This blog is about belief.
Belief is something you just know. You just take that leap and you choose to know something to be true, even though it is not supported by any logic.
I've been thinking a lot about belief recently. Ever since i started my Master's degree (a year ago), i've been surrounded (at times suffocated) by science and scientists and the scientific method. In my mind, science and belief were never mutually exclusive. They are definitely not the same, and i might even argue that they are completely opposite ways of knowing. But they are not opposing ways of knowing; devotion to one doesn't mean devotion to the other is out of the question. I've always thought - and still do think - that science and belief could happily co-exist in a person. In fact, being an M.Sc. student seems to have shone light on something that i will now tentatively state: science and belief happily co-exist in me.
This is very tentative. Sometimes i waver in my "devotion" to science, sometimes in my "devotion" to belief. (Perhaps sometimes neither science nor belief exist in me.) As a science student, i question why we have to know so much and in such detail - why are scientists so obsessed with "discovering" and understanding every step of every mechanism in the world? Why can't we leave things alone, and appreciate the mystery?
As a student believer, i question whether there really is Something out there. Maybe there is nothing, and all mysteries have a logical explanation that will in time be revealed by its scientific discoverer. Are believers just fooling themselves into believing in Something, because without that, they are meaningless? Belief is generally fed by happenings in one's life - if one needs these tangible, observable things to believe, is it really belief?
Anyway, my point is that being amidst scientists has made me very aware of my belief. The thing is, scientists are typically non-believers. (This is stereotyping, but i am finding that there is truth to this stereotype.) Being constantly surrounded by non-believers this past year has made me realize that i am not a non-believer.
I hesitate to call myself a believer (and i also hesitate to call myself a scientist), but i do have an inkling of what it means to believe - to just know something without needing the logic behind it. And i do tend towards believing that there is something beyond the physical world which is beyond the realm of human understanding, but simplified... it Loves and wants us to love.
Or something like that.
I think i'll let this blog be a place for me to think about this. A refuge from the science i am expected to practice and output for the next year or so...
Comments/questions/concerns welcome.
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