> As for me, I'd be interested in reading more about the faith of a worker at
> SLAC. If you have time, would you please give us a little of your own
> pilgrimage, and how your work relates to it?
Sorry about the delay in my response -- I've been scrambling about, trying
to find employment after I stop working at SLAC. It's a bad time to be
an expiring post-doc in high energy physics, unfortunately.
Briefly, then: I was raised in a more or less fundamentalist church
(Conservative Baptist) and believed pretty much the standard beliefs
in such a church, for pretty much the standard reason: people told
me they were true. Sometime in high school my beliefs began to come
into conflict with the science I was learning, first regarding the
age of the earth, and regarding evolution. The conflict
(exacerbated by literary and historical questions) has proved to be
long-lasting -- I'm now in my mid-thirties, and I doubt that I've
finished struggling with these issues. Sometimes the struggle has simmered
for years at a time, but sometimes it's flared up into (intensely painful)
doubts about my basis of any kind of Christian faith. I long ago
stopped being a fundamentalist, but it's only in the last year or so
that I've stopped thinking of myself as an evangelical (in the American
sense, that is). One result is that I don't feel terribly comfortable
in most churches: the liberal ones still make my skin crawl, and in the
conservative ones I feel like I have trouble breathing and I'm apt to start
muttering under my breath (figuratively, at least). My main conclusion,
at this point, is that I'm unlikely any time soon to be able to
think out an intellectual position that I will find wholly satisfying
(not surprising -- I've never been of a theoretical bent), and that
my job is to trust in Jesus Christ, and to act on that trust. (A good
description of people like me can be found in the book _The Myth of
Certainty_, by somebody or other.)
I've been reading this list for some time now, but I seldom see much
need to contribute, in part because my point of view is a little
farther to the left than the main range of opinion here, and I think
interjecting it would be more distracting than helpful (and also
because I'm lazy and dislike conflict). I am a fairly regular
contributor to talk.origins, however.
I think that's enough introspection for the moment.
Steve Schaffner sschaff@slac.stanford.edu
Opinions expressed may be mine, and || Immediate assurance is an excellent sign
may not be those of SLAC, || of probable lack of insight into the
Stanford University, or the DOE. || topic. Josiah Royce