Finding God in the Waves: How I lost my faith and found it again through science

by Mike McHargue

We have experiences with God that are beautiful and moving, but over time, they just become things that make us feel superior to other people.

People tend to view their minds and spirits as being distinct from their brains, but research doesn’t support that idea.

God is not something we believe in as much as something we feel and experience

You take in a truly staggering amount of sensory information, far more than you could ever process, and your brain manages this overload by tossing out anything unrelated to your survival and creating a summarized view of reality that it can read on the fly.

So that morning, I said these words: “God, I don’t know why I’m praying. You aren’t even real.”

Many Christians believe that people become atheists because they’re angry at God. My experience didn’t involve anger at all. I felt grief—a gnawing sense of loss. I felt empty and alone.

Love and grace speak loudly. The first and best response to someone whose faith is unraveling is a hug. Apologetics aren’t helpful. Neither are Scripture references. The first thing a hurting person needs is to know they’re not alone.

Suddenly, I don’t feel so weird for identifying with both skeptical and spiritual people.

Contrary to what we may feel, we humans weren’t designed to find truth or objective reality. We were designed to find food and to mate, to avoid predation and to maintain social standing in our tribes.

But I’ve learned that the need for certainty is an addiction we can kick—that it’s possible to have faith, and even follow Christ, without needing to defend historical Christianity like a doctoral thesis.

Cosmology describes a force that created us and then transformed itself into a system of forces and energy that continue to sustain the universe. This sounds at least a little like what Paul told the people of Athens: “In him we live and move and have our being.”

There may be countless religions, sects, denominations, and ideas about God, but as far as your brain is concerned, they all fit within two categories: the Angry God and the Loving God.

Saying “religion is bad” is a lot like saying “eating is bad.” Eating can be bad, but it depends on what you eat or how much you eat. Religion can be bad, but it depends on how you view God and how attached your faith is to an authoritarian system.

When you recall a troubling memory, you have a chance to modify the deeply emotional responses you experienced at the time of the event. This is why talking about traumatic events in a safe environment or with people who care about you has a way of diluting the trauma and training the brain to understand that the danger is over, that you can be safe.

that the Bible isn’t science or history. The Bible isn’t a legal document. The Bible is art.