religion and faith (also long)

[pilliwinks]

I agree that God must know that many are skeptical by nature and nurture. My impression is that he is not bothered by this, but is sad, because although the maturity of thought is welcome, for many of these folk the loss of innocence has made them cynical as well as skeptical, and that is a poor kind of life.

The bible indicates that God has no problems with skepticism, on the contrary we are exhorted to test everything (1Thess 5:21). I guess the problem comes if you are unable/unwilling to accept results that are challenging.

From what you've said it seems that biblical stories are unlikely to count for much for you, nor emotional outpourings from charismatic televangelists. But I recommend reserving judgement until you try out your skepticism on people working for the Salvation Army. I know they're far from being the only selfless volunteers, but the combination of enthusiastic faith and practical hard work achieves concrete things that challenge the view that these are just made up stories.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that God must know that many are skeptical by nature and nurture. My impression is that he is not bothered by this, but is sad, because although the maturity of thought is welcome, for many of these folk the loss of innocence has made them cynical as well as skeptical, and that is a poor kind of life.

The bible indicates that God has no problems with skepticism, on the contrary we are exhorted to test everything (1Thess 5:21). I guess the problem comes if you are unable/unwilling to accept results that are challenging.

From what you've said it seems that biblical stories are unlikely to count for much for you, nor emotional outpourings from charismatic televangelists. But I recommend reserving judgement until you try out your skepticism on people working for the Salvation Army. I know they're far from being the only selfless volunteers, but the combination of enthusiastic faith and practical hard work achieves concrete things that challenge the view that these are just made up stories.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not particularly cynical about religous people, one of the finest most decent human beings I know is a vicar.

and I've talked with many including salvation army and similar hard-working people whose hard work, entusiasm and dedication is very impressive. Nothing suggests that they have any special access to the truth, they're just decent people with a strong faith. I've also met similarly impressive people with no faith.

I have noticed a strong correlation between decent religous people, and a willingness to concede that their religous beliefs are a matter of faith (some claim private experiences as well). This may be some sort of bias on my part.

As many of these decent enthusiastic hard working people have different (or no) religon, then there's no way a benevolent god could only reward the ones who happen to have the right beliefs - to argue otherwise would be truly cynical.

chez