“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is unfortunately often — but not always — true that individuals who carry strong religious feeling are often bothered more than usual by poor health and personal dilemmas. The fact is that religions have been the carriers of some of the best ideas that man has entertained — but it has also held most stubbornly to the most troublesome concepts that have plagued mankind.

You cannot divorce philosophy from life, for your thoughts and opinions give your life its meaning and impetus. There are some people who believe that life is meaningless, that it has no purpose, and that its multitudinous parts fell together through the workings of chance alone. Obviously I am speaking here of scientific dogma, but such dogma is far more religious than scientific, for it also expects to be believed without proof, on faith alone.

The same ideas are so dead-ended, however, that they often trigger a different kind of response entirely, in which a scientist who has held to those beliefs most stubbornly, suddenly does a complete double-take. This can propel him or her into a rather severe schizophrenic reaction, in which the scientist now defends most fanatically the same ideas that he rejected most fanatically only a short time before.

With some variations, the same kind of “sudden conversion” can occur when a person who has berated religious concepts and beliefs suddenly does a double-take of a different kind, ending up as a twice-born Christian.