The Sermon Part 2 (Agnosticism)

by BBella , Sunday, July 27, 2008, 20:12 (5961 days ago) @ dhw

dhw wrote: - <I can&apos;t pray to a force whose nature is so indeterminate. I use the word &quot;can&apos;t&quot;, not &quot;won&apos;t&quot;. A leap of faith would not be confined to acceptance of design (which I think is the limit of reason&apos;s reach) but would require a personal trust. You &quot;have faith in Him&quot; and &quot;can relate to Him in prayer&quot;, and yet you are &quot;not sure how &apos;personal&apos; God is&quot;. You have probably hit on the ideal balance between reason and hope, and I find it very appealing. But the suffering of the world is real, and it provides a constant barrage of evidence which suggests that whether designed or not, the universe doesn&apos;t care. And so I&apos;m faced with the following possibilities: 1) a loving God; 2) a malevolent God; 3) an indifferent God; 4) a God with a dichotomized, human-type nature; 5) no God at all.> - First off, I just wanted to say I&apos;ve just caught up with recent threads; my mom had a heart attack and I have recently been very busy taking care of both parents who are quite elderly. My routine has stabilized a bit lately so I have been able to sneak a peek at the threads, and I thought I&apos;d interject a thought from my own personal perspective on coming to a similar moment in life of what dhw wrote above. After many years seeking to behold the mind of God through religion, philosophy, etc, I came to a conclusion I had wasted many hours and days of my life and had come to be more confused than when I first begun the pursuit. Because my confusion began to overwhelm me at a moment in time of life I felt pressed to the edge of the precipice of life and death...I felt at that moment I had to make a decision for &quot;myself&quot; whether there is or is not a God and what the mind of God, if there is one, would be like. And/or, what mental path to take, thoughts to think, if &quot;I&quot; decided to conclude there was no God. At that moment I could care less about the question of whether I would be right or wrong, I just needed a definite to fixate on to save my life at that moment. I then went down both paths...there is one, there is not one. I could feel my spirit/emotion life when I felt there was one opposed to when I felt there was not one. So I went with there is one. Then I went down the path of whether this God was a god of religion and do this and that, etc, or whether this God is one of what at that moment I called love. And, again, I felt a lifting of my physical emotions when I thought on a God of love opposed to a god of religion. So, from that day forward, I have based my perspective, or opinion, from that platform. Not because it is true...but because it feels as if it is a life promoting thought. So, when it comes to the question of &quot;the suffering of the world&quot; dhw proposed as proof &quot;God/universe does not care,&quot; my personal perspective is that, in some way yet to be perceived way (by many), suffering has it&apos;s place within the concept of God and love. It may have yet to become evident to many at just how that is....yet, I choose to believe it will eventually, at some point, whether here or there (after life) become completely understood. My mind lit on this question and I had to have an answer that could soothe my soul...from my own &quot;chosen&quot; perspective of God and Love. This is the only &quot;answer,&quot; if it could be considered such, that came, and continues to come, to the rescue of this question, for me, of whether God/universe cares. Of course, I do not expect it to soothe any other seeking mind/heart. But, it does soothe mine. - BBella