Facebook Faith #43 Feelings and Coincidence

"I know I have relationship with God because there are too many things that I can't explain as random in my life. I will often pray and get a different answer to what I was thinking. I can go on, but the point is I feel God in my life."

This was an explanation I saw given on a friend's FB page this afternoon. There is rarely a time when discussing faith with a believer, that it does not come down to feelings and coincidences. They may start by trying to offer proofs, or rational arguments; but it soon becomes clear that those approaches only work when discussing faith with other believers. The pokes and prods of the skeptical tend to clear those away without much effort.

What the believer is left with is some variant of the above. Their faith is founded on feelings they have, or a litany of too good to be chance circumstances. I understand. As an Evangelical, I had those too.

And again, if you stay within in your faith circle, that will probably be enough. However, once you look over the fence, once you examine life outside your tribe, you discover every other faith rests on those items as well. The pagan, the Mormon, the Catholic, the JW, the Calvinist, the Universalist, the Jew, the Muslim, etc... They can all point to times when their deity met them in some transcendent moment, when circumstances were too perfect, when Heaven touched Earth.

One of the things that started my walk away from belief was a recognition that these divine moments were not unique to my faith. That which should have been exclusive to my "correct" belief, was being experienced across faith lines.

Coming to that realization was a little like finding "The Great and Powerful Oz" was really just that man behind the curtain. Booming voices and balls of fire lose their wonder after that.

However, what replaced the wonder of spiritual experience was an awe of the natural world and the wonderful souls around me. I discovered that man behind the curtain is a layered individual who is worth getting to know. It turns out that reality is much more satisfying than smoke and mirrors.

The universe is huge and old - and rare things happen all the time.
Lawrence Krauss –  A Universe From Nothing