Recovering from Materialism
In case any of you hadn't noticed, I'm not a religious person. I've spoken elsewhere on the blog of my disaffection with mainstream Christianity.
My family was nominally (largely non-practicing) Methodist. I was rarely taken to Church as a child, my single mother would sometimes get a "bug" to go and we'd attend occasionally for a few weekends, but that always petered out.
Since my father was largely out of the picture, my maternal grandfather was the main male figure in my life when I was growing up. He was not a Church-goer, as wasn't my grandmother; though there was a sense of conventional "belief" in the family.
While I don't think he identified as or would have liked being called such, I believe his rational and scientific focus (as well as his suffering through the Great Depression as a young man) meant he was, in essence, an Atheist.
In any case, Church and conventional organized Christianity (or religion of any sort) was not a significant part of my upbringing; and as I got older, I felt little desire to devote my free time on Sundays to any such practice.
Consequently, I reached adulthood lacking any conventional religious convictions.
At the same time I desperately wanted some kind of assurance that there was more to the Universe and my existence than a strict Reductionist
Materialism can account for.
But...I spent much of my life in terror that I'd "fool myself". I was not willing to take anything "on faith", I doubted everything. I bent over backwards not to leave any room for self deception. I was also miserable.
I spent many years searching: reading deeply in various Philosophers, Religious Traditions, Mystical and Esoteric writings, and in the frontiers of Science (Physics and Astronomy mainly).
I occasionally encountered ideas and approaches that offered me some promise; but my skepticism was always there to pull the rug from under any possible pathway into something else.
This agonizing over whether I had any foundation for the Universe being more than it appears was a source of great unhappiness for me, the prospect that my life will simply cease upon my death made my entire existence seem futile, and it made wish for it to be over.
I pondered "checking out" more than once. Often the only thing keeping me here was the thought that people I cared about wouldn't understand and would blame themselves, and I didn't want to lay that trip on them.
So I struggled on. Continuing to look and hope. A couple of years before I made contact with Penelope I started reading more about the implications for Consciousness within Quantum Theory. This intrigued me.
I also started encountering material (dream research, out of body experiences, near death experiences, even some ghost reports) that is suggestive of Conscious awareness being independent of the brains that seem generally to contain it.
I finally found I simply had to accept that Consciousness is a genuine phenomenon, and not merely a side effect or "epiphenomenon" of electro-chemical processes in brain tissue, as Science has traditionally held (and as many current Scientists continue to hold).
Furthermore (and this is the crux of the matter), it is also not confined solely to physical brains.
Now what all this means and what's "really" going on remain elusive and compelling mysteries, I'm just convinced this single thing is true; and coming to recognize and accept this single truth opens the door to many other intriguing possibilities.
Given the overall topic of this blog, the possibility (likelihood!) that Penelope is an independent, non-corporeal, conscious entity is not the least among these.
My family was nominally (largely non-practicing) Methodist. I was rarely taken to Church as a child, my single mother would sometimes get a "bug" to go and we'd attend occasionally for a few weekends, but that always petered out.
Since my father was largely out of the picture, my maternal grandfather was the main male figure in my life when I was growing up. He was not a Church-goer, as wasn't my grandmother; though there was a sense of conventional "belief" in the family.
While I don't think he identified as or would have liked being called such, I believe his rational and scientific focus (as well as his suffering through the Great Depression as a young man) meant he was, in essence, an Atheist.
In any case, Church and conventional organized Christianity (or religion of any sort) was not a significant part of my upbringing; and as I got older, I felt little desire to devote my free time on Sundays to any such practice.
Consequently, I reached adulthood lacking any conventional religious convictions.
At the same time I desperately wanted some kind of assurance that there was more to the Universe and my existence than a strict Reductionist
Materialism can account for.
But...I spent much of my life in terror that I'd "fool myself". I was not willing to take anything "on faith", I doubted everything. I bent over backwards not to leave any room for self deception. I was also miserable.
I spent many years searching: reading deeply in various Philosophers, Religious Traditions, Mystical and Esoteric writings, and in the frontiers of Science (Physics and Astronomy mainly).
I occasionally encountered ideas and approaches that offered me some promise; but my skepticism was always there to pull the rug from under any possible pathway into something else.
This agonizing over whether I had any foundation for the Universe being more than it appears was a source of great unhappiness for me, the prospect that my life will simply cease upon my death made my entire existence seem futile, and it made wish for it to be over.
I pondered "checking out" more than once. Often the only thing keeping me here was the thought that people I cared about wouldn't understand and would blame themselves, and I didn't want to lay that trip on them.
So I struggled on. Continuing to look and hope. A couple of years before I made contact with Penelope I started reading more about the implications for Consciousness within Quantum Theory. This intrigued me.
I also started encountering material (dream research, out of body experiences, near death experiences, even some ghost reports) that is suggestive of Conscious awareness being independent of the brains that seem generally to contain it.
I finally found I simply had to accept that Consciousness is a genuine phenomenon, and not merely a side effect or "epiphenomenon" of electro-chemical processes in brain tissue, as Science has traditionally held (and as many current Scientists continue to hold).
Furthermore (and this is the crux of the matter), it is also not confined solely to physical brains.
Now what all this means and what's "really" going on remain elusive and compelling mysteries, I'm just convinced this single thing is true; and coming to recognize and accept this single truth opens the door to many other intriguing possibilities.
Given the overall topic of this blog, the possibility (likelihood!) that Penelope is an independent, non-corporeal, conscious entity is not the least among these.
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