Nor am I a confirmed atheist. Instead, I have consistently chosen the path of least resistance, i.e. the firm conviction that it is impossible to know whether God exists because both profound belief and atheistic denial are simply matters of faith.
And yet—go figure—I have often felt the presence of something I have come to call God. I feel it while gazing at a gorgeous sunset. Or looking at the face of my newborn child for the very first time. Or contemplating any of the infinity of things that regularly remind me of the astonishing miracle that is life.
All of which has led to a dichotomy between what I think and feel. Between, to put it another way, a strictly agnostic intellect and wildly spiritual emotions. Those two entities, in fact, occupy separate compartments of my soul, allowing me to maintain a stoic rationalism while also experiencing the supreme joys surrounding the mystery of existence. And it is that profound wonder, frankly, that caresses me awake each morning.
Enter society’s fickle sways. They have never pushed powerfully in the Philippines, where faith and church attendance have remained fairly stable. In the US where I come from, however, the story is different.
Beginning around 2000, studies show, millions of Americans abandoned their faiths, depleting church attendance by 50 percent. Religion, The Brookings Institution proclaimed in 2011, was approaching its “twilight hour.”
Then the pendulum swung back. A recent Pew Research survey found that Americans have stopped fleeing their pews and some are even returning. “Spirituality is not declining,” Penny Edgell, a University of Minnesota sociologist, told the New York Times. “And in fact, it’s high…”
So high that 92 percent now profess adherence to such classic beliefs as the existence of God, a human soul beyond the physical body, a spiritual realm beyond nature, or some kind of afterlife.
Sociologists attribute this change to several factors including the pandemic, during which people craved faith-based support, as well as massive immigration from more spiritually oriented cultures, and a national “vibe shift” bolstering conservative values.
None of which surprises me at all.
Lately, in fact, I’ve come across some religious arguments appealing to both mind and spirit. One came from a scientist arguing that, given the mathematical improbability of a planet inhabited by ostensibly intelligent beings, the only logical explanation is the involvement of an overseer.
Then, more recently, a Facebook post grabbed my attention. In it, someone describes two babies conversing in their mother’s womb. “Do you believe in life after delivery?” one asks.
“Well, of course,” the other baby says, “there has to be something after delivery.”
“Nonsense,” says the first baby, “what kind of life would that be?”
“I don’t know,” says the second, “but there’ll be more light. Maybe we’ll walk with our legs and eat with our mouths and have senses we can’t even imagine.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the first baby argues. “The umbilical cord gives us all of our scientifically prescribed nutrition, and that’s all we need,”
“But what if it’s just different?” the second baby wonders. “Maybe we won’t need that cord anymore.”
“OK,” says the first baby, “if there’s life after delivery, then why has no one ever come back from there?”
“Well, certainly we’ll meet Mom,” the second baby suggests.
“Mom? You actually believe in Mom? If she exists, then where is she now?”
“Mom is all around us,” the first baby says. “She’s the universe in which we live; without her, this world couldn’t exist.”
“Well, I don’t see her,” his companion insists, “so it’s only logical that she’s not here.”
Ah, but then the first baby brings it all home.
“Sometimes when you’re silent,” he says, “you can perceive her presence. You can hear her laugher, and you can hear her sing.”
It is the echo of those resonances, I believe, that makes life worthwhile.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
