Thanks for this, Verified. With all these spiritual posts, I've been meaning to write about my own atheist beliefs but haven't had time. I must say that I feel some reluctance to broadcast my atheism, though. Not that anyone at dag would judge me, but with my real name attached to the post, I worry that some potential readers of my books might. Also, it could create problems when I run for president. I might have to get born-again before I announce my candidacy.

Good.

Is there a God or are there gods?

Does God interfere directly with humans?

I am an agnostic; I do not know.

However, if Gohmert ever becomes Speaker or even head of a House Committee, I will be assured that there is NO GOD! At least one who gives a damn about us humans.

Very interesting piece VA for a number of reasons, but particularly because of its sincerity and the lack of even a hint of disrespect for those who may think otherwise. Nice work.

And have someone fix your formatting, because you have the mike now.

VA, your post prompted a memoir which I have put up over in Creative in which I loosely refer to some things you described, especially comments about "once having been a Christian". Further thinking is required and run up against certain of my avoidance habits. In the meantime, thanks, and keep the faith---I think.

The Bacterial Flagellum and the Divine Design

An Intelligent Creator who designed.

Is God Real? The Bacterial Flagellum and the Divine Design

 When we see something we recognize as an irreducibly complex micro-motor, resembling other motors designed by intelligent beings, the most reasonable inference is the existence of an intelligent micro-motor designer. Is God real? He is the one Intelligent Designer capable of creating the bacterial flagellum, and He is still the most reasonable inference.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity and ALIVE

http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-god-real-are-the-laws-of-logic-simply-human-conventions/

The Tyson lecture is interesting. The limits of ignorance discussion reminds me of Anselm wondering how we conceive of what is greater than what we can conceive.

The mention of "evolutionary algorithms" makes me think you have read Daniel Dennett. His approach rejects the kind of duality that would express whether "supernatural events" are possible or not. His objections to the Intelligent Design group are mostly on the basis of rejecting of what they claim to be mutually exclusive. He turns the same weapon against strict materialists that isolate causes as strictly the outcome of specific processes. His refusal to join either party has allowed him to develop interesting models of networking that cut across many lines of inquiry.

A variation on the "Buddhism Without Beliefs" point of view was expressed by Zhuangzi:

When Qu Bo-yu was in his sixtieth year, his views became changed in the course of it. He had never before done anything but consider the views which he held to be right, but now he came to condemn them as wrong; he did not know that what he now called right was not what for fifty-nine years he had been calling wrong. All things have the life (which we know), but we do not see its root; they have their goings forth, but we do not know the door by which they depart. Men all honour that which lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but they do not know their dependence on what lies without that sphere which would be their (true ) knowledge: may we not call their case one of great perplexity? Ah! Ah! there is no escaping from this dilemma. So it is! So it is!

Knowing and not knowing about the dependency described could be heard as expressing a kind of faith. But the expression wouldn't work as a creed that could draw a bold line between sides.

I think you're making light of a serious difference in how people use words, in this case, "belief." Words are important, it's how we communicate, and how they're used, definition, connotations, etc. are meaningful. When I use belief in discussions of spirituality it's more like a scientist uses "hypothesis." Some questions are beyond having an actual belief, there's only more likely and less likely hypotheses. Some questions are even beyond hypothesis. They're too big and there's too little evidence to even make an educated guess. When some very religious people say they believe in god it's like I use it when I'm saying, "Based on the voltage drop over this component I believe it's resistance has degraded and it's the problem with your tv set."

I pondered a lot on how to address this post, or even whether I could. At a certain point in this discussion one must discuss examples and experiences. Those experiences are deeply personal to me and I'm reluctant to post them in a public forum.  I've decided to share one.

I carry a pipe, a chanupa, in the Lakota tradition. Once at a Rainbow Gathering wandering around I met a friend who had created a women's space. She was preparing to leave and doing some closing ceremonies. She had come to sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies with me before and asked me to share my chanupa as part of her closing ceremonies. I agreed.

As I sat down waiting for everyone to gather a large blue butterfly landed on my hand. I thought nothing of it. Butterflies land on people sometimes when they are sitting still. When everyone arrived I gently tried to push the butterfly off my hand. I expected it to fly away as soon as my finger got close but it didn't. I pushed it and it hung onto my hand and resisted my gentle push.

So I proceeded with the ceremony. I unwrapped my pipe, put the pipe together, gave some explanations and passed it around for each person to pray. Than  I lighted it. I held the pipe bowl in my left hand with the butterfly still sitting on it, and a lighter in my right. As some may know when lighting a pipe there are unburnt gases that cause the flame to spike a bit. Two inches from  the flame sat this butterfly. As I puffed and took a breath the flame was drawn into the pipe and flashed upward several times. I passed the pipe around and when it returned to me I finished smoking what ever tobacco was left. This all took over 30 minutes probably close to an hour. I then separated the pipe from the pipe stem. As I separated the pipe the butterfly flew away.

If the butterfly was drinking the sweat off my skin I'd have been less surprised. But there was no extended proboscis. If this was the only time something like this had happened it would be less likely to sway my thinking. But during my exploration of what can best be described as mysticism, I've had more than a dozen such experiences. Coincidences build up into what Jung called sychronicities. Supernatural or not?

You can say statistical anomaly or that there will always be some rare events at the extremes of the bell curve. I am a skeptic, a scientist of sorts with a degree in electronics, and I don't accept "supernatural" events easily. But at a certain point after many "weird" experiences I couldn't accept any conventional science based explanation. It just seems to me that the world is bigger and more complex than science will acknowledge. And I think that's appropriate. Science probably isn't meant to study these things, in fact it's hard for me to see how they could. They aren't measurable or repeatable. But that doesn't mean the world of spirituality is not worth study.

I don't put god in that spot. I don't even have a hypothesis as to the cause. I just know that when one seriously practices mystical spirituality the universe seems to cooperate in ways I can only define as supernatural.

I wasn't looking for such experiences. I didn't want or need them. I didn't even want to carry a chanupa. All I wanted with my study of Lakota spirituality was to pour water in sweat lodges. I found the experience of a sweat lodge very powerful and intense. I found "hippy" and New Age sweat lodges to be often weak and trivial. I liked the more traditional lodges. I went Lakota land to study with NA elders simply for that reason.

While I mostly agree with your post it's insufficient to explain the world I've experienced. Like I said, it depends on how you define supernatural.