the unveiling

I'm having...problems reconciling my changing worldview with my religious beliefs. I was an atheist for a long time, and then agnostic, then a theoretical discordian, and then I became abruptly an actual, theological Discordian after Eris beat the crap out of me. Well, a couple of things have happened since then. My scientific and philosophical pictures of the world are integrating and filling in. I wasn't particularly ill-informed or ill-educated in any manner before, but the pieces weren't fitting together. Now I'm facing all these separate beliefs and pieces and I'm finding that I have reflective equilibrium problems, and that something somewhere has to either integrate or go.

Perhaps some examples would be illustrative. Before, if you'd asked me my stance on the mind-brain problem, I'd have told you I was a believer in consciousness as an emergent property -- consciousness as some sort of magical thing that arose from the sheer complexity of the connections of the neurons. Now I don't hold so much stock with that -- I'm a materialist, and now I maintain that the theory of emergentism is due to a combination of poor understanding of the actual biological workings of the brain and body, and the awe of the utter coolness of the way it all comes together. This locks down all thought, consciousness, and BELIEF to attachment to physicality -- something that doesn't much accomodate a belief in actual, real, spiritual dieties that aren't attached to any physical form and yet can have effect on the physical plane. There's just a discontinuity there. I still think emergentism is a nice metaphor for explaining how all our modular connections can combine to make up a full picture of consciousness, but I don't much like the traditional emergentism anymore, and see it as little different from dualism.

Another example is that of evolution. I don't believe in any sort of intelligent design, and I believe in evolution in terms of a strictly random process combining natural selection and sexual selection in an attempt to adapt to the environment. I do think of our current status as the educated animal as a biological byproduct of evolution. Where's the room for dieties in that picture? Did our gods evolve with us? Since there are already problems with moderate emergentism (let alone extreme emergentism), it can't be that gods simply emerged along with our consciousness and are part of a collective consciousness. Since evolution is so strictly linked with physicalism, it can't be that they're just...nonphysical beings that have always been around and that like to tinker us now.

But faced with all that, I have a really hard time throwing out my religious beliefs, because I have serious problems finding scientific ways to explain some of the experiences that I've had. I don't know whether this is because my explanations are insufficient or what. It's puzzling as fuck. What further compounds my puzzlement is the fact that I don't necessarily link people's beliefs in religion with lack of education or understanding. Lots of very, very intelligent people with their heads placed firmly on their shoulders continue to be religious through some sort of self-integration that I just don't comprehend.

And some of you are on my friends list. If you have anything to add here...please do.

Hm.