I know the title of this essay will make some people uncomfortable. To a certain type of person, the S word, save for its obviously metaphorical use in poetry or art, is something akin to a curse in our modern Age of Reason. The soul is out, don’t you know, along with leech therapy and the geocentric model. Using the word in any remotely serious sense marks you to these folks as something between a boor and a rube, to be regarded with pity and disdain.
I know this because one of those people lives within my heart. Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.
Maybe it’s because I forged my atheist spiritual identity in the Aughts, when the New Atheist movement was gaining traction and provocative books like The God Delusion popularized an attitude of snide dismissal, but I feel a frantic urge, even right now as I write this, to distance myself from anything that seems too “woo”. I need to reassure you, reader, that I am Sensible. I believe in science! And not like one of those hippies who claims to believe in science and then parrots pseudoscientific quackery like homeopathy or Reiki or, god forbid, vaccine skepticism; no, I’m a real-deal science proponent. Will some bumper stickers prove it?
[illustration of pro-science bumper stickers]
This feels so important to me because for so much of my life, I treated credibility like a ratchet. The moment someone espoused any belief or practice that was not supported by scientific evidence and RATIONALITY!™, I saw their arguments, collectively, as evidently unworthy of consideration. When, in my college freshman seminar, we read St. Augustine’s Confessions, I did jack shit to actually engage with the text, instead fighting a theological battle with a centuries-dead man via margin notes. Did I appreciate that it was one of the earliest autobiographies? Did I take any time to appreciate the craft or poetry on display? Did I take in anything at all about the text? No, of course not: Augustine had revealed himself as one of those people, so anything he said was tainted with the stain of an irrational mind, and therefore dismissable.
I have spent most of my adult life learning to disarm that part of my brain without losing sight of who I am and what I hold dear.
Perhaps you have been fortunate enough not to be poisoned in this way. If that’s the case, you’re further along this path than me. Please feel free to jump into the next section. But if you, like me, have a similar credibility ratchet in your mind, I bet it’s probably getting pretty antsy right now. What sort of woo bullshit is coming down the pipe—something to do with souls? Maybe a part of your mind is even licking its lips, eager to tear into me for being another one of those Irrationals.
I can’t stop you. But I will ask, if you’re feeling that too, to take a deep breath with me right now, and see if you can find the patience to tolerate the discomfort. I think there’s something important here.
I. [we strengthen what we practice] Repeated ways of thinking become habits.
We know this intuitively, right? You have that one friend who is always griping, and you wish they would just try to see the positive now and then. Or after years of going to the gym, you’ve learned how to recognize when you’re hitting the ‘wall’ of exhaustion and push through instead of bailing. Like paths worn in the forest, each time we follow a mental trail, it becomes a little easier to follow it the next time, until it takes barely any attention at all. This isn’t deterministic, of course—you can still choose to go bushwhacking in the synaptic thicket of unfamiliar territory, but it will require some degree of effort and intention.
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