I have found myself in a close to ideal situation. There is a man at a nursing home I visit periodically that has developed a fondness for me. This man, before retirement and a series of strokes, was a college professor. His vocabulary is limited but his mind is not. He writes a list for his wife after I visit him and the next time I enter his room I find a stack of books waiting for me. He has decided that I would be the beneficiary of his vast library of books and he is releasing them to me in the order that I am supposed to read them. Always the professor. While he cannot talk well we communicate well and he makes me summarize the books I've read and then nods in agreement if I got the point or shakes his head at me if I missed the point of the book. Oh ... did I forget to tell you that he taught philosophy? This is not easy reading ... I am used to speeding through a 300-page book in an hour but I have to slow down for these books and he gives me a stack of 7-8 of them each week.
I have been spending time with Rene' Descartes who coined the famous line: "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I exist." I have heard that line so many times in my other studies that I thought it stood by itself. But now that I have read it in context of his whole philosophy I find that it means something totally different than I thought at the time. Rene' is NOT anti-religion or anti-God but used his mind and his thoughts to prove the existence of God and the need for a moral philosophy of life.
I have repeatedly heard that science leads people away from God but GOOD science leads them back to Him again. Now that I have been going through the foremost philosophers of our history I think that it applies to them as well. Philosophy leads you away from God but GOOD philosophy leads us all right back to Him.
Don't ever be afraid of good, honest exploration of the mind, science, and thought. The truth has a way of rising to the top like a rich cream on fresh milk.