As someone born in eastern EU country. I am well familiar with orthodox, so I really don't see what's good about it. In our countries the priests are one of the most corrupted individuals who are always fat (as opposed to generally skinny population of poor people that can't afford much food) and always drive the nicest cars. How spiritual they are is arguable. They don't pay taxes, still are allowed to have wives and families and their working hours is way less than 40/w. If that's the life you are going for, then being and orthodox priest is the way to go.

I consider it no small blessing that I have a pious priest as my spiritual father. May God bless you in your struggle.

I guess everyone need to get his fix somehow. Some people play the Piano, some use drugs; and some devote themselves to a religion. The difference between the drug cartels and the religious priests is just the clothes. Both can also be very violent.

Because you don't see the spiritual part of it, only how it's being used as a way for people to grab power and wealth.

I could see the benefits of having a spiritual community around you, but, like, how do you convince yourself that supernatural things like gods exist? There's just very little tangible or logical there. Or would it be worth it to participate without really believing? Or you just somehow start believing? Frankly, for me doing that would probably be comparable to asking you to convert to Hinduism or something similar. Stability and fulfilment sound good tho.

The first struggle (and it took a couple of years, and is still in process) is learning that my entire worldview is rooted in the presuppositions of the Enlightenment and of modernism (and postmodernism, to a lesser degree). That is not how people saw the world for most of the history of humanity. And most of the experiences of religion and God that I had growing up were through that same empirical, Enlightenment worldview.

Through the work of Jonathan Pageau, I began to learn to see the world through a more traditional mindset. And I began to look at my own thinking and my previous presuppositions more carefully.

For example, you said "convince yourself that supernatural things exist". But you already believe all kinds of supernatural things exist. You believe in numbers. You believe in categories. You believe in grammar. You believe in logic. You believe in cities. You believe in political offices. Those are all above the natural world. In philosophy, that's called "metaphysics". It's "above" the physical world. You have a hierarchy of values (which is not physical) that determines how you see the world, how you act in the world, and how you categorize what your senses are feeding your brain. This is completely in line with our current scientific understanding of how our brains work. The work of John Vervaeke can also be very helpful.

Anyway, once I got over my empiricism and began to see that empiricism is completely blind to very large swathes of the human experience, it got much easier to say "well, since I have a value system intrinsically, and since a value system is completely necessary, perhaps I should put more effort into structuring it around the highest good."

Please keep in mind this process took a couple of years and will last for the rest of my life, but I hope you can see the stepping stones along the way.

I cannot wrap my head around how can You throw away empiricism - for me this is the only working way to validate mental models. Without it You just have infinite space of possibilities that are based on some subset of axioms that You choose as You please. It becomes just a logical and emotional game of who says it better (have better stories to tell).

And I don't belive in numbers or cities - they are just useful abstractions that stop existing when I stop thinking about them (and I'm guessing this is not a property of any potential imaginery supreme being).

Numbers are useful abstractions with no empirical evidence to back them up. That's my point. Numbers are a way of interacting with the physical world and reproduce certain results, but numbers themselves are abstract and have no physical properties.

As for empiricism, I certainly did not throw it out. It's useful, but not for everything. Say I have three knives in my kitchen drawer: a butter knife, a steak knife, and a chef's knife. Empirically speaking, which knife is the best knife? You can tell me all the physical properties of the knife, and the metallurgy of the knife and the shape and weight of each knife, but which knife is the BEST knife, from an empirical point of view? Empiricism has no answer UNTIL you, a person, say "I want to dice this onion" and empiricism can then arrange the knives in a hierarchical order according to which one will work best. But science has nothing to say about "best" or "worst" until an agent in the world has a purpose for which they want to use something. Then empiricism is a wonderful tool.

Another, shorter example: empiricism can help you build a rocket, but has nothing to say about whether you should aim it at the moon, or at a neighboring country.

And one more, just for fun: the empiricism that was used to detect and classify climate change is the same empiricism that was used to make the internal combustion engine. Empiricism is blind as to intent or motive. Empiricism is a toolset, but has no tools for determining a value hierarchy within the bounds of empiricism itself. Empiricism can only go to work once a person has given it a purpose or goal to work towards.

Oh I think I can see whats happening here - You probably have strong emotional need for things to have purpose and meaning. Sure, if I haven't accepted that pure existence is enough (and depending on the point of view it has none or all the meaning that we want) then exploring pure models in search for purpose would be also what I would do. But since I believe that there are infinite number of abstractions with no real physical properties that can be interpreted as real through your reasoning, from my point of view, empiricism becomes the only real tool (because per Your first example even the best or worst ultimately comes down to preferences that were shaped by physical world).

Let's say your lover writes a poem for you on a piece of paper and gives you the poem. You find it to be quite lovely, and you memorize the poem. Then, in a tragic accident, the cleaning lady throws the paper with the poem written on it into the garbage incinerator.

Does the poem still exist?

The answer depends on what You are trying to prove.

If You define this poem as ordered list of words that can be interpreted trough cultural and local context, then it existed even before it was written down.

If You want to go more realistic way then this poem exists only through my memory (partly as memory and partly as an emotional association) and will disappear with my demise.

You have smuggled in a LOT of things that are not empirical in your response.

"Ordered" - what is the empirical evidence for order? How can one know the difference between randomness and order with only empirical evidence? Order requires a concept of "orderliness" that one is comparing the evidence to.

"Words" - the empirical evidence of a word is a squiggle on a piece of paper. Everything else about a word and its connection to a thing is purely abstract, and not empirically verifiable.

"cultural" - what is the empirical evidence for a culture? What empirical properties does a culture have? Can it be defined merely by its physical characteristics?

"context" - what does this even mean, empirically speaking. We have infinite number of facts. How does empiricism filter relevant and irrelevant facts? What does it even mean for something to be "relevant" empirically?

"existed even before it was written down" - so something existed with no empirical evidence? How can you say it exists then?

"Memory" - what is the empirical evidence for your memory? Can I hook you up to a machine and stimulate your brain in such a way that I could get the words of the poem to read out on the screen?

"emotional association" - what does that even mean empirically?

I could go on, but I have to get back to work. I hope I have helped you clarify your thinking about how "empirical" you actually are(n't), but I've probably just lost you, and for that, I'm sorry. Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.

> You have smuggled in a LOT of things that are not empirical in your response.

Those are mental models that are useful to me but unfortunately I'm not master at using them. And what is more they are inherently wrong (because they are models and not the real thing - putting aside if anything is real).

I do not believe in them more than I need to. But they are the only way that we can communicate on high level - by establishing common model and that talking about its properties. And then we can empirically test if they really behave as we believe (if we want to, otherwise we can just leave it be and use it as toys and as a way to spend our time waiting for nothingness to take us back).

> Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.

Likewise - as You may have guessed english is not my native language and those concepts that I speak about are not well developed in my mind - they are merly my intuitions (by which I openly admin that I use things that are not empirically proven - but only because that is the only way that our faulty mind can work - by substituting reality with simplified erroneous abstractions that sometimes work).

>I could go on, but I have to get back to work

Wish You a pleasant work! And thank You for good conversation.

This seems like a facetious word-salad. You asked if a poem that was written then burned, still exists. He answered that the poem exists in his memory. It doesn't make any sense to say, what is empirical evidence for order or culture or context. You can't ask him to redefine literally everything, before you accept his answer.

I agree with your overall comment thread, that you separate empirical stuff like engines rooted in reality, from values like the highest good. You conclude that a way to achieve the highest good is to be religious. But are you sure? It's certainly good for you, your family and the community around you. But is it the highest good for the world? Across all nations, all the wars that have been fought over religion - I'd dispute that it's still the highest good.

I'm not sure I believe that any particular religion is correct, but it doesn't take very much faith to believe that there is a God.

Look at it this way: scientifically, the best explanation we have is that there was nothing and then from an infinitesimal point all of the entire universe sprang. For no discernable reason. That's pretty freaking wild.

The idea that there's a God out there past all that doesn't seem that much crazier.

Now whether or not you actually have a soul is a whole different discussion...

I always wonder - where do people get this intuition that something out of nothing is somehow more crazy idea than some supreme ephemeral being that existed before all this. The infinite regression argument is quite convincing that its rather the other way around - God is too complex idea to be the simplest possible answer.

That's the thing, most of these questions have been answered or at least heavily explored. Atheism is relatively new to the philosophical space, so I've found most arguments and thought exploration is based on ancient religions. After all, these same people founded most branches of science and math.

I really want to become an Orthodox Christian but feel like I would struggle with the whole "believing in God" thing. Should I still try it? Is there any way that I could "come to believe in God" in time?

If you have a hard time believing in God, then why limit yourself to just Christianity? Islam is ideal for exploring spiritualism through structure and discipline, Hinduism and Buddhism are great to explore spirituality from a psychological plane. This might offend some but while self-studying these religions, I found Christianity to be quite underwhelming, spiritually. In fact, if it wasn't for the writings of Desmond Tutu, I would have no appreciation of it. The only religion I haven't been exposed to is Judaism, as Jewish community are quite rare in India.

I agree that most forms of Christianity can be underwhelming, but Orthodoxy has a rich tradition that dates back over two thousand years of a mystical relationship with God, rooted in prayer. It's very different than any other form of Christianity that I have ever heard of.

According to Hindu philosophy, there are 4 ways to explore spiritualism:

1. Doing one's duty with detachment - the mind is trained to detach from the results of one's action and not attach positive or negative associations to it, thus weakening the ego and leading to enlightenment.

2. Self-enquiry and awareness - Pursuit of knowledge, and understanding of your own self in relation to the world to achieve a heightened consciousness of how you perceive the world through your senses, leading to liberation of the self.

3. Meditation - Related to 2.

4. Devotion - Loving devotion and surrender of self to a God leading to enlightenment.

Which one does Orthodoxy fall under? (Sounds like 4).

In Orthodoxy, prayer is considered the "art of arts and the science of sciences". Everything in Orthodoxy is intended to improve your prayer life, and your prayer life is how you enter in and pursue a personal relationship with God.

I don't know. I guess I'd prefer to believe in a religion where I'd fit in culturally.

That makes sense. Being a minority is not a pleasant experience in any country.

It's a matter of proof and evidence, not culture at the end of the day :)

https://www.provingislam.com/

> Is there any way that I could "come to believe in God" in time?

The door is always open. Please check out: https://www.provingislam.com/

Orthodoxy definitely takes a different approach than just accepting a proposition. I was a staunch atheist for many years, after having grown up Mormon. I was bitter and felt betrayed as I fell away from Mormonism. Here's what changed for me: I realized that the Christianity I had been a part of was still rooted in the Enlightenment and in empiricism. It tries to prove itself to be legitimate and relevant by trying to use archeology or science to verify the Bible. It's completely backwards and futile.

I listened to the Bible lectures that Jordan Peterson made several years ago, and I was intrigued because I had never heard anyone putting aside the historical story of the Bible and instead focusing on its relevance from a neuroscience point of view. This led to me eventually finding the work of Jonathan Pageau. He's an Orthodox icon carver, and he talks about the traditional worldview, how to understand the Bible from an ontological point of view (a hierarchy of being) rather than from a "scientific" or empirical point of view. It took a year or two before I really started to understand what he even meant, but once I started to understand that way of looking at the world, my whole world changed and I quickly joined the Orthodox Church.

To be more specific, I would recommend finding an Orthodox Church local to you, and just go see what it's like. Introduce yourself to the priest after the service, and he would be happy to talk with you and helping you begin to see the Orthodox way of life. The Orthodox approach focuses much more on your relationship with God, rather than a list of checkboxes of do's and don't-dos. It's very participatory. It demands a lot from the followers, but the sense of meaning, being, and purpose that have replaced my old sense of nihilism, meaninglessness, and despair...I can't even put into words how much my life has changed.

Thank you for the great response. I am also not a fan of conflating science and religion, so this is a refreshing take. I will take a look into Jonathan Pageau and maybe even visit my local Orthodox church (although I'm very scared)!

Be patient with yourself and take it one day at a time.

Check out the Jefferson Bible. I'm a fan of Christ but consider him one of the great moral philosophers instead of the son of god. This reading of the surmon on the mount moves me even though I'm not religious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nN9-C1yKU

Were you religious before you joined the Orthodox Church?

What inspired you to join it?

I grew up Mormon, explored Taoism and Buddhism, but never felt "at home". I considered myself an atheist for many years after that, but never really gave up hope that I could find a spiritual path. My family was on the brink of falling apart at one point, and I had started listening to Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible. That led me to the work of Jonathan Pageau. Once I started to understand what he was actually talking about (by learning more about the traditional pre-Enlightenment worldview), I thought "what do I have to lose?" and went to a local Orthodox church. I began meeting with the priest, and it's now the foundation for my life, and it's a part of my life every day, and affects every decision I make.

Interesting. Thank you very much for sharing your journey!