Quote from: Seshatneferw on May 22, 2007, 12:58:20 PM


As for myself, I choose to believe in the Christian God. It is my choice, though, and I also believe -- even more deeply -- that it does not matter whether the God I believe in exists or not.

  Nfr

it seems to me that you are unsure of his existence.  Are you saying that it wouldnt matter if you had wasted your time praying to nothing?  interesting!

Not quite wasting my time. I'd try to behave the way I try to even if there wasn't a God who told me to, because that's the decent thing to do (and that, in turn, can be argued from a sociological point of view as well as a theological one).

In case there is no God, there's not really any harm done -- I just got some of my spiritual solace from self-adopted delusions. Still, it worked.

In case there is a God, things should also work all right. Of course, if the real God does not like my semi-flippant attitude towards faith, I'm in trouble -- but would that kind of God be someone with whom I'd want to spend the rest of eternity anyway?

The fact that I chose the Lutheran outward forms is a matter of upbringing. Ultimately, they work for me; but this is not too different from the way I've adopted certain theoretical frameworks for my day job. They, too, work for me, but at the same time I recognise that some competing theories work for others.

  Nfr

I\'d say that you have an Agnostic mentality.  I thought that the idea of believing in God was to actually have faith that He DOES exist, but thats just my opinion.

Quote from: Fer on May 22, 2007, 01:36:18 PM
I\'d say that you have an Agnostic mentality.  I thought that the idea of believing in God was to actually have faith that He DOES exist, but thats just my opinion.

Hmmm I'm a Christian, and I believe in God, but I have the view that I can not be certain whether he exists or not.
How could I as a human, be sure?
I just find it far more romantic to believe in a god that created and designed all that exists, rather than to believe my ancestors were apes. But, that's just me.

Yes, that's part of it for me, too, except for the part about my ancestors having been apes (they were, I am, the exact species has been evolving for a while, and so on). This belief-despite-doubt is the main reason why I don't really consider myself agnostic.

  Nfr

Sometimes I waver a bit between Agnosticism and Atheism, but for the most part I'm an atheist.

I guess there's a lot of ways to view it, but I think there is some awe in the notion that we are the refined product of billions of years of life, the cream of countless trillions of generations of natural selection, and that from the seeds of life born when the Earth was young, so we and all life are here today.

For me, that's at least as inspiring as the idea that some highly powerful being decided to 'play God' as it were, and we are the result.

QuoteI just find it far more romantic to believe in a god that created and designed all that exists, rather than to believe my ancestors were apes. But, that's just me.

No, I'm not picking on you Nero... I just wanted to make a point about the study of evolution.  Evolution does not necessarily say that we are decendents of apes.  It does provide for the possibility that we and apes have a common ancestor.  If this is true, then that common ancestor would likely be even more primitive than apes! 

And who knows..  wouldn't it be interesting if apes were decendents of man?    I can hear the conversation now: "Do you know what they are teaching in our forest?  That apes are decendents of man! How long can we allow this to happen?"

Cindi