Letters to the Editor
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I think therefore I believe
" 'But Haught is also a fierce critic of hardcore atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who claim that evolution leads logically to atheism. He says both sides place too much faith in science. "Ironically," Haught writes, "ID advocates share with their ideological enemies, the evolutionary materialists, the assumption that science itself can provide ultimate explanations.' "
How we think is the reason we believe. We learn from repeated successful response to stimuli what we percieve as reality. From this virtual reality of "nows" we devise a linear continuity out of which we develop the conviction of personal identification and extra personal relationships. "We" are not past or future. We deduce such experience from the physical existence of nerve cells and the influence of emotional gate keeping through which we access 'memory bits' from existing nerve cells.
The experience of now creates the anticipation of continuity. From the idea of continuity we develop hope. Hope, and the ability to relate to any possible combination of memories, results in the desire for control of future experience.
Supernatural intervention and the laws of nature have the same physiological foundation.
Both require conviction through continuing successful predictable experiences. Both fulfill the requirements of the belief process. Neither accepts the obvious conclusion that how we believe is the way that we know. What we know is how we believe. We cannot escape our virtual reality. It is a leap of faith to say that the sun will rise, whether it is by physical laws or the will of a creator.