I was just like you.
I discovered the word "agnostic" any years ago, and I realized that, at the time, the word described my position on spirituality. I refused to believe in whatever naturally by virtue of faith. I refused to believe in any notion that I could not get my own mind around. (And you know what?... That's ok. I don't think any of us are expected to believe in whatever blindly.)
Today, however, I would characterize myself as a deeply spiritual person, and a lot of people, with good reason, would be put off by that declaration.
I'd never try to turn whatever into any reliance system, nor do I believe that any should. Growing up in as a Catholic, I know all too well the shortcomings of traditional, religious approaches. All I'm going to do is tell you how I came to understand the things I know today - nothing more and nothing less.
My Discovery of Science
Ironically, the branch that started my path to insight spirituality was science: the very thing that many religious leaders fought so tenaciously against over the past two centuries. I've all the time had a fascination with science, and while my twenties, I picked up Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". In this book, Hawking is able to characterize modern scientific theories about the universe in layman's terms, and because I was not a university graduate of science, this is exactly what I needed to understand the scientific report of the universe.
What I found was that science is stranger than fiction.
Probably the most leap that whatever must make when studying the laws of physics is insight what scientist call "Einstein's ideas of general Relativity", and in single the implications that it brings to our notion of time. Time, for the most part, is not what you think it is.
(Oh... Just a little note: for the purposes of this article, I'm going to write as if Einstein's ideas is pure fact rather than a theory, because, today, it is widely believed to be the best model to characterize the universe for large objects with immense gravitational influences. Up to now, his theories have been proven correct.)
I came to understand that time is not a constant. We grow up believing that time is all the time the same. A day will be a 24 hours today and it will be that way tomorrow. Of course, this is true, but what most citizen don't know is that time is distinct in distinct places throughout the universe, because time is altered by things like gravity, and the speed in which one is spirited through space.
For example, because Jupiter's gravitational pull is about 300 times that of the Earth, time on Jupiter moves more gradually than it does here on Earth! Therefore, if it were potential for person to live on Jupiter, they would age more gradually that we do here.
Speed has the same supervene on time as well. The faster you move through space, the slower time moves. If a person were able to trip on a space ship very close to the speed of light, time would roughly be at a stand-still for that person: the time on that spaceship would nearly halt.
For those of you who've never studied science, you may find that this is unbelievable, or merely an unproven theory. But, the truth is, it's been proven. Time does slow down as you move faster through space. Scientists have done experiments with synchronized, anatomical clocks, one that was placed here on Earth and an additional one placed in the Space Shuttle, and the one in the Space Shuttle all the time works more gradually (because of the speed in which the Shuttle travels).
My insight of time was merely an introduction to the expected reality of our universe. I also learned about the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the scientific report of all of the "waves" that we know today, like radio waves, micro waves, light waves (what we see as light), sound, x-rays, etc, etc. The only dissimilarity in the middle of one wave or an additional one was that some are "longer" or "shorter" than others. This minor dissimilarity is what differentiates either we see waves as light, or either we feel it as heat. Yes, heat is naturally an additional one wavelength called Infrared Radiation, and we comprehend it as heat.
When I learned about this, I could not believe how beautifully easy and excellent this was, and I was amazed at how the properties of a substance can be so dramatically distinct with such a minor change.
The more I learned about science, the more that I realized that it was a very, very strange universe that we lived in, and I learned that it was much best organized than I could ever hope to imagine. And, there were all kinds of distinct scientific theories that were wondrous, like parallel universes, time travel, etc. Just astonishing stuff that is -not- fiction. It's our current, scientific insight of our universe. It's no wonder that some citizen who have taken the time to observe scientists end up selecting it as their profession.
But!... And this is a big "but", I learned that science will all the time have limitations because there are some things that we will never be able to do. For example, one can never know the position and the speed of a particle at the same time. This is a minor thing, I know, but there are many things, like this that are all the time going to be exterior of our ability to detect. Some of our theories, like part Mechanics and the Chaos Theory, indicate that some things are fully random, and the outcomes can never be determined. Einstein's ideas of general Relativity is seriously flawed because it only works for objects that are large, like planets and stars, and it breaks down once you get down at the atomic level.
When I realized that there were things that we could never know, or probably would never know, I realized that scientist themselves, have to take a leap of pure faith in order to believe in their own theories. They are no distinct from philosophers and even religious leaders when trying to characterize the universe. Scientists will use experiments and observations to the best of their abilities and come up with theories and mathematical models to characterize what they have seen. If the model or the ideas fits into what their observations are showing them, and if it can predict future events, it is declared a successful theory.
Some theories, I learned, are impossible to prove. Take the example I mentioned above about time. Does time stop at the speed of light? Truthfully, it probably does, but equally rigorous is that it can never be proven because in order to prove it, person would have to trip at that speed and see what happens. But, that is impossible, because we don't have any motor that can even hope to bring us close to that speed, and Einstein's ideas of general Relativity states that in order to trip at the speed of light, it would take an infinite (and I mean infinite) estimate of energy to get to that speed.
Thus, technically, that part of the ideas is improvable, at least for now. So, scientist must take a leap of faith in order to believe that time would stop. They are putting their complete faith in their knowledge of science and mathematics in order to "believe" that something will happen.
Does this mean that what they believe to be true -is- true? no ifs ands or buts not! In fact, scientist are wrong all of the time, and most are just as defiant to turn and to new ideas as religious leaders are. Try and tell a scientist that some of the Laws of Thermodynamics are wrong, and you'll see that it will be the same reaction that you'd get telling a priest that God doesn't exist.
I remember watching a television documentary more than a decade ago where two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, were giving a presentation claiming that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by a bacterium called "Helicobacter pylori". Most of the audience of doctors ridiculed these Australian scientists because, at the time, doctors believed that stress or spicy food was the cause. They discovered this bacterium in 1979, and proved it was the cause of ulcers in 1982. It was only 6 years ago that it was widely accepted, and only in 2005 did they get valid recognition for it by winning the Nobel Price for Medicine. That's 23 years before they were officially recognized!
When I saw that documentary, I wondered: "what could be wrong with accepting this new theory". I wondered why these doctors and scientist in the audience were so defiant to this new idea.
That is human nature, and it has been happening since our existence. What I realized is that, one day in the distant future, scientists will have new, and best theories, and perhaps other theories that will wipe out our existing ones. It is potential that one day, new theories will emerge that will fully obliterate our current insight of our universe.
That means that today's science is just as intangible and fragile as any other former ideas was in the past. Once I was able to acknowledge that, I was able to open my mind to whatever because I realized that I have to steer clear of that same arrogance as the audience of ulcer doctors that I described above. Not to say that I will accept all blindly, but at least I was willing to keep an open mind and try to understand what citizen are trying to say about complicated issues. Science, it seems, was no longer my religion.
Are You an Agnostic?