How embarrassing. I used to think of myself as an unbeliever! But I\u2019ve come round. A friend really challenges me. He is where I was ten years ago. He made me realize that I have truly delved\u2014what a portentous word!\u2014and I don’t want to give that short shrift. I have taken LSD a few times; I\u2019ve done a variety of weekend workshops; I\u2019ve been a soul-journey-er. I now own that. (I tended to minimize these and really, I shouldn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n
Taking into real considerations all his objections, which are like my own thinking in the not-too distant past, I realize that I\u2019ve changed. I retract my atheism—not from fear of punishment, but out of conviction. I’ve had mild transcendent experiences. You may call them illusions, and perhaps they were. Perhaps. But I think that takes the accusation of "illusion" a little too far. A few illusions, perhaps; a moderate number—even then, well, maybe. But for me I’ve had enough mind-stretchings\u2014not yet one of those personal mind-grabbing "why dost thou persecute me?" visions of Paul on the way to Damascus, but close\u2014to be convinced.<\/p>\n
My friend played the devil\u2019s advocate. He is so like me ten years ago.) He makes me marshal all my evidence: It adds up to: I am convinced! There’s a 4% of will playing out here, "the will to believe"—who said that?— but evidence aplenty suffices in my mind. I refuse to say you should believe too, though. There is a poignant beauty in our stand-off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How embarrassing. I used to think of myself as an unbeliever! But I\u2019ve come round. A friend really challenges me. He is where I was ten years ago. He made me realize that I have truly delved\u2014what a portentous word!\u2014and I don’t want to give that short shrift. I have taken LSD a few times; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-spirituality-and-philosophy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2771,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions\/2771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}