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Notes -
For other Christians on here, or seriously religious people, how do you handle the paradox of belief? I was talking to a friend today about my recent experience joining an Orthodox Christian church, and it's just so interesting. The 'logical' part of my brain relentlessly attacks what it sees as the foolishness of religion, ritual and sacrament.
And yet, when I partake and do my best to take it seriously, I feel healed. The spiritual water that Christ talks about in the Bible slakes my thirst. It's almost impossible to conceptualize, but damn it I've tried so many different ways to heal my inner wounds throughout my life, and this one works better than anything, by far.
How do you make sense of a serious religious practice, while keeping the ability to be seriously rational?
I have precisely the opposite problem. Basically an atheist with respect to a personal, interventionist God, but trying to incorporate some sort of progress-oriented spirituality in my life to mixed success. I’ve experimented with New Agey concepts like the Law of Attraction, but it’s difficult to fully embody them when I know they’re fundamentally psychological tricks without any metaphysical underpinning.
If I understand your troubles correctly, I would strongly recommend you checking out John Vervaeke. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto (by the way exactly as Jordan Peterson) and he developed very attractive philosophical framework, trying to combine cognitive science, ancient Greek philosophy and Buddhist teachings. He presents his ideas in the youtube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. I was under huge impression of the consistency and orginality of his thoughts. The whole thing strongly verges on spirituality and he explicitly states that he is trying to develop a 'Religion of no religion'. Usually I consider such attempts to be doomed to failure, but this was interesting even for me, a devout Catholic. Considering his religious affiliation I would label him a modern-day atheist, though he calls himself a Buddhist (in one of the episodes he argues that he doesn't find eternal life to be a good idea).
Interesting, earlier this year I did watch some of his interview with Bernardo Kastrup, one of my favorite modern philosophers, on the Theories of Everything Podcast but it didn't particularly stick with me. The series you linked sounds interesting, I'll give it a shot. Though I'm generally skeptical that a search for meaning is necessary or desirable. But I am coming from a more Buddhist nihilist perspective meaning is mostly a cope for dissatisfaction caused by misdirected attention. I didn't realize Vervaeke himself is a Buddhist, so if he still makes the case for finding meaning I'm open to hearing it.
I will second that, his lectures as well as Jordan Peterson's actually helped lead me back to the Church.
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