Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science

by Mike McHargue

“Somewhere within you is a longing, and if I were you, I’d try not to overanalyze it,” he began. “I might not go much more beyond the fact that you have this longing, and so far you can’t seem to find a scientific or other category to meet that longing. It’s as if, in your life you have ideas, and ‘this fits in this bucket, and this other thing fits in this other bucket,’ but you have this other thing that is real but doesn’t fit in any of your buckets. “I would call that the God bucket.” Rob looked at the ceiling for a second, his right leg bouncing up and down—either nervous or excited—as he thought about what he wanted to say. “I probably wouldn’t define it much more beyond that,” he said. “Your mind, which is obviously seriously dialed in, is probably used to mastering things. But it sounds like, in your experience, there is this thing you cannot master. It’s happening to you. You aren’t standing over it in a white lab coat, holding a clipboard. This thing somehow does something to you that’s different from anything else. It’s almost as if there is inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning—which is the stuff that kidnaps you. You know what I mean?” Easy laughter returned to the room.