Here's a response my brother sent after
my post last week:
~~~
I just read your post, and it sounds
like you're really passionate about the intelligent design debate.
I'm excited for you, but honestly, that debate doesn't spark anything
for me.
There were a few points where I went
"Nooo! He's missing the point!" and a couple others where I
thought, "Woah, that's powerful and interesting," but I'm
okay with not knowing the answer to the question, "Why are we
here?"
I'm more interested in things that are
personal. I want to hear the emotional basis of an
argument--otherwise I'm not sure why I should care. What have these
thoughts meant for your everyday life recently? How have your
discoveries uncovered beauty and joy?
But what I'm really interested in is
your story!! You've never told me, nor shared a written story with me
about your journey from atheism to Christianity. It seems like you
might be ashamed of it, which I can understand because [we both had
an ex-Christian upbringing and you think] I want to judge you for it.
I just want to know you better.
So, I'm very excited that you're
putting your story in your next book, and I hope to be able to read
it before it's released! Good luck with your writing, and don't be
afraid of showing a little emotion in it--you're not a philosopher
anymore, you don't have to abide by their rules!
~~~
I've received several reactions to my
post, most positive. This one, though also very positive, was one of
the more critical ones, and I took three important things away from
it. First, it confirms for me that the personal part of what I want
to say, the part that comes from the heart, that tells the emotional
details of my journey, is indispensable. My last post, I realize,
neglected this, and did much more to introduce my intellectual
philosophy than my personal story. Second, it brought out a
misconception that I should have expected, a perception that my
reticence to share is based on shame. In fact I am not at all ashamed
of my story! I'm eager to share it; it is just difficult to explain.
Finally, it emphasizes the importance of talking about how my faith
has transformed my day-to-day life. Much of this is private, for
reasons of modesty, but not all of it has to be, and it's important
for non-theists to understand how much joy a relationship with God
can bring.
My response is below. A few
too-personal parts were removed for this public version, but it is
still very personal.
~~~
The story of how I went from atheism to
Christianity is not a short one. It extends from my experience as a
senior in college, to my realizations just over a year ago, with
several stages along the way. I'm interested to know what parts of
the story you most want to understand. I'm definitely not ashamed of
it. If anything the source of my reticence has been my struggle with
pride, as I'll try to describe.
I'm writing this out of a desire to
communicate these things to you, especially on an emotional level, as
you asked about. It will help me, I'm thinking, if I can try to give
an overview of the story, and then you can ask for elaboration on the
parts that you find most puzzling or interesting. I know this is sort
of a long email, but it'll be shorter than sending you even just the
personal chapters of my book, which have grown to about 100 pages,
and will probably be close to 200 by the time I've finished this
draft.
When I was a senior in college (2004),
I had my first mystical experience, a vision of God, what I should
call my "epiphany." In certain ways it was the most
powerful of my experiences. Before that I was basically agnostic,
though I called myself atheist because I leaned that way. Since that
experience I have known that a personal God exists, with only very
brief periods of doubt.
It's hard to summarize my epiphany,
especially in terms of emotions. But I'll try.
Prior to it, I was all over the place,
mood-wise. The initial euphoria of going to Caltech had worn off,
especially as I had realized that the quest to unify General
Relativity and Quantum Mechanisms (also known as the search for the
Theory of Everything) was not something they were really preparing me
for, nor was I the best equipped to undertake it (there were much
better physicists around), nor was it what I really wanted out of
life. So I think my predominant mood, from 2001-2003, was one of mild
depression. In short, my pride had been crushed. I stuck with physics
because it was the most "prestigious," I was good enough at
it, and it still seemed the most philosophical of sciences.
It was also depressing because I didn't
have much of a love life. The gender ratio was 2:1 and there just
weren't many dating opportunities.
What little free time I had I spent
largely either drinking with friends or in the library. [...]
I started to get into poetry,
philosophy, literature, and "complexity science."
Complexity science is the attempt to take mathematical methods from
physics and use them to understand complex systems like human
society, evolution, or ecosystems. Chaos theory has been a notable
success in this direction. Famous scientists like Stuart Kauffman and
Stephen Wolfram were claiming that they were on track to discovering
a unified "Theory of Complexity," a kind of physics you
could apply to any system. Most scientists thought (and still think)
they are a bit crazy, but I thought it was fascinating what they had
achieved, and I even took a few classes on it offered by a couple of
the more daring professors on campus.
I know maybe this all sounds cerebral
and impersonal, but I guess to be honest I take theories and
abstractions very personally. This was even more true back then. And
in truth I somehow stumbled on a very heady combination of ideas and
friends that started leading down a wildly mystical path. In 2003 I
started getting high with some of my friends while talking about deep
things. This started the whole experience snowballing, and my
ceaseless contemplations eventually led to swinging moods, racing
thoughts, and what the doctors called a "manic episode."
Though, to begin with, it wasn't really
a manic episode, because it was very isolated. Before and since then
I've only had a few experiences anything like it, and that's not at
all how a truly manic psychosis is supposed to work.
It was a mentally and spiritually
chaotic time for me, prior to the epiphany. It was definitely a
breakdown. I would not recommend the path of mysticism I took in
those years to anyone else. As I see it, it was God who rescued me
from total annihilation. It was only when the love of God shone
through and brought peace and reverence -- that is, holy fear -- back
into my soul that I began to rebuild my mind from its shattered
pieces. So if somebody wants to claim that my vision of God was a
kind of pipe-dream, merely the product of a fevered imagination, I
must firmly disagree. Sure, I had many fevered visions in those days,
but that this vision of Eternity rescued my mind from total chaos was
a miracle of the most profound sort that I will always be grateful
for. I don't think anything short of God could have accomplished the
turn-around I experienced.
If you want to know more details about
that experience, let me know. In the book I'm working on I have
several more pages on this, and I'm happy to elaborate as much as you
want. It was a personal experience, sure, and very "triggering"
for years, but at this point in my life I've faced down the demons I
encountered back then, and I don't mind talking about it, not in the
least. But for now I guess I'll move on so I can finish my overview.
The next phase of my life, as I said,
was theistic, but I kept delving into Nietzscheanism and I guess I
still toyed with a kind of materialistic relativism. My mental and
spiritual life, though less chaotic than before, was quite a mess. I
was on medication, went to counseling, and as you know developed
certain personal relationships that I'm not proud of.
Not that a lot of other grad students
in philosophy weren't pretty much in the same boat. Modern philosophy
is very different from ancient philosophy; now they tout it as a form
of tradition-destruction, and as I see it now, this kind of wanton
spiritual demolition leads nowhere fruitful. But I guess I'm
digressing.
I was pretty much back to being mildly
depressed most of the time, 2004-2009. It's hard to be diagnosed with
bipolar disorder, doctors telling you you have a 30% chance of
careening into a permanent mania of racing thoughts and some mixed
state of black mania that almost always ends in suicide. Anxiety and
fear was a part of my day-to-day for years. I figured I would be on
anti-psychotic medication the rest of my life, and that this was
better than the alternative.
And these were no "happy pills"
I was taking either. High doses of Seroquel, despite what they tell
you, never get easier to take. What happens after you take your
pill--always at night--is that you start feeling a pressure on your
chest, and then your sinuses and your windpipe start to contract (at
least that what it feels like) and it starts seeming like you've got
cotton balls stuffed in the front of your brain. Your thoughts stop
cohering and become a muddle of sharp impressions that last for a
second, then are absorbed back into the cottonballs. I'm struggling
to describe it but the point is it's horrible. You keep hoping that
your leaden, dreamless sleep will begin so you can wake up in the
morning and think again. The inability to string together reasons
will sometimes lead to severe anxiety attacks, heart pounding like it
is going to explode, and for those there was no cure but to get out
of bed and pace. Around midnight or later, the medication would
mercifully wear off enough so that I could read Aristotle to help
bore me back to sleep, and actually have some dreams. Generally I
would sleep 9.5 hours a night, any less and I would be too groggy to
function. The hangovers from Seroquel were unremittingly bad, but
having a nightmare while on it was probably the most terrifying part.
My doctors kept telling me to increase
the dosage, but I kept trying to titrate it down. But after trapping
down I would have a round of flashback nightmares that they claimed
would act as "triggers" and I would have to increase the
dosage again. I hated this cycle but I held on to at least a sliver
of hope that my case would prove different and I would eventually get
off meds and be cured of my psychosis. Technically, psychoses are
supposed to be incurable. This would lead to the second major miracle
of my life, in 2009, when I discovered the power of prayer and got
off my medication.
Most importantly, between 2004 and
2009, the root of my spiritual sickness remained, with almost as much
strength as before. As a physicist I had wanted to find the Theory of
Everything, and then the Theory of Complexity. As a philosopher I
wanted to be the next Great Philosopher. My pride and arrogance were
largely untouched--they had just found new targets. What I find
amazing is that while everyone around me, and most books and articles
I read, and even my favorite philosopher--Nietzsche--only encouraged
this aim of being The Wisest, God was subtly growing a more humble
part of myself, a part that really just wanted to know the truth.
Darwinism wanted me to put a theory out there that would spread, to
create ideas that would be "fit" and replicate themselves
super well. But then, somehow, a humbler part of myself knew that
even on Darwinian assumptions, only a sincere love of truth, of
finding the truth and expressing the truth, would lead to anything
that lasted. And I came to realize too, as I read the ancient
philosophers whose ideas had survived so long, that the most eternal
ideas didn't belong to the men who wrote them down at all, but were
really just a part of Eternity. If eternal ideas belonged to anyone
at all, it was God.
It impressed me that the ancients
realized this, that in fact ancient philosophy (what had survived)
was most interested in virtue and what it means to live a moral,
good, and just life. This is what Socrates spent all his time
thinking about -- the man that to this day is still considered the
greatest philosopher! The man who said he only knew that he did not
know. And what is also fascinating reading the ancient Greek
philosophers is that they often spoke of God and striving to join Him
after death. This from sages in a culture that believed in many gods
and had no real notion of heaven. But Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and
other great polytheistic philosophers came to these eternal ideas
through pure reason.
It gave me hope and comfort to find
this. Modern philosophy, it seemed to me, was mostly pointless
technicalities. I've talked about this on my blog and I elaborate in
the current draft of my book. But you know what I mean. Academia is
largely dry, overly specialized, and too career-oriented. It rarely
gets back to the real ancient questions of virtue, not even in
philosophy departments.
It was during this time that I
conceived of the argument I give in Progress Debunked. Seeing that
philosophy hadn't progressed since ancient times, and had in fact
regressed in some ways, and that science was doing little to address
what really matters in life, I came to question the whole modern idea
that more modern is better. This is important for my story because
all of the connected ideas I started to have-- the value of family,
the value of tradition, the value of morality-- all of these "more
conservative" ideas I would find elaborated on and explained in
detail in the Bible. Rejecting modern "liberal" ideas,
going back to tradition, I found myself primed to hear what the Bible
was trying to say, what religion is really--at least in its better
moments--all about.
By 2009, I had read the Bible all the
way through, as well as other religious texts like the Bhagavad Gita
and parts of the Qur’an. I know there's this picture in modern
society of what these books say, that they're judgmental and
threatening and full of hellfire. But I found out that if you read
them with an open mind you will find a great deal of comfort and
courage in them. The Bible isn't one long argument for why you should
go to church. [...] What it does have is a commandment to rest on
Sundays. I love that commandment. It's brought me, like I said,
comfort and not fear. In fact I found that as I started to follow the
Ten Commandments more closely in my life, that my freedom actually
increased by leaps and bounds. Like the rules of logic, the laws of
God actually open doors.
Late 2009 was one of my more
transformative periods. I knew I needed tradition in my life, and I
knew I needed religion of some kind. My skepticism of modernism had
extended to psychology itself, and I wanted to get out of the whole
mental health system, which had started to seem more like a prison.
So, as I said, as I started to try to live by the word of God,
suddenly doors opened up. My nightmares started going away, replaced
by revelatory dreams that helped me understand my relationship to God
better. (I talk about these on my blog, and in my new book to an
extent.) I started praying, my dosages went way down,
eventually to zero, and I even had my bipolar diagnosis reversed by a
professional. (So officially, I never was bipolar to begin with.)
Soon after this I met Emily. My desire for a family seemed to really
excite her and this has led to the wonderful life I enjoy now.
I realize that none of this should have
been possible. It was a miracle. All it took was that "mustard
seed" of faith I had in God, as Jesus talked about. And since
that time, even though for years I prayed without really knowing
whether God literally answered prayers, or if it was just good for
you "psychologically," my faith has slowly grown. Meeting
Emily was a miracle too. We both believe this. We'd both dated random
people for years and met no one even close to the right one. Life is
too complex, the human experience is full of too much chaos, for
there not to be a Divine hand helping it along. I have been blessed
in my life, and I am very grateful for it, in fact I don't think I
deserve it at all. It was purely God's grace, as Paul speaks about in
his letters. It was out of my darkest times that God lifted me. It
was not by any power that I possess. And if anything I write now
makes people wiser or touches them, I know it is not by my own power
that such wisdom reaches them. I know that I am only an instrument.
If I had been left to my own devices I would have become some
Nietzschean monster, logically demanding everyone to bow to my
superior reason, leading them all to nowhere in particular. Now I
realize that the only worthy goal, the only worthwhile guide, is the
infinite goodness, love, and mercy of God.
I know I've skipped ahead a bit here.
Again, 2009 was another key moment in my journey. The next period was
my "philosophical Christian" years, from 2010 to late 2018.
During this time I believed in a personal God, and I believed in
aspiring to the kind of virtue taught in the Bible, but paradoxically
I was not convinced that things like miracles could happen. You would
think that my experiences would have been enough, but they were not.
I was still so steeped in rational skepticism that I could not bring
myself to believe that, for example, Moses had really parted the Red
Sea. How I finally have come to believe this, I have been trying to
explain in my most recent posts. But I guess you are right that I
keep getting into abstractions and philosophizing and I've largely
missed the personal part.
I guess the difference with this most
recent realization is that the personal part came afterwards, after I
had my abstract realization that miracles happen. In fact, it is
still developing. [Note: Emily has asked me to share the following
part on my blog.] Emily is still more skeptical than I am. Her
skepticism doesn't stem from "science" but more from her
negative experiences in organized religion, which she feels makes
unrealistic demands of perfection.
We agree quite a lot about the problems
with organized religion. I've tried going to a few Christian churches
but I've never found anything that felt right for my needs or my
family's. But I have started to more earnestly teach our children the
Christian tradition and read one chapter of the Bible a day with
them, and discuss it. Teaching my family this way has been a very
rewarding experience. We do not force the Spirit, but let it descend
on us when It wills, sometimes discussing eternal topics, sometimes
being moved to sing hymns.
Jesus said that when you pray you
should not pray in public but in your room with the door closed. So
that's what I do. He said that when you give to charity to do it in
secret so that your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is
doing. So that is what I do. All the sins he accused the Pharisees
of, I see done by modern religious leaders. So I do not follow them.
He said "Judge not, lest you be judged." So I do not judge
any way of worshiping the Creator, nor withhold Christian fellowship
based on denomination, but recognize all believers as equal in
Christ.
Yet he also said, "Nor are you to
be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ." Part
of what makes it so hard to express myself is that I don't want to
set myself up as a teacher. Yet I also feel that if I don't try to
share what wisdom I've been given, I am not following Christ's
commandment to make use of my "talent." (Matthew 25:14-30;
1 Corinthians 12:27-31)
It is a fine line I walk, and I've
recently realized that it is too fine to walk by my own light. So I
am constantly praying that I can be guided to do God's will as he
wills it without being prideful. This is part of the reason so many
of the blog posts I've written have never made it to the web
recently. I keep realizing that many of them are nothing more than an
exercise in arrogance.
I've been reading a lot of the early
history of Christianity recently. It gives me comfort because Roman
times were much like modern times. The early Christians were
pacifists and completely nonjudgmental, very Christlike in every way.
It inspires me to see how they quietly protested against decadence
and sin by simply not participating. When they were killed it was
usually because they refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods. I find
it incredibly inspiring that someone could be that brave. Many Roman
soldiers were converted just upon seeing their courage in facing
death.
In fact it was pondering this history
in late 2018 that I first started believing in miracles. It wasn't
any one account that convinced me. It was the full weight of the
historical revolution. How could a sect devoted to peace, kindness,
and self-sacrifice, willing and ready for martyrdom, preaching sexual
abstinence and meek humility, appealing more to slaves than to
rulers, AND believing in miracles, God, and the afterlife, ever have
managed to grow as fast as it did? On Darwinian principles it's
impossible. I calculated that if Christianity was no fitter than the
alternatives, the probability of it growing so fast was far less than
1 in a googol. This realization left me physically shaken. All the
hypotheses that our reality is a "computer simulation"
rushed back into my head, making me realize that it was far more
plausible that our reality was designed to evolve beings who
believe in God, that answered prayers might really be part of the
program.
Emotionally, the realization was
euphoric. "Gospel" is really Old English for "good
news." I realized that it was not only possible that Jesus came
to bring the message of eternal life after this simulation was over,
but highly probable, given all the facts.
It has been hard not to let this
realization go to my head. I realize that everyone is on a different
journey, that God's plan is different for each person, that each of
us are special in a unique way, and that even our worst and most
sinful mistakes, from an eternal perspective, are ways for us to
learn. Jesus blesses those who are humble, because it is those who
are humble who do not give in to the subtle selfishness of pride,
which I think is rightly called the father of all sins. This is what
I've been mostly struggling with. I need to share the good news, but
I can't be setting up myself as a teacher. Only Jesus can teach.
On a day to day level, my newfound
faith has brought indescribable joy, in almost every way. I know it's
cliche but every sunset and sunrise is more beautiful now, everything
in nature, and even man-made things show the hand of God. For example
I recently started reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and
when he said he believed only Providence could explain the appearance
of Democracy in the modern world and all its freedom, I knew exactly
what he meant. I see how even the worst experiences are ultimately
for the best. I see God now in everything, especially in other
people--my children, my wife, my friends, and everyone I meet, in
every conversation I have. None of this is burdensome, but incredibly
liberating. It inspires everything I do, from trying to be a better
employee, to being a better writer, to being a better father and
friend.
[...]
~~~
I’ve been working on an expanded
version of this story in my book, which as I said will be about half
about my journey, and half philosophy, in alternating chapters. It
will stretch back to my childhood, and extend to the present as well.
Several people have asked me for this story, both family and friends,
and I look forward to finally writing it down in its entirety.