A serious question for Atheists (and I guess christians as long as you dont push your beliefs on me)?

Question

I had more of a statement then a question a little while ago.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtPPlU1K9hYXvjJyDBH8OZzsy6IX?qid=20060728140352AAoYsUk

One out of the many answers actually made me think... alot.
"Sounds likes me just before I became an Atheist. Whoever wrote that is one step away, maybe two if you count the Agnostic phase."

Let me tell you what I belive in:

I don't belive that the bible was this otherworldly book that was written by man with the power of god to instruct us on how to live our lives. I think it was a great story told that has been interpreted in many different ways (hence the different religions)

I DO belive that there is something... another plane of exsistance after we die. Not some supreme being that is going to judge me and smite me for what i've done in my life.

I Belive in MY god, a god that gives me the power to make my own decisions and belive what I want to and won't condem me for what I felt was the right decisions to make in my life.

The question is what label does this put me under. considering i don't follow your typical christian beliefs.

Sorry, it took me a tad to get to this part. had to break it up in 3 different parts)

Answer 1

Deism makes a lot of sense.

http://www.deism.com/


Is Deism a form of atheism? No. Atheism teaches that there is no God. Deism teaches there is a God. Deism rejects the "revelations" of the "revealed" religions but does not reject God.

Much of the evil in the world could be overcome or removed if humanity had embraced our God-given reason from our earliest evolutionary stages. After all, all the laws of nature that we've discovered and learned to use to our advantage that make everything from computers to medicine to space travel realities, have existed eternally. But we've decided we'd rather live in superstition and fear instead of learning and gaining knowledge. It's much more soothing to believe we're not responsible for our own actions than to actually do the hard work required for success.

Deism doesn't claim to have all the answers to everything, we just claim to be on the right path to those answers. >

Answer 2

I think that nobody can possibly know or give you the right answer, it is something you need to find for yourself instead of influencing yourself with other's perspectives. I personally am not certain there will be a very typical end of the world. I just think some natural disaster or calamity, some virus or disease, or perhaps even mass-spread war, or even insane, excessive pollution, would kill off mankind like the dinosaurs were killed off. Then, we'll be all filed off to wherever people go when they die. I really love the idea of heaven and hell, but at the same time I feel it's almost self-important to think that there just HAS To be more to being human. That the second we croak there MUST be another chance, another life somewhere. Through evolution humanity's selfishness towards itself and the fact that people are deep thinking mammals we ended up having to justify and explain everything. A couple thousand years ago Egyptians believed your soul is weighed against the weight of a feather and nary a sin would tip the scale and you would go to the horrible hell that they foresaw. Since then and probably before then, every civilization under the sun came up with some sort of faith to justify their existence and to keep people in line and keep them behaving.

I've been raised catholic but I will never assume that my religion is one hundred percent correct because I don't KNOW. I cannot possibly be selfish enough to think that a human, which is a speck in the massive cosmos, would understand anything about god or how things work. We've barely figured out or own bodies and what makes up the air and the sea, it's nearly impossible to think we have even reached a religious understanding. Thousands of years from now our religious faiths will be seen as a joke just like we see the ancient Greek's and the ancient Egyptian's faiths.

However, I still like to believe that I should be good and kind and a wonderful person because something great is waiting for me, but I know that in the course of time and the events of life and history, my own religious feelings will become archaic. But without the motivation to believe that some fatherlike figure in the sky is watching us and there is a wonderful world of clouds and goodness waiting for me, I don't think I'd be bothering as much. Since as a human my brain still needs answers and reasons, and I am not like a dog where I blindly obey and do not question the world and there is no need for the complexity of fath.

I don't like to close my mind. I think calling oneself "saved" is rather interesting because, as I said, there is no way to know what is really out there. Nobody has ever been documented to have come back and to have told the truth. Paranormal research does seem to show there are spirtiual energies, and even I dare say "ghosts" but every ghost and every Ouija board has said something different and its weird and hard to say what influences these "spirits" to speak and what is behind them - perhaps its all the listener's inner self creating it. There are no answers to such questions.

Answer 3

Thats fine to think that way and I felt the same way 26 years of my Life ,all religions were the same to me and whatever anybody else believes was fine , and untill you have an actuall exsperience with the true God (20000 religions how could they all be right ) your life has not begone ,Its simple really ,so simple a child could understand yet God blinds the eyes of those who dont believe ,Who he picks and chooses is his right and believe me if he is putting a call on your life you will have no choice in the matter and it sounds like he has been calling for a long time , Open the Door and ask him from your heart to show you if hes real , Hes real my friend and someday we ALL will bend one knee before him and confess that Jesus Is Lord maybe not everyone in this life ,but it will Happen and its a promise ,By the way don:t you think its strang that out of every so called god there is, only The name of Jesus is used in vain

Answer 4

I find that very interesting. I would say a Deist- someone who believes God has no input in everyday lives of humans but is a being of the Universe. I also would reccomend some of the wonderful Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism which are much more accepting and free.
You don't have to label yourself as anything, that's what I think.

Answer 5

I believe man (human) enters a flawed world and existence that is a physical world. I believe God exist and is Spirit but much more than Spirit but is so powerful and such that it is beyond human comprehension for us to understand just who or what God is. I believe to be human is to have a physical body but an eternal, created spirit contained within. I also believe that the Judgment of God is against sin and not against specific people and even good as well as bad people cannot meet God's requirements. I see the Bible as writings by men but directed what to write through revelations from God and that it is through the written word that God reveals His message to those that seek Him. No one is forced to make that decision for it's a free decision that man can make based upon evidence that he has at hand. I further believe that God reaches out to each person that will be open and seek Him and make evident to them that He is real and exist and that comes not from the physical world as in a voice but from the spiritual world through the inner spirit that exist within each person. Only then does a person know for real that it is real and exist and not though someones persuasion. Other thoughts about this are posted on my blogsite
http://acaseforinsanity.blogspot.com/

Answer 6

The way I see it.

All things considered, the answerer has already conceived and formulated the situation of how it is going to happen. This is not unlike a Christian or anyone with absolute faith in how it will all end.

The only thing left to do is to wait and see -- unless he / she changes his / her mind.

The alternative is to keep an open mind and make a decision at the last moment right before he / she is to find out -- or not...

Answer 7

You seem like a thoughtful, intelligent person who, like most of humanity throughout the ages, wants to know the answer to "the big question".

I'll tell you, I have my own questions, sometimes. For me it boils down more to hope.

However, if we are intellectually honest, we keep searching for the answers. And for me, if I do believe in God, then it only makes sense that he would communicate throughout history with his creation. If that is so, then the Bible and the Lord's Passion only make sense. Also, the church he came to establish that replaces the old covenants.

You might try an intellectual lay movement called Communion and Liberation for some of your searching.

Life is a journey. Enjoy.

Answer 8

Despite human nature to group and identify people as units ... every Christian practices their own version of Christianity ... their God is different than the God other Christians worship. The same applies to every other religion or belief system ... subtle differences exist at an individual level.

So basically, there are 6,000,000,000+ people ... and there are 6,000,000,000+ different religions or systems of belief. So don't concern yourself with needing to identify or group yourself into an organized region ... you're more than free to simply be an individual, and ... even if you did group yourself with others, you'd still be an individual.

Answer 9

Thank you for being another like-minded person. You're a rare breed (especially on the bible stuff).
I consider the bible to be somewhat like Aesops Fables... A story with a moral to try to live your life by, NOT take word for word.

I believe in being good for the sake of being good to my fellow mankind... not for some ultimate reward.

Answer 10

God instructions us to train are ideals, Christians do plenty of charity and caring for our associates if Christ did not come and push his reality on us the sector could be plenty worse then it's. I feel your flawlessly satisfactory with Satanists who could simply as quickly consume your spleen as seem at you, rape your other halves, and molest your kids. I wager you would be plenty happier residing in that style of worldwide huh??? Real Christians who do as Jesus taught simplest do well, had been commanded to like our enemies, now not to pass judgement on, now not to sentence, to not kill and so on..... But for the second when you consider that I'm in poor health of @ssholes such as you striking down Christ...You can suck a dick!

Answer 11

Forget religion.

Christ is the path of salvation.
Christ is the truth of God's Word.
Christ is the life eternal.

Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Christ is the tree of life.

Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: