Taken from the bottom of my heart! I’m still trying to think of a way how to re-position myself towards militant sceptics – some who are my colleagues and who I like in every other respect apart from their knee-jerk reaction when confronted with people finding value and truth in anything that cannot be reduced to falsifiable objective facts.

The most harrowing and cringing aspect of it is that I actually understand them very well. Not too long ago I could have reacted in a similar way, before something came along that forced me to accept that truth occupies a larger space than mere fact alone. I’m still struggling to come to terms with what happened. If I look inward, I can feel my rational self being aghast that the larger “me” falls for that nonrational stuff. They’re like two orthogonal domains within me, and from within the one he other one seems completely unreal. And that goes for both directions.

This at least gave me a taste of how difficult it can be for people who have grown to be confident with their rationality, but not so much that other side, to accept the validity of that other side. And much the same goes the other way around.

Still, they could at least try and be less convinced that their way is the only way. It would certainly help if public figures representing science would be a bit more like Einstein and a bit less like Dawkins; and if public figures representing spirituality / creativity would be more like – say, Stephan Hoeller from gnosis.org (the only person I’ve ever heard talking about spiritual issues, who has a good solid sense of humour), and less like religious fundies.

Thanks for your article! I loved it.