Tackling the Skeptics' Gordian Knot

It's not easy being a Skeptic, with a capital Skep.

I should know, for I made a valiant attempt to be one, for many years, and failed dismally.

The ability to hold onto the sort of Skepticism which usually goes along with Atheism, with a capital disdain for the Gods, has been one of the more spectacular failures in my life so far.

For a while, it's sort of comforting.

You know all those loose ends, all those questions for which you don't have any good answers? Well, they can all be tied up nice and neatly, no ends flapping in the breeze, if you subscribe to the 'It must have a rational explanation, and any rational-sounding explanation will do' form of skepticism.

Of course I was always going to be miserable at this - but it seems I had to try, if only to justify, in some manner, all the time and energy I'd put into becoming a scientist.

Pity it didn't last-then I could take a satisfied look at that giant knot of resolved unresolved questions, label the whole boiling 'explicable' and turn my back on it.

On Sunday night, I woke up from my customary light sleep when I heard my name being called, clearly and distinctly.

I looked at my sleeping partner who was snoring and who has never been given to talking in his sleep, and wondered, for a brief moment, if I could blame it on him.
After all, it was a male voice of approximately the same range and timbre that had called me awake, so it could have been Warren, couldn't it?

For that brief moment I also ignored the fact that my body was trembling quite violently - that my earthly components were already in full possession of the fact that I had been woken up by my father calling my name.

I'm not as stupid as I would have made out when I was still a Skeptic. I had heard that voice for more than 40 years and have recalled it in my mind many times over the last 7 years since I last heard it and, unlike poor old Carl Sagan, I know the difference.