Thanks for your thoughts on this. I think to follow one’s heart means more than just listening to feelings and thoughts. I think it goes deeper than that, on the level with convictions tried by experience. Neither does it mean that the heart trumps reason. The point is that reason has inherent limits (so does the heart, of course). It can only take us so far where knowing God is concerned. As I see it, it’s not a choice between head and heart; we need both. Each can take us places that the other can’t. Pascal certainly wasn’t an irrational believer. One of my favorite quotes from him is, “We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit.” Following one’s heart is not an excuse for behaving irrationally. Neither is rationality an excuse for not following your heart. They may seem to pull us in different directions sometimes, but truth may be in the synthesis they produce. This sort of tension governs any relationship we have with another person, why should it be less true of our relationship to God?

I suppose it’s true that feelings can lead people to very different beliefs but, aside from the point about not abandoning reason, it’s also true that reason leads people to very different beliefs. There’s no “safe ground” here in reason alone. That’s the point of the article. Some atheists and skeptics pretend there is because that’s what they are most comfortable with. Head and heart are not really as separate as we like to think, and the way people arrive at very different beliefs has more to do with just the leading of head or heart as if all the possible choices are equally available to the application of either faculty. Social context plays a big part. Everyone has to begin somewhere and we are all constrained by our own choices. Reason can tell you that all religious beliefs can’t be true. It can’t tell you that none are true.

That is an interesting question. It leads me to then ask, how else should I determine the existence of God, if not by my senses and by being reasonable? What are my options? It sounds like the article says to ‘Follow my Heart’. What does that mean exactly? How does one do that correctly or incorrectly for that matter?

Does that mean listen to my thoughts, my feelings, to what I ‘feel’ God might be telling me? How can I tell if my thoughts and feelings are correct, and really come from God? I can’t really.

To believe because you ‘feel’ like it. How is that Truth? It can’t be, because ‘following your heart’ leads people to different Gods and completely different beliefs. So, is one person right and another wrong? How can you tell? If my heart tells me God wants me to sell everything and leave my husband and children, is that God, how can I tell? Could you argue with me, and tell me I’m making a mistake? No, because according to you my heart trumps reason. So in this case, I’m in the right and no one can tell me different.. especially the skeptics.

I have a real problem with this. Anything goes. ANY belief is correct, as long as you truly feel it is.