Clenched Fists and Open Hands

[Hagoth]

I heard some discussion on IOT about Mike McHargue, aka Science Mike. His story sounded interesting so I ordered his book Finding God in the Waves. His story, as I understand it was that he was an extremely fundamentalist, Bible literalist Southern Baptist whose love for science caused him so much cognitive dissonance that he finally had a major shelf crash and came out on the other side an equally devout and outspoken atheist. Then, sometime later he had another defining moment that brought him back to God but in a very different and non-literalist way. I'm still waiting for the book to arrive.

Anyway, I decided to listen to his Ask Science Mike podcast, in which he answers science-n'-faith questions. He said something in the first episode that I really liked. He feels like he was treating his mind like a clenched fist during both his fundamentalist and atheist periods. You grab tight to your conclusions and squeeze. Nothing else gets in. His current situation feels to him like an open palm; it's got a lot of stuff on it of varying size and importance and it's easy to add and remove things as required by evidence and learning. When I go to church or watch the news I'm seeing a lot of clenched fists and I can see them in my own story. I'm going to hold onto this open hand idea and see where it takes me.

Incidentally, after contemplating this for a while I had one of the most powerful "spiritual" experiences in my life. I'll write about it in another thread.

[slavereeno]

This is interesting, sounds like he ends up on a similar page to Joe Scott, whom I posted about in another thread. Scott is a science and culture youtuber and his discussion of God talked about an openness to the idea of God and some of the possibilities of what it is, (rather than 'who he is').

[Linked]

The idea of the open hand is appealing to me. There is a lot out there that we don't know, and much of it we don't realize that we don't know.

I've said before that it was a big relief to be able to say "I don't know" about the church and god and other similar topics. I'm naturally an open hand kinda guy, and I was not comfortable living in a clenched fist world view. Eventually my open-handedness finally overcame.

[deacon blues]

This is an excellent metaphor for an open and closed mind. I have similar feelings since i realized a God of Love won't punish me for seeking the truth, and a God of Truth didn't establish the COJCOLDS. If it all turns out that there isn't a God, I can live with that too. If (a big If) the LDS God is real, he isn't really THE God anyway, he's like Eric Von Daniken's ancient astronauts.

[Hagoth]

...he's like Eric Von Daniken's ancient astronauts.

You mean he built the pyramids and the Inca walls?

I'm reading Mike McHargue's book. Here's another quote along these lines. I mean the clenched fist thing, not the ancient astronauts thing:

"We can approach beliefs not as gems to be mined from the earth and protected with clenched fists, but as butterflies that land on an open hand - as gifts to enjoy but not possess."