Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Is "I am agnostic" a valid answer to "Do you beleive in god?"

Aurakles · 11-11-2005, 11:28 AM

It's strange, I've been a lurker for quite sometime, but did not decide to register until today and navigated my way to this particularly topic. I say strange because somewhere between my daily cup of ambition and barbed-wired biscuit soundbites, I was queried about my religion. I loathe to call myself an agnostic, though it is how people usually place me. Well...I don't have a belief system per se. I know that's hard for some people to accept or understand, but the word "belief" probably needs to be expanded here. Most, if not all, belief systems are very static and unchanging. Moreover, we are born with them; we begin to learn about them before we become conscious; they are, no matter what we think of them now, an intimate belonging of our being; they inform our consciousness, our language, and our dreams. We can turn away from them or against them, but that would only bind us tightly to a reduced version of them.

With that said, I find that most organized religions are bureaucracies that place a distance between humans and their creator(s), if there is such a thing. I accept all possibilities, but I am also skeptical of all of them, even my own reduced versions of them. I try to understand the world through critical analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and skepticism. Once I achieve a certain understanding and agreement with a given tenet, I practice that. If, for instance, I understand that love is the answer, as cliché and trite as that sounds, then I practice love. Equally important, I am completely comfortable with the ironic, meaning that I accept the notion that uncertainty is the only certainty. Most people cannot accept that and thus cling to some form of certainty, which most religions provide.

I am simply not an evangelist. I am not concerned with corrupting people with my ideologies. I am far too skeptical of my own thinking to market my ideas. If anything, I believe in infinite possibilities, while remaining skeptical of those very possibilities. I am also not concerned with what is before me or what is behind me, but rather with what is within me. I am intimately concerned with growing and learning. I am retroactively introspective, so my ideas vacillate on a daily, if not, hourly basis. My religion is change, and the only thing I am afraid of is losing that potential. I don't want to arrive at 50 with the same ideas I had at 25, for I would have wasted half my life. Besides, if I am concerned with progress, I cannot achieve that without change, and if I cannot change my mind then I cannot change anything.

11-11-2005, 11:28 AM	#76 (permalink)
Aurakles Crazy Location: behind open eyes	It's strange, I've been a lurker for quite sometime, but did not decide to register until today and navigated my way to this particularly topic. I say strange because somewhere between my daily cup of ambition and barbed-wired biscuit soundbites, I was queried about my religion. I loathe to call myself an agnostic, though it is how people usually place me. Well...I don't have a belief system per se. I know that's hard for some people to accept or understand, but the word "belief" probably needs to be expanded here. Most, if not all, belief systems are very static and unchanging. Moreover, we are born with them; we begin to learn about them before we become conscious; they are, no matter what we think of them now, an intimate belonging of our being; they inform our consciousness, our language, and our dreams. We can turn away from them or against them, but that would only bind us tightly to a reduced version of them. With that said, I find that most organized religions are bureaucracies that place a distance between humans and their creator(s), if there is such a thing. I accept all possibilities, but I am also skeptical of all of them, even my own reduced versions of them. I try to understand the world through critical analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and skepticism. Once I achieve a certain understanding and agreement with a given tenet, I practice that. If, for instance, I understand that love is the answer, as cliché and trite as that sounds, then I practice love. Equally important, I am completely comfortable with the ironic, meaning that I accept the notion that uncertainty is the only certainty. Most people cannot accept that and thus cling to some form of certainty, which most religions provide. I am simply not an evangelist. I am not concerned with corrupting people with my ideologies. I am far too skeptical of my own thinking to market my ideas. If anything, I believe in infinite possibilities, while remaining skeptical of those very possibilities. I am also not concerned with what is before me or what is behind me, but rather with what is within me. I am intimately concerned with growing and learning. I am retroactively introspective, so my ideas vacillate on a daily, if not, hourly basis. My religion is change, and the only thing I am afraid of is losing that potential. I don't want to arrive at 50 with the same ideas I had at 25, for I would have wasted half my life. Besides, if I am concerned with progress, I cannot achieve that without change, and if I cannot change my mind then I cannot change anything. __________________ Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.