Originally Posted by
UKShootist
There is an old Yorkshire saying "Believe half of what you see and nowt (nothing) of what you hear." My first response is to challenge the concept of 'belief' without foundation. By definition, an agnostic does not believe. The simple fact is, I don't know. If we can only discuss here our (your?) beliefs then this is little more than an echo chamber. I certainly do not just not want to believe but I refuse point blank to believe what I do not find credible. There is an attitude creeping in here of the pupil in class asking the teacher to explain something and who promptly gets beaten for not just learning it by rote. The cheek of wanting to actually understand.
Now, to return to the subject of "I don't know" it is my nature to try and find out. The first lesson I am instructed in amounts to "Because it says so in this book". OK, I read the book. Then I find out who wrote it, it's sources, which parts were left out, which were put in, and who decided which was which and why. The only answer can be that is is a work of man. Parts of it, indeed most of at least the New Testament may even be factual. Consider this, a thought has just occurred to me, how much weaker would the Catholic Church, the representative of Christianity for nearly two millennia, be politically if it had just concerned itself with the New Testament and the works of Jesus rather than relying upon the hellfire and damnation of the Old Testament? And it is quite certain that the Catholic Church is nothing if not political.
We are given all the evidence we ever need? I discuss such subjects with many people of all faiths and persuasions, as far as it is possible for me. Evidence then. For 32 years of my life my work, and much of my life, has been concerned with finding evidence. I was paid well to do this. I understand evidence. How many times in the course of those years do you imagine I might have listened to someone insist that I must believe them for no other reason than they say a thing is so and what's more their friends all say more or less the same story when there is not a shred of proof?
"It says so in this book", the final 'proof' people will offer. They will say that there is endless supporting evidence to prove what the book says, but this is mostly found in their book, of course. But what of the other books? Muslims will cite proofs of the Koran with the same absolutist conviction and as much, or little, 'evidence' as those citing the Bible, or the Book of Mormon, and may even be willing to die defending their beliefs.
So, how do I, who doesn't know but who would rather like to find out, choose who to believe when there are so many? When as a student I ask one who would be a teacher a question about their teachings that seem to me to have no rational basis in truth that rather than address that question I am metaphorically beaten by that teacher for questioning his teachings which much to my surprise, seems to be your current approach.
I have frequently posted the reasons for my doubts but it seems that my words become invisible in the face of the certainty of the faithful because they contradict blind faith and cannot therefore be even worth the reading. It is a fact that I will never, can never, believe the Story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden as anything other than allegorical. Same goes for Noah's flood. The sheer variety of denials about the age of the Earth, dinosaur fossils etc. means I cannot give any credence at all to anything said about it by anyone seeking to prove the Biblical version.
In the face of this conflict of opinions, I cannot call it conflict of evidence, all from learned, devout, people, all disagreeing on so much, I, a mere mortal of limited intellect (as are we all) am supposed to make a leap of faith which will be nothing more than the intellectual equivalent of tossing a coin and decide to believe in one of these many options. No. It's simply not good enough.
Here is my faith, for what it's worth. IF there is a God, IF He happens to be along the lines quoted in the Bible, and IF He feels the need to judge me, then any God worthy of the name will judge me on more than if I just professed a blind faith in his existence.