I try to be careful with my own certainty about things; I like
to know what "way of thinking" is behind my way of thinking; I
like to challenge my own assumptions as much as i can; it's one
of the reasons why I like to debate hot topics such as science
and religion on occasion; by explaining what I'm thinking, I am
forced to research and "dig deep" into understanding what I
really believe. I don't think atheism is idiotic per se; but the
direction I've noticed it's been taking over the last few years,
is that it's becoming Evangelical; it's using the same
techniques used by Evangelical Christians; except instead of
pointing to the Bible, they point to other proofs that work as
their Bible. Look up "New Atheism" to get an idea of the
"thinking" behind their thinking. So yes, it is becoming a
religion in its own right; very dependent upon a set assumptions
that seem to "fall from the sky" (a priori is the phrase I
think) - and challenging others based on their history and logic
WITHOUT also challenging their OWN assumptions and looking into
their own history. I've been looking, probably since I was 8
years old and started questioning both the church I went to
(Methodist) and the school I went to; and saw things that were
wrong with it. Since that point, I've been trying to find a
"system of thinking" that matched up with how I already saw the
world. Very hard to do; I did a lot of religion hopping in my
20s, Buddhist, eastern Orthodox, Unitarian, Muslim, to try to
find truths; and I found many, but it wasn't "it" for me. In my
30s, I studied the sciences as heavily as I could; and I found a
lot of truths in the science too; in fact, much more than I did
in my religious quests. But still, something was missing. Yet I
noticed a thread tying them all together; I always had a strong
interest in Linguistics, Metaphors, Neuobiology and the concept
that we're our brain and our bodies and our environments -*
rather than just "computers in a meatbag"; When I discovered
Embodied Cognition, it "clicked" for me.* I wouldn't say that it
is the answer for everybody, but for me, it gave me a framework
from within which I can work from; In short, our way of thinking
works through a series of analogies built up upon other
analogies; "pure reason" is a nice idea; but doesn't reflect the
neural circuitry; - our emotional system always engages first
before we begin reasoning; making "reasoning without emotion"
physically not possible. We may not recognize the emotions as
emotions; but they are; certainty is an emotion, complete with
measuable levels of chemicals, parts of the brain being
activated during certainty. Also, I've been finding great
benefit in going through the history behind different ways of
thinking; I don't think any idea "fell from the sky" and is
automatically true simply because it "makes sense"; there's a
history behind the concepts; and travelling backwards through
time to find the sources really is eye opening to me..
