The Crux

“I feel like I’ve been deprived of so much…that just explains my existence: science, philosophy, psychology, eastern religion, anti-religion.”

That is a statement I made to myself back in February 2018. As simple as that statement may seem, it has become the crux of my entire existential crisis that has spanned thirteen months and counting.

There is a lot I can unpackage in regards to my childhood so I intend to keep this entry focused on my initial curiosity to start asking questions. I will do my best to maintain a form of reverence to my parents and the environment in which I was privileged to be raised. I simply wish to spark some conversation with any other folks out there who feel there is still so much more they have never been told.

I want to give each of the topics listed enough space to breathe as I dive into this so, for today, let’s dig a bit into my relationship with science.

I spent most of my life in a relatively small social bubble in the Midwestern United States. The surrounding small towns in my area had a Christian church on every corner, and all my peers knew the “main” bible stories from when they went to church with their grandparents. Atheist influence is rather taboo in this part of the country. I carried a perspective that everything outside of literal scripture was evil and wrong.

Most of my life I understood my existence to be at odds with what my bible described and what my textbooks in school explained. I grew up with the disposition that these two sources must perpetually fight against each other. The bible never uses the word “evolution” so the public school system is wrong. The English translation of my preferred version of a holy book I can get on sale in America (which primarily focuses on themes regarding the heart behind human interaction) doesn’t explain natural adaption throughout all existence in detail so we must discard the whole topic entirely. I grew up carrying that perspective of science.

Allow me to flex your paradigm a little. I was watching a documentary about how the earth naturally functions as a perpetual, autonomous organism despite hurdling through the decaying expanse of space. You would be my guest to criticize the legitimacy of the examples they described, but either way, the documentary was at the very least thought-provoking.

To summarize, Earth has been fighting to exist since its inception. Earth has adapted and created systems that work together to sustain itself in an environment where all things expire (space). Their depictions of this intelligent symbiosis fighting for life (evolution) were parallel to the Biblical themes I was taught about life conquering death. I came away with two assumptions that night: God is Earth, and God is evolution.

Why does it feel sacrilegious to proclaim those statements?