Faith and Well-Being

For the last several years (six or so?) I have identified myself as an Agnostic Theist. Anyone who reads my posts can probably figure out my beliefs, but here is a blog I started (and stopped) a while back that sums it up:

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"Agnostic Theism"from Secular Religion:

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As an Agnostic Theist, I hold to the belief that knowing GOD is inherently impossible; we can only define, at most, what we believe about GOD.

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Admittedly, this degree of faith is a little 'weak'; the GOD involved is not well defined and there are no statements of knowledge involved with the belief. I've noticed, lately, though a strong desire to strengthen my belief and faith as things go well in my life. A part of me wants to embrace this desire and make stronger proclamations about what I believe in and what I think can be known or said about the GOD I believe in and other religious notions. At the same time, a logical part of me realizes that doing this would be rather hypocritical: to have strong faith in good times and weaker faith in worse times. So, I have resisted this urge on the premise that it would be wrong to give into it.Anyway, I don't think I've ever started a topic to discuss my own faith and belief, but I'm interested in talking about this with the folks here who are maybe more and maybe less faithful than I.Maybe Faith/Belief Forum?

Thread copied here from the Faith and Well-Being thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

It is quite logical that GOD, Creator of all seen and unseen, is far too complex, majestic, and ...well...busy to simply have a casual conversation with. Many Christians (I don't know about agnostic theists ) believe that Jesus is the way to God, and, being God Himself as God the Son, is much more in touch with the thinking process ,motive, complexity and/or simplicity of what it means to be human. So in our conversation, as we discuss GOD I relate to GOD by relating to Jesus Christ, whom I believe to be alive today and with the Father(GOD). That would square well with your prior commitment to being an agnostic theist. Out of curiousity, what think ye of Jesus Christ? Be He alive today...concretely and bodily...or only abstractly and as a character in human literature? I know that your background in religion involved both Christianity and Jehovahs Witness(IIRC) so your ideas about who Jesus is/was might differ from either belief fully.I respect your honesty about having a weak faith at times and a strong faith at other times. Perhaps one question that can be brought up for discussion among our evc brethren is this:Faith in what?Is a mans faith in his own strength and skill? Does it include the relationships that he has in his life and thus include their strength, wisdom, and skill...for example...having faith in a community...or in a family...or in America, or in humanity-at-large?Stile would be the one to agree and expound on that subject. Jar has told us many times his beliefs as well, and I am sure that has influenced you greatly...seeing how you respect jars logic, wisdom, and heart.Perhaps some of what I or zombie ringo or other EvC members have said has also sparked your curiosity and interest. Comments?That Blog that you started was quite good! Everyone should check it out.... Edited by Phat, : added comment about Jons 2011 Blog

Not nearly as hypocritical as the reverse, I think. How supportive is your significant other in this development?

Faith in the things I mentioned, and perhaps even a leaning toward Christian-esque beliefs. I think the thing that motivated me to start this thread was the conflict between the belief I feel compelled to have and the logic that tells me it is no good. The blog was a flop.

I don't know why my significant other would have any role in this.

Sound similar to my agnostic deist position ...

Part of our belief is cultural. We get many of our ideas and feelings about belief from those closest to us, such as our communities,families, and roomies. The other part of our belief is logical and rational and more of an individual personal quality.

When I was young, I never thought about it all much. The idea of God as a graybearded old man in the sky...similar to how cartoonists portray Him...was kinda funny and yet it made sense to a 7 year old. As a teenager I became agnostic and esoteric. Getting high was spiritual enough for me at that stage and the TV Evangelists seemed funny and clownish!(Most still do, by the way )The year that I "got saved" characterized(felt) as an epiphany and an intense awakening of internal awareness of a presence much greater than I---which was reinforced by a charismatic(charismaniacal) church full of tongue talking, hankie waving, demon casting hyper-emotional folks whom I saw at the time to be hyper spiritual.At that time, however, I had a few experiences that I judged to be "real" though unexplainable apart from God. Critics would say that my confirmation bias was repeatedly confirmed and never challenged...which was true. Until I got to EvC Forum. But enough about me...at least for now. WEhat was your early upbringing and how did the people around you contribute to or against your budding curiosity about life in the redneck United States?

Perhaps. Though the use of the Greek term instead of the Latin one does seem to alter the nature of the God in question and the process of finding belief in Him/Her/It.

Considering I didn't know my now girlfriend even existed at the time I became an Agnostic Theist, I do not see her as playing a big role in the development of my faith.Since I believe my logic and reasoning are independent of my feelings about things and people, I also cannot see how she could influence my intellectual (as opposed to spiritual) processes.I was raised as a Christian, a Creationist in fact, and largely lost my Christian faith through my adolescent and teenage years. When I entered college I was almost a full-blown militant Atheist, a feeling strengthened by experiences while in highschool (not actually in school, just during that period of my life) where I was judged negatively due to my lack of belief (the associated events of which experiences led me to EvC).The development of my faith was two pronged:

1. Through careful reasoning I deduced that beliefs and knowledge are separate faculties of thought that can coexist even when their content is contradictory. Courses on logic I took in college further convinced me that this clear and reasoned separation is not only necessary for a healthy belief system but actually leads to stronger less-shakable faith, since my belief and faith are not contingent on the way the world works (hence part of my current dilemma).
2. Events in my personal life led me to believe that there was a GOD that interacted undetectably with the world. In some ways, the very inception of my faith and belief are examples of the conflict I now face, though these few good fortunes no longer form the basis of my belief and there was certainly more to the experiences than just things going well for me at the time.

Prong (1) made prong (2) possible. I now see a complete divorce between my knowledge and my belief with the exception of my personal experiences, which influence both and are the cause of my current conflict between feeling strengthened in my faith and also reasoning that the additional faith is empty, and so not worth my consideration.My logical mind is beating my faith down constantly. And it's not that I'm not afraid to have the additional faith, but just that when (of if) I do develop that faith I want it to be meaningful and deep and not just the product of good times. I believe that strong faith should be preservable in the face of troubling experience; if not then the faith was never real to begin with. I don't want fake faith. I don't want to be a 'reverse Job'.Jon

Personally I don't see a conflict between logic and Christian beliefs. I agree that if you want to take the fundamentalist stance and believe in an inerrant Bible then logic does go out the window.I think that it is best to fully explore your doubts with reason. It makes no sense for God to give us the gift of reason and then not expect us to use it. What I found very affirming of my faith was studying Jesus in His historical environment. Jesus was a 1st century Jew. How would other 1st century Jews understand Him.Within that I found it helpful to put aside the concept of His deity until I better understood Jesus the man. I think that makes sense to do that, , as it is obvious (according to the Gospels) that none of His followers during His life time had any notion of Him being part of the Trinity. They viewed Him as a prophet and the Messiah.In that regard I contend that the foremost Christian historian around today is N T Wright now working from St. Andrew's in Scotland. I have spent countless hours reading what he has written and am just starting his 1600 plus page book all on Paul and his world.Here is a link to a web site that has a great deal of what he has said and written. There are certainly many different understandings of Christianity out there. If you have followed some of my discussions with people like Faith you can see that we are so far apart that essentially we are adherents of different religions.NTWrightPage -I have no doubt that some of the things I believe are wrong but I do have confidence in a couple of things that are foundational. The first thing is that Jesus was bodily resurrected almost 2000 years ago and that God is good, loving and just.If you are considering Christianity you might look into this. There is no early form of Christianity that didn't base their faith on the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I would start by researching what you believe about that because if the resurrection was not an historical event then you are better off joining any other organization that is about serving others. As Paul says, if it didn't happen then we are to be the most pitied.Here is a link to a lecture in written form given by Wright on the resurrection..Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins - NTWrightPageHope this helps

Your significant other would have a role in it if you have elected to share something important to you. The question wasn't intended to be all that complicated. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I don't see a conflict either. The conflict I am having is between knowing that faith that exists only good times is empty faith and weak. It is based on the whims of the world; it is a leaf in the wind.Yet it draws me in though I do not want it. I am not fully convinced that being a Christian requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Obviously as a Christian you feel differently and are perfectly justified in your belief. I've never been particularly impressed with Wright's take on the resurrection:

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N.T. Wright in "Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins":

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Of course, there are several reasons why people may not want, and often refuse, to believe this. But the historian must weigh, as well, the alternative accounts they themselves offer. And, to date, none of them have anything like the explanatory power of the simple, but utterly challenging, Christian one. The historian’s task is not to force people to believe. It is to make it clear that the sort of reasoning historians characteristically employ inference to the best explanation, tested rigorously in terms of the explanatory power of the hypothesis thus generated points strongly towards the bodily resurrection of Jesus; and to make clear, too, that from that point on the historian alone cannot help. When you’re dealing with worldviews, every community and every person must make their choices in the dark, even if there is a persistent rumour of light around the next corner.

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Wright's taking a deistic approach to the question: he believes that religious propositions can be substantiated by appeal to observations in the natural world. My theistic approach is very different; I do not think that the natural world can tell us anything about matters of faith and belief.Of course, I think theistic faith is stronger specifically because it does not rest on the whims of scientific observation. If Wright is basing his faith in the resurrection on the notion that it is substantiated by the historical evidence, then we must ask ourselves what happens to this faith when (of if) new evidence presents itself.And so that would be where I sand: If I ever developed a faith in Jesus and his resurrection, it would not be because I reasoned my way to that faith but because I accepted it on faith.Jon

The the truth is still the truth in good and bad times regardless of our feelings and emotions. It is us that changes and the reality of God is a constant. I think that if we look for a god that is going to solve all of our problems when we want him to, then I suggest that in my experience that isn't how God works. It is all part of free will. If Jesus wasn't resurrected then there is no reason to pay any more attention to Him than any other philosopher, and as a matter of fact less, as it would show Him up as just another failed messiah, and a highly delusional one at that. Wright is anything but a deist. The quote that you looked at is Wright's view as an historian. However, when he puts on his Christian scholar hat on he is very definitely a theistic Christian. For that matter a resurrected Jesus requires a theistic god. Neither I nor Wright would say that theistic faith rests on the whims of scientific observation. However ultimately with perfect theology and perfect science would be congruent.The resurrection was a one time event. Science can only say that we haven't observed anything else like that, and that it is totally unverifiable.
However, theoretically, if science could prove that the resurrection didn't happen then it would be obvious that our faith was misplaced. It is no point in having faith if it is based on an untruth.It is my belief that we should base our faith using scripture, reason and tradition. I see tradition as being the accumulated wisdom of the centuries. Wright approaches faith in that manner.As far as science is concerned I personally view it as a natural theology.I'm going to be away from the computer pretty much for a week so I may not be able to get back to any replies to this for a while.Cheers