The Old Testament

You know, OF, you sound more like a Deist than anything else, and I don't mean that in a derogatory manner either. Like the "founding fathers" or at least a lot of them, they believed in a creator entity, but not necessarily christianity.

Just an opinion.

Myself, on the other hand, I have to stick to my agnostic position. What I gathered from all the conversations in these threads is that it really just boils down to a matter of pure faith regarding belief in a deity, and I require more proof than that. I think, and again, I don't mean this in a derogatory manner, that all the main stream religions can't be taken seriously, given that there is so much controversy about, and too little facts, or questionable facts, supporting them.

I think what I intimated at the beginning of this thread is pretty true, but it goes back beyond just christianity, as I agree with you that there are aspects (many, I think) of what judaism espouses that is questionable as well, and given that christianity and islam are derived from it, well, it seems to me that it puts them in a questionable light as well.

But hey, everyone has the right to believe as they wish. I will stick to Naturalism and Humanism, myself, until I can find something that proves something else exists.

 

I'm cool with deist, pantheist, panentheist, and/or theist. I believe in Something Big Out There (besides space). More importantly, I believe in God in Tillich's sense, as the Ground of Being, the Ultimate Meaning, or as the recovery groups put it "Higher Power", "in whom we live, and move, and have our being". My life as a Christian began with a life-changing moment of clarity which can be characterized as a religious experience, psychotic break, whatever--in which I accepted Jesus and the agape principle for which He stands as the meaning of my life. I'm and okie existentialist in my approach to reality, which is necessarily a course of risk-taking in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty. I make a "joyful bet" on Jesus, which is Luther's definition of faith.