Religion

Here's how I look at that: What we know (or think we know) is what we have learned or have been exposed to and accepted. At about age 16, I began to choose my own sources of information, based on my particular interests at any given time. I no longer accepted the choices of others regarding what I fed my brain.

I soon recognized that reading the ideas of others was also fraught with the danger of accepting those ideas as my own, so I took in information from a very broad range of sources, and on a very broad range of subjects. I considered each exploration as a logical challenge, retaining what made sense, and rejecting the rest.

From that time forward, I have been an autodidact. While I've taken courses at various schools and have a BA degree (English,) I never let my directed studies interfere with my own more random, but, self-directed, acquisition of knowledge. That was almost sixty years ago. I remember pretty much all of what I have learned. So, I doubt very much that I will revert back to any earlier stage. In fact, I continue to learn new things, moving on to different subject areas on a regular basis. Am I likely to become a theist? That seems to me to be an impossible thing. I finished that stage of exploration decades ago.

To what end was all of that? To no end at all. The process continues, and will until it does not. That's the life I have chosen. It is my own. Is it unique? Well, pretty much, since I consider each person to be unique. Is what I have learned correct? As far as my reason has been able to assess it, yes, it is. I have discarded more than I have retained, when it failed to convince.

Of what use is it? Well, when my wife, working on a word puzzle, asks me for a 9-letter word for a flightless bird, I can immediately tell her that the word is "cassowary." That is the only flightless bird with nine letters in its name. When she asks me how I know that, I can tell her the title of a book I read at 10 years of age that taught me that word. I have learned, though, that she doesn't particularly want to hear about its size, weight, the bright colors on its neck, nor its habitat or eating habits. It pleases me, somehow, to know those things.

How will it all end? I have no idea, except that I will cease to exist at some point. Life's a one-way trip. I might as well enjoy it.