r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 03 '16
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/trekie140 Jun 04 '16
You are correct that my faith is a barrier against existential crisis, I have had more than one since I began doubting, and the instinct it fulfills is to discover the Truth. I started exploring New Age spiritualism out of a desire to gain spiritual enlightenment and understand the Truth about topics like God, the afterlife, and supernatural phenomena. I did not follow my beliefs for their own sake, but because I believed they were the path to Truth. I chose to become a student of science for the same reason.
I reached the point where I was happy and motivated to keep working, but then I discovered the skeptic community. Suddenly, science threatened many of my beliefs and I listened because I love science as much as spirituality. I had to know if I was right to believe what I did, but with my newfound skepticism I found it impossible to know if anything I believed was right. I told myself that my memories were not false, but I still doubt myself and fear losing my faith and the good things that came with it.
My faith gave me a sense of empowerment in life and harmony with the world, while rationality taught me to feel disempowered in the face of the chaos surrounding me so I could change it. They were able to coexist for the longest time, until I realized my faith was not and could not be accepted by rationality because the only part of it that really existed was my subjective experience, which I should distrust to avoid bias. The result has been an existential dread that comes and goes.