The title sends chills down my own spine, but whatever. It all started when my parents' almost absolute faith in this type of Qigong made my life a complete hell. Today I finally decided to write about a few people whose faith have touched me the most over the past few years.
I was perhaps an atheist for at least 18 years of my life. And I remember being a Russellian humanist at least by the time I entered high school. Then T from North Carolina came to teach at my high school during an exchange. We kept in touch after he left and one day our chat somehow touched on religion, and I offered T my very thought-out opinion: I felt that people are most afraid of death, and since religion (or in T's case, Christianity) provides a sense of eternity, it somehow comforts us mortals a lot, and that's why we are drawn to it!
It took T a long time to respond, but when he did, it was a freaking long email. "As a friend," I remember him write, "I advise that you reconsider your stance in front of God." He then went on to tell me his not-so-smooth life story and how he felt that without God he would not have found that critical job he was so longing for.
That cracked me a little*.
A year or two passed, and came freshman year in college. I retold the story to an orthodox Jewish friend, who told me that he found the story very "cheesy."
Sophomore year I took a cosmology class together with a philosophy of religion class (and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to finish!). Then and there I was 100% sure that I became an agnostic.
When I was in Paris, I met J and B at around the same time. I had just got out of my relationship then, and somehow became really close with both of them. I started Bible Study with J because I was always interested in the Bible bit never had the time to really read it, and it is so important if one wants to understand sat Dante's Inferno or Milton's Paradise Lost.
"Oh she's just trying to convert you," said B with a laugh. He is a scientist and doesn't even believe in free will. I couldn't quite comprehend it at the time, but now I see that B's disbelief to me is just as my non-commitment to God to my Christian friends.
But B does meditate and once he told me how one day, when he was still in college, as he was meditating, he felt that touch by something higher and from then on just knew that medicine was what he was going to pursue. B's grandparents are Seventh-Day-Adventists.
I kept the Bible Study going after my return from France. Then one day I received an email from the humanist society that they were organizing a Qu'ran study and I readily signed up for it. I was not expecting this, but when I told my Bible Study buddy -- she's actually Christian -- about this, she became very disappointed and said, "you've come so close to our Lord (after so much Bible studying) and now you are doing a Qu'ran study now?"
I didn't know how to respond.
I don't really know where I stand. Still. I started going to a local Chinese church recently. My mom had a conversation with an old lady who told her the following: "if these smart post-docs even believe in Jesus, then I better do!"
For reasons I would hate to disclose, my parents' faith in Qigong has also overshadowed my life so much now. Cohen's lyrics has never rung so true to me: only drowning men can see him. I find the American pragmatists especially convincing as well, that belief only becomes belief when it serves us and does us good. I'm surprised that I've come to this conclusion after five years of college, especially when my personal ethics are so contrary to utilitarian (not to say that pragmatism and utilitarianism are the same thing, but they share the aspect of considering how something can do someone good).
Maybe it's having read Menand's The Metaphysical Club. Also my summer life experience this year. Which still awaits some recording.
*I mentioned T at a speech at my high school after I got into a certain prestigious college. I'm sure it cracked some others, too, but it caused some indignation of our president. Religion isn't a popular topic from where I come. Then again it was probably mostly because I didn't publicly thank the school and its officials for providing me with the resources to "succeed."
I was perhaps an atheist for at least 18 years of my life. And I remember being a Russellian humanist at least by the time I entered high school. Then T from North Carolina came to teach at my high school during an exchange. We kept in touch after he left and one day our chat somehow touched on religion, and I offered T my very thought-out opinion: I felt that people are most afraid of death, and since religion (or in T's case, Christianity) provides a sense of eternity, it somehow comforts us mortals a lot, and that's why we are drawn to it!
It took T a long time to respond, but when he did, it was a freaking long email. "As a friend," I remember him write, "I advise that you reconsider your stance in front of God." He then went on to tell me his not-so-smooth life story and how he felt that without God he would not have found that critical job he was so longing for.
That cracked me a little*.
A year or two passed, and came freshman year in college. I retold the story to an orthodox Jewish friend, who told me that he found the story very "cheesy."
Sophomore year I took a cosmology class together with a philosophy of religion class (and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to finish!). Then and there I was 100% sure that I became an agnostic.
When I was in Paris, I met J and B at around the same time. I had just got out of my relationship then, and somehow became really close with both of them. I started Bible Study with J because I was always interested in the Bible bit never had the time to really read it, and it is so important if one wants to understand sat Dante's Inferno or Milton's Paradise Lost.
"Oh she's just trying to convert you," said B with a laugh. He is a scientist and doesn't even believe in free will. I couldn't quite comprehend it at the time, but now I see that B's disbelief to me is just as my non-commitment to God to my Christian friends.
But B does meditate and once he told me how one day, when he was still in college, as he was meditating, he felt that touch by something higher and from then on just knew that medicine was what he was going to pursue. B's grandparents are Seventh-Day-Adventists.
I kept the Bible Study going after my return from France. Then one day I received an email from the humanist society that they were organizing a Qu'ran study and I readily signed up for it. I was not expecting this, but when I told my Bible Study buddy -- she's actually Christian -- about this, she became very disappointed and said, "you've come so close to our Lord (after so much Bible studying) and now you are doing a Qu'ran study now?"
I didn't know how to respond.
I don't really know where I stand. Still. I started going to a local Chinese church recently. My mom had a conversation with an old lady who told her the following: "if these smart post-docs even believe in Jesus, then I better do!"
For reasons I would hate to disclose, my parents' faith in Qigong has also overshadowed my life so much now. Cohen's lyrics has never rung so true to me: only drowning men can see him. I find the American pragmatists especially convincing as well, that belief only becomes belief when it serves us and does us good. I'm surprised that I've come to this conclusion after five years of college, especially when my personal ethics are so contrary to utilitarian (not to say that pragmatism and utilitarianism are the same thing, but they share the aspect of considering how something can do someone good).
Maybe it's having read Menand's The Metaphysical Club. Also my summer life experience this year. Which still awaits some recording.
*I mentioned T at a speech at my high school after I got into a certain prestigious college. I'm sure it cracked some others, too, but it caused some indignation of our president. Religion isn't a popular topic from where I come. Then again it was probably mostly because I didn't publicly thank the school and its officials for providing me with the resources to "succeed."
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