Below is my latest Writs and Rants. I have also updated the About section. And finally, I will be leaving on my trip tomorrow, Monday, the 24th of August and will be starting my Travel Log. Stay tuned.
I’m reading Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World. From what I understand so far, the demons that he refers to are ignorance and an intrinsic habit of humans to place our desires and emotional interests above that of scientific scrutiny. This he states, is why we put so much faith in religious organizations, psychics, mystics and others who would profess salvation but are apparent charlatans.
I cannot disagree with what he is saying. I whole-heartedly agree with it actually. People are prone to line up and embrace what feels good as opposed to what is actually true. This is far from meaning that science holds all of the answers. He points this out clearly; that science is a growing body of knowledge and subject to intense scrutiny and criticism. But in the end scientific conclusions are ultimately testable and withstand the demands of inquisitive minds in search of truth while religion flounders under the pretense of ignorance and “sacred truths” that are not permissible to ever question.
What he is saying, I cannot deny is true. Religions worldwide play to their flocks’ willingness to blindly follow. Now, I take my glasses off when I read. I finished a chapter of this book, set it on the floor and looked up. I saw a blurry painting of Christ hanging on the wall in my mother’s house.
I’d say that almost immediately my eyes started to water. How can I reconcile this belief when there seems to be no consensus as to the actual doctrine of Christ? Even in my own faith there seems to be dissension, contradictions and other oddities that perplex the understanding. Is the truth complicated, or is it simple? Is it really just profess the name of Jesus and be saved? Is there nothing else? And if there is, why does it seem so obscure and difficult to find. What is actually true? It seems like if Christ were actually there it would be more apparent and less convoluted. It seems.
All of this secretly plays through my mind coming off of the recent disclosure and photographs of Joseph Smith’s Seer Stone, the odd egg shaped brown stone that he purportedly used while peering into a hat in order to translate the Book of Mormon. It’s stories like these that people scoff at. It’s things like these that make Joseph Smith a charlatan in the eyes of scientific scrutiny. Charlatan or not, the LDS Church is certainly an anomaly that has taken the world by storm. I’d like to present the argument that Smith couldn’t have lied and still had such an immense impact on the world as he did even a hundred years later, but alas, I’d defeat my own argument because lies are often times the most flourishing as we have seen. People love to believe what isn’t true. Falsities often make us feel good about ourselves even when we might obviously be in the wrong. Things that are easy flourish despite its sincerity. And perhaps in the future I’d argue that the LDS faith is anything but easy which makes it even more odd that it should continuing to grow as it is. But I refrain from this point at this time as I am not ready to defend it against a more informed reader. I am biding my time.
Now returning, I couldn’t easily make out the details of this painting of Christ because my glasses were on the floor. But I didn’t need to. The idea is simple yet deeply profound. Christ is the Savior of mankind. Even a blind person needn’t see anything to believe it. And if it is true than how important is it? But the problem remains, how do we probe the truth while steering clear of mystical nonsense and false prophets. One way could be to embrace science whole heartedly. However, to fully embrace science one acknowledges that there is a lot that he doesn’t know, but also he denies himself any avenues for faith to grow since this advocate only acknowledges what he can see. Yet there really is something to this whole faith thing despite what some have to say about it. I cannot deny that in the wake of those who exercise true faith there ripples a certain authority from where miracles spring. Yet all of this is fruitless from the eye of the cynic. It can all be reduced to neurological phenomenon and statistics. The light at the end of the tunnel certainly is no divine presence beckoning us home. And certainly it is merely a statistical probability that a person every once and awhile should escape a fiery car wreck unscathed. Any divine intervention in an infinite universe can always be reduced to mere coincidence and phenomena of the mind.
There is no way around it though. I state that most of us, if not all of us are biased. How can I believe without acknowledging my own bias toward my upbringing in the church? Is it true? If it is surely there would be nothing more important. But if it isn’t than I suppose it doesn’t really matter one way or the other but the fact that I was fooled still would break my heart along with millions of others. The fact that I might be playing into the hands of a charlatan does concern me, but this is the point that I want to make. This is not a frivolous concern. This is not me blindly paying tithes to an organization in hopes that my money will save my soul. This is not me participating in an organization for the social acceptance in a predominantly Mormon culture. In fact I have to strive to recognize on a deeper level than is apparent to me that the social element of the church is to promote a comradery of all people in order to strengthen character and faith. Their social activities and ideals in general fly in the face of my own disposition to anti-social inclinations. But through it all I am trying to say that this concern of whether it is true or not resides at the core of who I am. It is incredibly important to me to get to the root of all of this, untangle the mess that has been generated by ignorance, lazy justifications, the spread and promotion of disinformation and sometimes an all out revile for the truth as I know sadly resides in the minds of some. I am not certain as to the most efficient way to go about this, but I intend to find out what is ultimately true.
As I often times do, and to indulge in a bit of metaphor, I’d ask what the root would be that I previously mentioned? Perhaps it is Christ, but what is Christ surrounded by? Dirt, rocks, worms, other root systems and garbage, fossils and all sorts of things that come into our reality and obscure what actually might be true to the point where simple concepts are terribly distorted.
What are the demons that haunt our world? It is true that it is ignorance and it is true that it is bias. However if I am held to be ignorant in my conviction of Christ and what He represents to me, than I truly don’t know what to say any further other than paradoxically, my conviction compels me to seek out the truth in its entirety in any manner as I can and this is why I hold the scientific method in high esteem. The universe is infinite. I don’t have faith in this concept, it is just true. Even if there is an edge to our universe there is still more out there, endlessly. Though this next premise cannot be proven as of yet, I live my life under the notion that consciousness is fundamental to the underpinnings of reality. I believe this for a reason I simply cannot explain at this time and don’t ask anyone else to blindly hold this view. But this means to me that life continues on endlessly. There is no scientific study on this to prove it as factual, but this is how I live my life. It is simply this way to me. And openly, this belief could stem from my own neurological experiences, from my grandiose, bipolar and schizophrenic thoughts flooding through my head but if there is anything that endows a person with peace, and if peace is any indicator of the truth than perhaps I’m on to something. Either that or it is all just a sad illusion or delusion spawned from an ill, uninformed mind. There is no doubt that it could be. But I’m pretty damn sure that it’s not.
Even with my glasses off, a blurry picture of Christ certainly doesn’t resemble a blurry picture of ignorance or the demons that haunt our world. Maybe some can twist the two into some demonic amalgam of error and exaltation. Certainly this happens often. But I don’t want to twist anything. Give it to me straight doc and exorcise these demons from my soul. I don’t care how painful it is. Just let it be done that I might now the truth. I don’t know how to reconcile a belief with direct observation without succumbing to the appearance of personal preference, or subjective biases, or at least differentiating these beliefs which might be true with others’ beliefs that might not be true or vice versa. But in my depths I wrestle with this daily. I hope and pray. I study this world and listen to what others have to say. I try my best to learn, to love and to live. What else can I do? And what else is there to do in order for real knowledge to flourish?
In the end, though difficult to understand, though difficult to reconcile, and difficult to separate from the realms of myth and folklore, Christ, from the very center, the very deepest, from the coldest most overlooked corners of my being urges me to continually examine every faculty of me existence, as, if it is true, His Atonement certainly surges through more than what is immediately apparent or pressing upon my consciousness on any given day. Christ quietly impresses upon my mind daily the desire to press forward in fervent search of greater understanding. I love Him, for in my feeble state I would be truly lost if there were no open arms patiently waiting to bring my sin filled body back home into eternal splendor and learning. But how can it be? There is so much room for doubt, criticism. I do not know how to answer all of the questions pertaining to God, Christ, and the LDS Church. But this is where I choose to stand. This is where I have made my home in light of everything that I have search out. There is nothing more I can say at this time. Let it be.
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Demons find there home in the unexamined fissures of the heart. They are comfortable in them as they, ethereal, conform easily to fit in the weak parts of our spirit. As they set up camp they wreak havoc in the sporadic firings of our mind slowly leading us into ever thickening mists. Perhaps some are trained in a sort of demonic priesthood, but in defense of those poor demons who are simply broken hearted, I’d say that their only homes are in us, and as water gravitates toward the deepest valleys, they merely by natural law are drawn toward and fill our hearts. Some might call this possession. This is why we can command them with the authority of Christ to depart even as his authority can move the mountains, but surely even Christ loves them as he reproves their natural inclinations.