would not live forever as I had always assumed. 12 years later I still admit I don't very much like that fact. You just deal with it.

 

Welcome to the board Chad.

[chefranden]

Hi Chad,

 

Even as a spiritually blind meat head that couldn't see a spirit even as a raving born again street preacher, I have much sympathy for your GF's tears. Our culture was disconnected from "the ground of being" 10,000 years or so ago when it got its start. Remember, "stay away from those fucking filthy high places."

 

I'm thinking, at the moment, that Science is the logical extention of that mind set. It would be difficult to rape Momma Earth if you loved her. Better to think of her as a lie of Satan. Even better to think of her as a cold dead rock. -- Better for raping that is.

 

Don't mind me I'm the resident government certified crazy guy.

 

chef

[sonofspong]

Hell, I still get the chills when something bad happens. Before, I always had the comfort that my all loving sky buddy was gonna make everything better in the end, and my current anguish was nothing more than one of God's mysterious plans.

 

Of course nowadays, I realize theres no one there to catch me when I fall: everything I do, every descision I make, is all up to me.

 

Being a sheep is indeed easier.

[chefranden]

an interesting quote from Joseph Campbell that probably fits the context:

 

"For those in whom a logical mythology still works, there is an experienced both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe.  For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work -- or, if working, produced deviant effects -- there follows inevitably a sense of both disassociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for 'meaning.'"  Joseph Campbell