What to believe?

My mentioning of 'His Dark Materials' reminded me of how angered Christian groups are about the books.

This brings me to my religious beliefs? Oh dear, how this has caused me so much trouble in my life. Atheist, Agnostic, Spiritualist (a close family member was even a medium), Christian, even Missionary, Preacher ... what do I believe now? I'm not saying much about that right now - I've got to have learnt something from experience.

What's so surprising is that people who know me who read this posting are likely convinced I fall into any one of the boxes above, except perhaps the Spiritualist one.

The problem is my timing ... it's not very good. As an example, when I lived in South Africa at about 18 years of age, I helped arrange a beauty competition. It was quite a success and in particular I arranged a date with a beautiful model. The date went well until she brought up her beliefs over dinner. She was on the journey to becoming a Christian and I was not, in fact I was pretty much an atheist ... needless to say we didn't have another date. However, a few months later and we would have got on so much better - my lousy timing! Our beliefs were out of kilter. I do hasten to add that about six months later I did meet my lovely wife ... that was superb timing :-)

This is the main problem I see with religious beliefs (or lack of them) is that it polarises us. The only time it doesn't is when we say we just don't know - good old agnostics! That said, I don't really subscribe to the view that religion has caused a great deal of woe in the world. We're essentially tribal and it doesn't matter what the banner is we sit under we'll still fight and bicker with all the other tribes. But it does seem to me that when we sit under a religious banner that the vast majority of people go on to lead good lives. So religion seems to be a good concept and whether you believe that that is how God intended it or whether evolution has brought us to this point something seems to be right about it. By the way, please don't be offended by the tribal analogy - I am referring to everybody including me as being tribal.

But back to my religious beliefs, as you must concede that this posting had started out as a bit of oblique navel gazing. There are many reasons why my spiritual journey has been so eventful and I have some rather interesting tales. Would I have chosen a different path? No, I don't think so - often these journeys are more about finding yourself than a religion or even God. It would be such a boring world if we all believed the same thing and despite what I said earlier it would be no fun arguing with a world of agnostics. I am very happy to say that I have used God/religion as a crutch through significant portions of my life and why would that ever be a problem? If you have a religious belief then I trusted in God, if not then I tapped into my inner strength - the fact is it worked/works ;-)

Next year I'm continuing to study astrophysics - the universe is truly a strange and awesome wonder. The more I glimpse (this is about all I can manage) of the strangeness of the quantum world, other dimensions and the universe, the more I sense a chasm in our understanding. To read only in the last week of the suggestion that the hole in the universe detected by radio astronomers in August is the imprint of another universe is amazing. Then to read the theory that the act of 'observing' this might have affected the future of our universe is pretty startling. This is the strangeness, that merely observing at a quantum level has an affect, that something can come out of nothing, that I'm even here writing this in the first place. It is as if, through us, the universe is trying to understand itself, remarkable. I didn't intend that to sound so ... 'cosmic', but it did and it is - I guess. Incidentally, I think 'studying astrophysics' is quite good timing - for a change! So much is going on in this field at the moment that we seem to be discovering new information almost monthly, the chasm's still there though, there just seems to be a lot to discover.

Anyway, I could ramble on all evening and I daresay I've been talking to myself. I hope I've cleared up one thing - don't assume you know what my beliefs are :-)