Faith and Well-Being

Jons Initial Belief Statement writes:I hold to the belief that knowing GOD is inherently impossible; we can only define, at most, what we believe about GOD.

Jon writes:Admittedly, this degree of faith is a little 'weak'; the GOD involved is not well defined and there are no statements of knowledge involved with the belief.

Jon writes:I don't know why my significant other would have any role in this.

Jon writes:I think the thing that motivated me to start this thread was the conflict between the belief I feel compelled to have and the logic that tells me it is no good.

Of course it's faith but the hope is that it is a reasonable faith.

Jon writes:What I said was: "And my conception is that science and theology have nothing to do with one another. They cannot agree or disagree because they simply never deal with the same ting." The two aren't incompatible.

Jon writes:I don't think faith requires evidence. Science requires evidence. If you have evidence for something, it is silly to say you think it is true as a matter of faith.I do think faith requires some reasoning, though. Your faith should make sense both in relation to itself and in relation to its role in your life.

phat writes:Does GOD make sense? Does Jesus being alive in communion with the hearts of willing humanity make sense?

Jon writes:Those are your beliefs. And, no, they don't make a damn bit of sense to me.

Jon writes:I thought at least one aspect of my faith was clear when I said "I have identified myself as an Agnostic Theist."

You know what it means to be a Theist, right?

jar,in another topic writes:Christianity is about doing what Christ commanded us to do; to heal the sick, comfort the sorrowful, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, teach the children to think critically.
It is not just about the benefits, the "what's in it for me". It's about taking up a cross and trying to do what is right.

Nicene Creed writes:I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

nwr writes:There is no reason that God would write a book of lies. For that matter, there is no reason that God would write a book at all. As Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks. (Apparently those are part of the words of a song).I grew up in an evangelical Church. People would commonly speak of the Bible as "The word of God." However, I took that to be a metaphor, not a statement of authorship. I suggest that you consider doing the same.Let me expand a little on my history. As a young child, my mother would drag us (me and my siblings) off to the Anglican church that she attended. I hated it. I found it excruciatingly boring. So one day I asked "Do I have to go?" I guess that upset the apple cart. After some family discussion, I was given a choice. I either go with my mother, or I attend some other local church. So I tried an evangelical church that was just down the street. And that was not nearly as boring, perhaps because they encouraged me to read the Bible for myself instead of just listening to sleep-inducing sermons. The best historical evidence seems to support that viewpoint. I recently came across a blog post that asks the same question Why trust the Bible?. I considered commenting on that blog, but decided not to.It is the wrong question. Both you, and the owner of that Doubting Thomas blog, are asking whether or why you can trust the Bible. But what would you thereby be trusting?As I see it, the proper question should be "How can I trust the Bible?" That is to say, what is the appropriate way for me to read and understand the Bible, in a way that I can trust it.I'm a mathematician (and computer scientist). It never occurred to me that I should "trust" my mathematics text books. Likewise, it never occurred to me that I should trust mathematical theorems that are published in research journals. If I want to know whether a theorem is true, I must work through the proof, make sure that I understand the proof, and come to my own conclusion on whether the theorem is true. Such decisions are too important to be a matter of trusting the author.I guess one way of putting that, is that I trusted the math textbooks and the teachers to provide guidance for the direction that my study should take. But I did not trust them to settle questions of truth. I had to settle the truth questions for myself.I'll put it to you that the same holds about the Bible. It is up to you to read it, to understand it, and to decide for yourself the truth question. Use the Bible as a guide for the directions that you should go. But you have to settle the questions of truth for yourself.

jar writes:If someone is going to take the position that God actually wrote the Bible or controlled the content of the Bible then I don't see how that person could possibly come to any conclusion other than that God is either a liar or a fool.There are simply far too many stories in the Bible that are absolutely refuted by the evidence in this universe that the same God supposedly created, for example the two or more mutually exclusive flood stories. Either God wrote the stories wrong or God falsified the evidence. Either of those make that God a cheat at best or simply incompetent.
So faced with such conflicts I find my best choice, most reasonable choice, is to try to determine which is most likely.It's possible of course that God is some Loki like or Coyote like trickster that did fudge the evidence that is this universe. It's possible that God just faked the genetic bottleneck evidence, hid all the evidence of a world-wide flood during the time humans have been on earth, placed fake artificially aged human remains that show humans all over the world tens and hundreds of thousands of years before the Garden of Eden existed.I can not see any reason to worship such a God.Or it's possible that God created the universe just as it appears and that just humans wrote the Bible. It's possible that those humans did the best they could with their limited knowledge to describe using tales and fables their understanding of the world and their relationship with their fellow man and their understanding of God. If that is the case then we should be able to see God and morality and culture evolve over time in the stories, and that's pretty much what we see.

Phat writes:Does Jesus being alive in communion with the hearts of willing humanity make sense?

Ringo writes:The evidence is against it.

Stile writes:What you believe comes along the same lines as how you feel. You feel what you feel. You believe what you believe. You are the ultimate and final judge when it comes to how you identify with such things.

Stile writes:Feelings are the most powerful force to a human mind. They are at their most powerful when not connected to the physical world.
Whether that's good or bad is determined by what we do with those feelings.

razd writes:Logically the rational position is open-minded skepticism.