05-03-2004, 09:04 PM
I can't deny something to His face if he's never shown It to me. That's simply my point about being unsure whether there is one god or multiple gods, because there is no evidence for either, and I don't consider the Bible to be evidence because it was written by man, and men are flawed. I hear the faith argument over and over, and once again, I understand it and respect it, but I am just talking about how my mind works, and I cannot blindly have faith in something. I believe in things, and those beliefs change every so often. So, again, I don't expect God to punish me for having no absolute faith him Him if he doesn't give me anything to go on. He knows how my mind works, according to some He created it. Again (I've said again many times, I know), it's just difficult to explain myself. I wouldn't necessarily call it faith, I have faith in my judgment of things, but I won't say I have some firm written convictions that are never changing. They are beliefs, nothing more, and I wish them to be respected. And I wasn't referring to you telling me I was going to hell, SE, I was referring more to some Christian folks that tell me as such if I don't get baptized or believe in Christ or whatever it is I am supposed to do.
My girlfriend is Catholic, and she's far from fundamentalist (doesn't take the Bible literally, supports ###### marriage, abortion, etc.), but has said the same stuff to me, not maliciously or anything, that one needs to be baptized to avoid hell. And if we were to get married, she would make me get baptized... which personally I have very very deep problems with doing, but I WOULD do it just for appeasement. So, maybe it's anti-faith, I have so much faith that I don't believe in Christianity that it would sicken me to lie about it, but not set faith in any particular forum of belief.
And SE, about the G-ist thing, I actually have many times described myself as a MacKenzieist (my name), and my girlfriend also says I'm not truly agnostic, I do have a religion, it's just unlabelled, and I kind of believe that. I guess it all depends on what you define the words as meaning... I consider atheism the lack of believe in a God, which I don't necessarily think entails a lack of meaning in life, as much as many of you would think so. And if you do believe in meaning, it doesn't necessarily mean you need a god for that. And agnostic I consider to mean not belonging to an organized religion or one of its denominations, nothing more. So there is a broad range of those agnostics who have no beliefs, but I'm not one of them. I could go into GREAT detail about my belief in balance of life, how good and happiness are necessary but so it evil and destruction to keep things moving. A utopia would be a dystopia for humankind.
My girlfriend is Catholic, and she's far from fundamentalist (doesn't take the Bible literally, supports ###### marriage, abortion, etc.), but has said the same stuff to me, not maliciously or anything, that one needs to be baptized to avoid hell. And if we were to get married, she would make me get baptized... which personally I have very very deep problems with doing, but I WOULD do it just for appeasement. So, maybe it's anti-faith, I have so much faith that I don't believe in Christianity that it would sicken me to lie about it, but not set faith in any particular forum of belief.
And SE, about the G-ist thing, I actually have many times described myself as a MacKenzieist (my name), and my girlfriend also says I'm not truly agnostic, I do have a religion, it's just unlabelled, and I kind of believe that. I guess it all depends on what you define the words as meaning... I consider atheism the lack of believe in a God, which I don't necessarily think entails a lack of meaning in life, as much as many of you would think so. And if you do believe in meaning, it doesn't necessarily mean you need a god for that. And agnostic I consider to mean not belonging to an organized religion or one of its denominations, nothing more. So there is a broad range of those agnostics who have no beliefs, but I'm not one of them. I could go into GREAT detail about my belief in balance of life, how good and happiness are necessary but so it evil and destruction to keep things moving. A utopia would be a dystopia for humankind.