Skeptical Faith

Google Image At age 25, Libby Osgood, “w earing heels and a sculpted black skirt with just a hint of pink,” stood in a room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center filled with older males. She was a NASA engineer monitoring the countdown of the launch of a satellite. Now, over 10 years later, after working for a NASA contractor, several “mission” trips to Kenya, getting her PhD in engineering and teaching engineering at a Canadian university, she is finishing her novitiate and will make her first vows as a sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame. How can a person who is obviously intelligent, with a fulfilling and promising career, do such a thing? you may ask. Isn’t becoming a nun in today’s climate of opinion the most counter-cultural thing there is? No Naïve Religious Fanatic Maybe. But Osgood’s was no snap decision by a naïve religious fanatic. She lacks insight neither into what she’s giving up nor what she’s getting in return. “Most people,” she wrote ...

Google Image Social scientists, I’ve noticed, often try to use scientific studies to explain human emotions, and sentiments like kindness – with limited success, in my opinion. The National Public Radio (NPR) web site, for instance, recently had a report entitled “Kindness vs. Cruelty: Helping Kids Hear the Better Angels of Their Nature.” It was adapted from an episode in a Life Kit podcast, "Parenting: Raising Awesome Kids." The report asks, “Are humans born kind?” “…As parents of young children,” writes the author, “we (both) assumed that kindness is just something our kids would pick up by osmosis, because we love them. It's a common assumption.” Capacity for Empathy She cites various studies, including one that tried to answer the question by examining humans’ capacity for empathy. “We have neurons in our brains, called mirror neurons,” says the article, “and they respond in the same way when we experience pain, say by being pricked with a need...

Google Image I regularly ask myself why I write these blogs. And one of my answers is that I hope to help people answer the question, “What does it mean to believe?” as I try to answer it for myself. I try to keep my target audience in mind. As posted on my blog site, the blog is “a discussion of faith, belief and religion for people who have given up on God and/or religion.” I understand that relatively few people – especially in the category of people I’m trying to reach – may be interested. But I feel compelled, and believe that helping just one person is worth it.  "I Will Not Mention Him" On the bulletin board in front of my desk is a quote from the prophet Jeremiah: “I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” I don’t mean to compare myself to the great prophet, and my thoughts about the blog may not be...

Google Image An acquaintance a couple of years ago spoke to me about her frustration with her teenage daughter who wanted to live with her boyfriend. “Don’t you want me to be happy?’ the girl asked her mother. This may be a familiar kind of appeal to parents of teenagers, but the appeal to happiness, expressed that way or not, isn’t limited to teens. All of us have made, and continue to make, dubious choices in our pursuit of happiness. And like many teens, we chafe at anything we perceive as holding us back. In a recent blog, I quoted theologian and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen as writing, “Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom.” Slavery to Rules? “True freedom?” For many, religious faith means just the opposite – slavery to rules and regulations and somebody else’s idea of happiness. So what is the sense of “true freedom,” at least in the Christian perspective? Isn’t it the kind of freedom expressed in love...