Secular Mind vs. Religious Mind

Before there was such a thing known as blogging, I kept an on-line personal journal.  Every few months I would print out my personal journal and keep it in a binder. Now, on my other blogs, which aren't really all that personal, I only print out the posts that get lots of hits to save.  I'm accepting public opinion as to the quality of my work, which I don't know is entirely correct to do or not.

William James

 I just read something in my journal from 2001 that I think applies to the current political climate in the USA.  William James in his essay "The Will to Believe," said  "As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use."  To me that describes the political climate in the USA at the moment, and especially the mind set of the right-wing Republicans, which is almost all of them.  Even though that may be human nature, I think at certain historical times, it's more emphasized than at other times,  both in people and in societies as a whole.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard talked about "A Leap of Faith."  I noticed that William James talks about the same thing only he calls it something like "A leap into the dark."  The same idea but one from a religious mind (Kierkegaard) interpretation and the other from the psychological mind (James) that doesn't consider itself religious.


Being "Saved."

The complete "Being Saved" experience is like the philosopher Blaise Pascal's night of fire in which he experienced a total conversion from a mathematician to a man of God.  (I had the same kind of experience myself).  This is also like St. Paul's "Burning Bush" experience in the Bible. There are people who will experience the same psychological experience, but some will explain it entirely in psychological terms (like William James did) and won't even connect it to religion, or to a God, and then another type of mind will only see it in religious terms.  I think there have been great minds of understanding who were not basically of the religious mind, like William James, Carl Jung and Freud. However, I think that the greatest minds embrace both points of view.

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, also, like Pascal, ended up being a completely spiritual mind.  Even so, I don't think they ever disregarded the truth of mathematics.  It's just two different worlds, which brings up the basic philosophical problem of which world is more real.  For me, the people who only believe what they can see and hear, in other words dead to the spiritual side of life, are also dead in their souls.  I think that this type of personality most often self-destructs, if they don't ever are blessed enough to change.