Welcome to Life in a Terrarium! My name is Haley. I grew up in Wyoming and now live in southern Oregon where I practice massage therapy and study English at Southern Oregon University. As an introduction, I will share part of my story of how I came to love science.
Life in a Terrarium explores various aspects of science as I discover them and includes how they add to my understanding of life within the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere. The "terrarium" also refers to the horizon of humankind's knowledge of our place in the universe, which is constantly shifting due to scientific advances. I’m not a biologist, physician, geologist, or politician and do not claim authority on any subject besides my personal experience. This blog is an experiment of thought, writing, and reception. I hope it is both thought-provoking and relatable.
Having been indoctrinated in religion from birth, I am predisposed to supernatural thinking. To this day I am drawn to the esoteric, the unknown, the mysterious, the secrets of the universe.
My personality also lends itself to obsessive-compulsive behaviors and neuroticism, well-met growing up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism. I ritualized my faith: pray, fast, read scriptures, repeat. Daily life was intense; symbols offered communication between the Divine and me. I was superstitious about numbers (7, 27), colors (white, red, black) and Bible verses. Synchronicity represented my devotion and His revelation.
I knew that my Heavenly Father was watching me. I had a testimony of Jesus Christ. I resolved as a young girl to be sealed in the temple to my husband for time and all eternity. Because God had a secret plan for me, my receptivity to the “Spirit,” or influence of the Holy Ghost, was finely tuned.
I was always a bibliophile. The Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, all parts of the Mormon scripture, spoke directly to me. Books were a gift from on high and my sacred duty was to mine the hidden meaning within them. I read about philosophy, numbers, fractals, quantum physics, politics, and world religions. Although books opened the floodgates of my curiosity, I reconfigured my discoveries in terms of what I already knew as Truth. Reading was a search for more intricate layers of the same Truth.
Further questions were addressed through prayer, scripture study and the words of the latter-day prophet(s). Other approaches to understanding were consistently downplayed. Scientific argument, for example, was used to support the Gospel when possible, otherwise it was criticized as a prideful attempt by man to displace God's eternal unknowability.
So I was intrigued by science, but it was not always useful. When one has mastered the art of self-delusion, many questions are eliminated. But as an inquisitive person who was also not willing to abandon faith, I accepted the challenge to fit “worldly” knowledge into my belief system.
I was an apologist acrobat extraordinaire, eagerly debating friends who clearly didn't know the Truth. I researched controversial Mormon principles, such as polygamy, in order to rationalize their validity. As I grew older, it became a performance to behold, twisting myself into a ridiculous pretzel. I needed the Church to get behind me.
Whenever I challenged the doctrine, I was quickly set straight by instructors before the subject was changed. I wondered why my questions were often discouraged or ignored. I was taught that man is given free will because genuine faith comes only through personal conviction rather than through the conviction of others. If the Church was true, was I not certain to arrive at this conclusion after a thorough investigation? Wouldn’t my faith only be strengthened by such a test?
Rationalization brought me far, until I realized my deep-set value of honesty in my searching. Bending over backwards to make the “logic” of religion work was not enough. Ultimately I had to come to terms with the facts that weren’t aligning with my faith. I was terrified of losing meaning, friends, family and security. But I was more terrified of living a lie.
If meaning is not simply learned, I now reason, I would expect more consensus on truth. I now see that whether an individual is Mormon or Muslim largely depends on time and birthplace. I was taught everything I knew about God, the planet He lives on, the human woman He impregnated, and how He communicates telepathically with man.
I no longer believe, but my conversations with God never ended. Now they are conversations with my unconscious, my ego, my dreaming mind.
Now I gather meaning through observation and reflection. While science does not attribute meaning to existence, it continually provides perspectives on what it probably doesn’t mean (eternal life, predestination, significance, salvation) in light of a lack of evidence to support such claims.
The “answer,” for me, is the fact that the universe is and I experience it. And all that is conceptualized, observed, explained or thought about has nothing to do with what may actually exist aside from my perception of it. In order to make progress in our condition of limited information, humanity observes consistencies and proceeds with what works, thus sending ourselves to our moon, eliminating devastating diseases, isolating the gene for breast cancer, and using wavelength technology to “see” how Earth’s weather systems operate.
My view is that there is no purpose, no intent, no positive or negative, no reason for anything aside from that which we create. Only indifference. This understanding opens a door to an incredible sense of wonder and inspiration because meaning is flexible as long as one recognizes the difference between reality and fiction. I hope throughout this blog I can explain why scientific understanding means everything to me.
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