Where I'm at...

[_CaliforniaKid]

I just had a few thoughts while chatting with Don that I thought I'd write down as much for my benefit as for anybody else's.

I'm at a stage in my life where I don't find a whole lot of use in the Bible, except the New Testament portions that enjoin some good moral principles and serve as a useful guide for life. Certainly I can no longer see it as a ground for religious authority; my confidence in it has been too altogether shattered for that. I do think it is extremely useful as a pointer to the religion of Jesus Christ, but then I have no clear picture formed in my mind as to what the significance of the historical Jesus Christ is for me. I think my sojourn among the histories of the Mormons, with all their spirituality and morality mixed with utter charlatanry have shaken my confidence even in the person of Jesus. When I ask myself what sets Jesus apart from other prophets wo have made extraordinary claims, I find myself at a loss to give any cogent answer. Certainly Jesus has a powerful hold on my consciousness, but I don't know if I could claim that he is divine or even-- in light of his apparent pretensions to divinity-- a true prophet (whatever that means). I also find myself intellectually ambivalent about the existence of God. I can't marshal much evidence one way or the other. So I guess that, at a purely logical level, I am an agnostic.

Having said that, what I feel does not accord with what I think. I feel that there is some God or cosmic plan out there guiding all of this. I feel a need to have a community. I feel a need to make a difference. I feel a need to abide by at least some of the moral strictures that are so a part of who I am. And I feel that a life lived according to purely abstract intellectual reflections is too boring to really be worth it.

So what I've decided is to adopt a sort of compromise. I suspend my disbelief with respect to the existence of God and divinity of Jesus and live my life according to my feelings... a sort of functional theism. I think I will be happier doing so than living a functional atheism. But at the same time, I reject evangelicalism, and I find grounds for my ethics in utilitarianism as well as in theism. And finally, I argue for a liberal theology that I think is more coherent than the prevalent fundamentalist model. This last bit makes me slightly uncomfortable, since an agnostic doing theology seems really, well, bizarre, but the level to which I have suspended my disbelief I think leaves me room to do so.

It's a weird feeling to sort of stand outside myself and analyze myself this way. This must be what an NDE feels like. But anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm playing a sort of cognitive dissociation game that allows me to be unsure about some things but not to be paralyzed by it. I plan to live life passionately. If I argue for a theological perspective, it will be passionately. If I pursue an ethical course of action it will be passionately. If I participate in the life of a religious community it will be passionately. If at the end of the day I stand outside myself and ask, "do I really believe all this?" I may have to answer that I don't know... but I'm gonna try and be ok with that.

[_bcspace]

I suspend my disbelief with respect to the existence of God and divinity of Jesus

If I believe that God exists, I have to ask myself "which God?" which leads to "which religion/philosophy/church?" and is it on the earth?

[_CaliforniaKid]

I suspend my disbelief with respect to the existence of God and divinity of Jesus

If I believe that God exists, I have to ask myself "which God?" which leads to "which religion/philosophy/church?" and is it on the earth?

I have asked which God, and I have to answer that if it is any God then it better be the good one, because otherwise it's a shot in the dark anyway and there's probably not even an afterlife at all. A good God would have to be one that doesn't mind all that much which church you attend, so the "which church" question gets answered for me in terms of where I fit and can do the most good.

[_KimberlyAnn]

CaliforniaKid, I think I am where you are. :)

I'd expand on that a bit, if I weren't so darn tired!

KA

[_moksha]

It's a weird feeling to sort of stand outside myself and analyze myself this way. This must be what an NDE feels like. But anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm playing a sort of cognitive dissociation game that allows me to be unsure about some things but not to be paralyzed by it. I plan to live life passionately. If I argue for a theological perspective, it will be passionately. If I pursue an ethical course of action it will be passionately. If I participate in the life of a religious community it will be passionately. If at the end of the day I stand outside myself and ask, "do I really believe all this?" I may have to answer that I don't know... but I'm gonna try and be ok with that.

Barring William Butler Yeats poem The Second Coming, where he postulates that:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Mining and refining your own beliefs is a commendable thing. Go boldy! There is a lot of wisdom out there to be had in the various faith traditions and philosophies. Feel free to pick and choose. The process will result in what is right and authentic for you.

[_Sethbag]

CaliforniaKid, here's something to chew on. People are real. We can argue all day and night about theology, and theories about God, and whatever afterlife there may or may not be, or about what this God might want from us, and what he might look like, and so forth. But these are all just abstract notions, while people are real. People exist, on this planet called Earth.

If you want to be the most effective in your life, I'd suggest that you keep your focus on what you know is real, which is people. If your morality is people-centric, rather than abstract theory about God centric, I predict you'll find the most satisfaction, the most joy, the most fulfillment, and feel like your life was most worth it in the end.

You've admitted you have no idea what's real in the world of abstract religious argument anyhow. Run with it. Forget the abstract, unprovable, unknowable, and stick with what's real.

[_Polygamy Porter]

Merc said it well back in his Vegas dayz

"Live your life ethically not morally."

[_Inconceivable]

Thanks Sethbag.

[_Runtu]

I suspend my disbelief with respect to the existence of God and divinity of Jesus

If I believe that God exists, I have to ask myself "which God?" which leads to "which religion/philosophy/church?" and is it on the earth?

Why would you need to ask any of those questions? Suspending disbelief, for whatever reason, is not the same as acknowledging the existence of some particular type of god with a specific religion. Besides, I've asked those questions, and I'm quite sure most Mormons would not be pleased with the answers I got.

As for the OP, I can relate completely. Mormonism in some ways has made me distrust "spiritual" feelings because those feelings quite often testify of things that are demonstrably false. Hence, one can have a testimony that obviously fake scriptures are true and self-absorbed charlatans are true prophets of God. But then to live on purely existentialist and rationalist principles tends toward an empty existence, at least for me. To be happy, I have to acknowledge the feelings of my heart and the yearnings of my soul. On the one hand, my mind and heart are united in their rejection of Mormon notions of truth, but on the other hand I don't know where to turn.

The other day I sat in sacrament meeting, wondering why I couldn't just suspend my disbelief and put myself wholeheartedly back into a belief system that worked so well for me for 40 years. Why not just take the plunge and be a "faithful" high priest again? But as soon as those thoughts crossed my mind, I realized that I cannot suspend disbelief because to do so would be to violate my conscience. So, what to do? I haven't found a belief system I can follow "passionately," as you put it, so for now I choose to live ethically and follow my conscience.

[_AmazingDisgrace]

The other day I sat in sacrament meeting, wondering why I couldn't just suspend my disbelief and put myself wholeheartedly back into a belief system that worked so well for me for 40 years. Why not just take the plunge and be a "faithful" high priest again? But as soon as those thoughts crossed my mind, I realized that I cannot suspend disbelief because to do so would be to violate my conscience. So, what to do? I haven't found a belief system I can follow "passionately," as you put it, so for now I choose to live ethically and follow my conscience.

My experience has been different, in that, for a long time, I didn't care about conscience, or the ethics of belief. All I wanted was the belief. I spent around three years from the time when I first seriously engaged the arguments against the existence of God, to the time when I was able to admit to myself that I really didn't believe.

It was a horrible experience. In moments of honest relection, I acknowledged that I truly did not think that any gods were real, which was always followed by desperate attempts to unthink what I had just thought. Through most of that time, if I could have taken a pill that would erase my memory so I could believe again, I would have done it in a second.

It wasn't only the social or family costs of becoming a nonbeliever - I really wanted God to exist, and I wanted to be a person who believes in Him. This is why I'm baffled when others say that belief is a choice. Maybe for some it really is, but for me, it's a choice I tried to make over and over again that just didn't work. My disbelief wasn't suspended so much as it was hurled into the air until it come crashing down, again and again. Eventually, it just got too heavy.