So in the midst of all my mind-crunching work, I am having an existential crisis. Intrigued? Well, click on good sir/madam/other
I am agnostic. I think it is possible that there is a god or gods but I simply don't know; I am open to the possibility of any belief system being true, atheism included. My existential crisis is as follows:
Let's say there is a God. The Christians' God, for argument's sake. God is good. God is benevolent. God does not want me to go to hell.
There is a hell. It is a hell for sinners and not believing in God as the one and only true god is a sin - perhaps the worst sin. Those who choose a life of sin are damned for eternity and those who do not believe in the Christians' god live a life of sin.
God is also all-powerful. So, if God wants us to be sinless, why does God not make us sinless? Why does God not create people with complete belief in God and whatever belief system is the correct belief system?
According to the Christians I have talked to, I have to take a leap of faith. I have to choose to believe in God, the end.
I ask again, what is the point of that? It is all-important and yet left to the whims of the imperfect? I am answered, God gave us free will to choose for ourselves. I ask why God gave us the free will to choose God or sin and I am answered that God is ineffable.
But this is not enough for me. I need evidence, proof, because this is a revolutionary life choice, something that will change me and my experience completely. Did God not also allow me the faculties of logic?
But there is no evidence. It is written down and that is all. You choose to guess.
But what if I guess wrong? What if I guess Christianity and Islam is the right choice? What if I guess Islam and the answer was Protestantism? How do I know which to choose? And what if none of them are correct and I change my life for an eternity of oblivion or another religion's purgatory? Should God, the all-knowing and all-powerful, not - at least - provide more evidence than a book that's thousands of years old, translated across multiple languages, and interpreted through people whom it calls imperfect and fallible?
Moreover, isn't that type of thought process incompatible with the type of thought process God requires of us in order to believe in God? How do I know to abandon the former for the latter?
You must take a leap of faith. Guess.
Anyway, many different faiths sustain people in their lives; it feels right for them but for most religions, it is wrong. So why does this:
Anyway, many different faiths sustain people in their lives; it feels right for them but for most religions, it is wrong. So why does this:
end in this, for so many people:
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