By Degrees

I was a strident atheist for most of my life. Having grown up in a community quagmired in religion and all the fear and hate that so often accompanies unquestioned faith I found it impossible, unconscionable, even morally reprehensible to believe in the Judeo-Christian god.

When I was in University though, almost all of my electives were of a spiritual nature- Death & Concepts, Comparative Religions, the Psychology of Religion - because I wanted to understand why and how people could believe in these myths and, worse, allow such dogma to shape bigoted, small minded world views. These courses didn't change my atheist stance at the time, but they did make me see how these issues could be discussed intelligibly, and how religion need not preclude reason.

Still, University was a good three years behind me before I had the astonishing (to me) revelation that atheism required just as much faith as theism. This epiphany, at what was probably one of the darker points in my life for a lot of unrelated reasons, led me to the shift from atheism to agnosticism. And this shift, in turn, opened my mind, and my heart or soul or both, to some fascinating possibilities.

Since then, the more I learn about science-quantum physics, biology, human biology and evolution, the more convinced I become that, at the very least the world we inhabit, must be the result of some sort of intelligent design. We're actually at a point in scientific history where scientists are quite comfortable predicting our extinction and the rise of a new wave of hominid based on what we know about the past. (This will happen, by the way, based on a simple shifting of a skull bone known as the sphenoid, just as it has at every other point in our evolution). Once you can predict evolution it becomes difficult not to view it as something pre-programmed to move us forward, toward an inevitable and purposeful end. But what end?

That's where it starts getting good, and that is, I think where science, particularly quantum physics, will eventually lead us. Straight to the place where we'll find the great big mystery humans have given a million names and faces.

I feel silly now when I recall all the hours I spent vehemently arguing god does not exist, as I would if I had to admit I'd wasted so many evenings arguing against Santa Claus. What interests me now are the possibilities far more than the probabilities and I really can't wait until we discover just who, or what, is behind all this madness. I would love to know whose amusement it is, exactly, that I seem to have been placed here for. So far the only contribution I can make towards this identification is it seems to have a very twisted sense of humour and somedays the jokes seem to be disproportionately made at my expense.