Howdy!
First found this joint around… ohh, couple years ago actually. Was just offended by all the, the BLASPHEMY I encountered. “My Lord. Is this what philosophy about?” 
Left the place. Had to face down some mighty hard truths–undeniable truths. Underwent my own period of raw skepticism and… somehow, I dunno. Came out the other end quite at peace with the reality that there simply is more a God than there is a Santa Claus, to borrow from our other new member Dork.
Well, best I get on with it, as this is surely turning into quite the long missive. I’m going to share with you something I relayed recently to an old friend who was just on fire with the Holy Spirit. LOL It sums it all well enough; where I am now. It is very nearly a straight cut & paste, so where you see “you” I am addressing him.
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You were inquiring what led me to move away from Christ and the Christian church. Well, it is very simple if you really want to know, but cannot be summed up in just a few words. So grab your favorite drink, please get y’self comfy, and settle in.
History lesson
I evolved spiritually at first. After reading the Bible through, I branched out and read works by such noted authors as Gary Zukav, Deepak Chopra, Wayne W. Dyer, Marianne Williamson (a lovely soul and beautiful writer–you must read “A Return to Love: Reflections on A Course in Miracles”).
DO NOT be fooled by Williamson’s title; it’s a wonderful introduction to modern day, new-age thinking and does well in tying together ALL the world’s religions including Buddhism and Hinduism. It will change how you think–a proposition I rather suspect you’re resistant to, but hey a man can try. 
Sean [his name is Sean], Hinduism is the world’s OLDEST religion, did you know that? Spanning over 4,500 years, long before Christianity was ever born.
Note that this all occurred right about when I hit thirty. Through my thirties, I studied much of Eastern theology, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Lao-Tzu’s Taoism.
Into philosophy
You know Sean, faith stands alone with only one’s beliefs to support it. Therefore, faith by definition is blind: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1, KJV
Old saw, but Sean you may have heard that knowledge is the ultimate enemy of faith. The more you amass, especially in the fields of philosophy and the sciences, the more chinks you’re bound to find in either your chosen faith or that into which you were born.
Modern, freer thinkers (often called, “philosophers”) sit back and coolly observe that the farther science advances, the more any religion or singular conception of “God” must die off.
Faith alone holds no room for reason or logic
For one thing there is absolutely no material evidence that Christianity is any more valid than the myriad of other religions across the world and across the ages. But more importantly, there are various intelligent arguments to be made for the nonexistence of superterrestrial beings, not the least of which the random luck of the draw of who suffers and who doesn’t; who is born where, who is born to suffer and die.
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (have you seen it?) is a perfect modern-day euphemism for the human imagination run amuck; a veritable modern-day allegory of the cave–only these are caves and shadows we construct for ourselves.
Many modern thinkers have used the analogy of leprechauns in the attic [and here I’m stealing from (or citing?) our esteemed and brilliant Polemarchus] to demonstrate the ludicrously of believing in a being or beings whose existence is so starkly improvable except but for… you guessed it.
Faith alone.
Indeed, as I delved deeper into the many disciplines of philosophy, I soon decided that the concept of “God” or god must by any stretch of independent thinking exist only in our minds. For you see, philosophy is the thinking man’s field. Blind faith alone will have you worshiping the sky, the trees, hell even Mother Earth or the mighty sun.
Concluding with Nietzsche and a dollop of Silesius
Religion rests its very foundations upon faith. But it seems to me that either there is a benevolent God or there is no god at all. Certainly not one of benevolence, for 70% of our populated world is one hell of a brutal place. If God exists, then his existence is almost irreconcilable with the aforementioned state of affairs. But to side with Friedrich Nietzsche and say God exists only in our imaginations, that postulation makes more sense to me.
Sean? One of the things I never got, and I as I have mentioned to you, I was a Baptist most of my life, was this “Christ died for our sins so that we could believe in Him, know salvation, and have a shot at taking that straight gate and narrow way to Heaven where streets are lined with gold.”
And live forever.
Crap, it makes no sense.
Some higher being is going to come down, make himself into human form, suffer, die, resurrect himself, let us suffer for a couple thousand MORE years, then return in some grand Rapture just to save the animals (well, human animals) he created in the first place? Hell you might as well tell me there are monster in the woods–or that 72 virgins await me if I become a martyr for a fringe Islamic cause.
You see, we get these teachings from family and they’re passed down from generation to generation. Growing up, the child believes what he receives. Growing into adulthood he or she often finds themselves questioning those very same beliefs, placing them under the acid test of scrutiny, and sometimes–just sometimes–tossing them aside. Most who delve deeply enough into philosophy must cast aside the notion of a benevolent skygod watching over but a few.
Me? Well I’m what you’d correctly describe as a “weak agnostic” (that’s an actual term): I don’t know if there is some skygod watching all this, but I believe we CAN know (“strong agnosticism” dictates that we cannot know one way or the other). And as to my own spiritually, well personally right now I rather take the stance of 17th century poet, hymnist, and philosopher Angelus Silesius.
Robert DeNiro does a brilliant recital of one of his sonnets in the remake of the motion picture, Cape Fear. I recommend you see it (it’s a fantastic movie):
I am like God, and God like me.
I am as large as God.
He is as small as I.
He cannot above me nor I beneath him be.
Silesius subscribed to an arcane form of Pantheism, which essentially holds that God and man alike are as one; that sure, there exists a God but he suffuses all of us and transcends none of us. We are born into divinity; it is a our birthright. After all, we’re here.
It’s a wild idea I’m still working on. Remember Seany: I’ve no answers. Only questions. But the freedom to question allows me to search beyond the walls of any religion.
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That was one month ago. He NEVER wrote back. LOL
-GNJ-
