I experience, therefore, I am.

Only one essay in and I'm already hooked.

I'm still not enough of an intellectual to understand the Great Thinkers that well. I understand a little. And I've read a bit of Kierkegaard (see here and here). So when I pick up this book by a Mormon intellectual attempting to explain Faith and Science from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist or ecologist, and he starts going all Kierkegaardian on me, yeah, I can relate.

And there's one of the keys. Some Scientists and non-scientific Rationalists believe only in physically demonstrable proofs. But Science still struggles with the nature of consciousness itself. I have enough doubt to still leave open the possibility that my existence is nothing more than a physical body evolved from primordial soup and my consciousness is only the complex firing of random neurons trying to make sense of my own existence, but my life experiences tell me something more. It is experience that defines my existence. And that's why I fused Søren into Descartes up there in my title.

Let me sum up Brother Peck, Ph.D.'s first essay in this book, "Randomness, Contingency, and Faith" in his words:

So faith is not a matter of belief despite evidence or lack of evidence, faith is the subjective experiment of coming to find nonscientifically available subjective truths. Just as we suspect that others have consciousness despite the complete lack of any objective measure, we may assume that subjective truths are universal but can be appropriated only by the individual. objectively they are invisible, like other people's individual consciousness.

Oh, yeah!

I encourage you to experience the book on your own as I will continue to do. I'm only through the first essay . . . .