While this post follows a series of other threads I’m throwing this out here as a curiosity sort of thing to see if its possible to determine what the broad scope of faith view is on this board. I’m just curious as to what people’s experiences are and if they’re willing to share--not in debate as to validity of denomination, but to see roughly as a snapshot how we (SFReader posters) shake out across a spectrum. I’m curious to know more about the people I post with.

Since I’m curious and since many people view this as an intensely personal issue, I’ll share first as a gesture of good faith (no pun intended) while trying to avoid being overly self-indulgent. Here goes:

Like Alice Cooper and Jesse James I am the son of a Baptist preacher. Not just a baptist but a *Southern* baptist. Fire-and-brimstone theology, dancing is a sin, probably (thought not explicitly stated) a sympathy to the concept that the earth is 6 thousand years old.

As a result I was an enthusiastic atheist by the time I was 16.

I remained so, devouring books on the subject especial about objectivism, during a 2 year period. By the time I joined the army though something was gnawing at me and my position had changed more to resemble “hard” agnosticism.

By the time I was done with my experiences in the military I was outwardly a “soft” agnostic and subconsciously a “believer” in “something.” Then I met my wife who’ve I’ve gushed on about at length across different threads so I’ll avoid a repeat. Suffice to say I was stunned a person of her education and intellect would hold so devoutly to a faith--and one so rigorously defined--. i.e. not a generic ‘spirituality‘.

Long story somewhat shorter, we stopped the social activities of our youth as bad for our liver and started going to a church once we‘d been married for a year or three.

The church was a denomination under the umbrella of Methodism. Methodism as the name applies tries to come “from a method” and its tenants were: faith + reason. Man has a rational mind, he should apply it in all aspects of his life and faith is not aside from this somehow.

This was a *crazy* concept for a son of a southern baptist and former atheist. Reason is not the province of bible thumpers! What the hell?! Then I discovered something stunning to me (but probably not to people raised in other traditions than the one I was) and that was that the pastors had degrees, they had educations. My first pastor held a Masters in Archeology. My second a PhD in Theology and not from some church sponsored seminary but from Yale University.

The net result is that I heard no Oral Roberts/Jerry Fawell/Pat Roberts/etc type sermons. No 50-ft Jesus. No 9/11 was god’s wrath for America tolerating gays. No 6 thousand year old earth. I also learned that many of the “gotcha” questions I had come up with as an Angry Young Man atheist and devotee of Ann Rand were hardly knew and that they were central questions addressed by people in theology--not avoided, not unanswered and not immutable, but actively pursued.

Which then lead me to realize something about myself. When I didn’t believe I didn’t pursue knowledge. I only sought out material that reinforced my position and that flaw in myself wasn’t limited to theology. Now, I find I don’t read many atheistic arguments so the reverse is true, with the central caveat being that I did at one time.

Then one day my faith was tested.

K, don't worry. The incident did help me understand that faith and the faithful are seperate.

I also think it situationally ironic that Gustav and I are sitting in almost exactly the same place--though seperated by years. Unexcited agnostics about to marry intelligent Catholics = his present and my 10 year past.

I'm curious to see where he'll be in five years and after the birth of children as our "start" point is so superficially similar.

I've had some experiences that have left me less-than-satisfied with organized religion.  I was raised a Catholic, but oddly enough my mother is really some sort of atheist-agnostic-Christ is an alien sort (whichever she feels like at the moment, apparently).  I always questioned the idea that you must seek God through a priest, and that you will only be forgiven your sins if you confess them to a priest, so I found that I was rather comfortable attending an Episcopal Church when I started dating the woman who would become my wife.

I also appreciated that Episcopal priests have lives and families outside of the church.  I always questioned the relevance of a priest preaching family values when he has no real family of his own.  How can a priest really know about marriage and having children, for instance, if he has never done it?

However, I am a bit of a traditionalist, and do like that the Episcopal church does mass and communion.  Somehow it doesn't feel like church to me without mass and communion.  I like the ceremony.

Anyway, I was happy with my wife's church until they tranferred in a new priest.  The old priest was nice and friendly.  The newer one made it clear that he disliked children, and he felt that if children misbehaved, they should be made to sit with strangers.

What?  I'm not letting my child sit by someone I don't know.  My child was well-behaved.  I do have an issue with blanket statements being made about the behaviour of children when my child is innocent.  If he had a problem, he should have dealt specifically with the ones creating the problem.  (Aren't the children the future of the church anyway?)

Well, I had told my wife this guy was a former Catholic.  Come to find out, I was right.  We actually know people who knew him when he was a Catholic, and apparently he hated children even back then.  He told one girl that she was going to burn in Hell because she had lied to her parents.  Wait a minute?  Wasn't he supposed to be forgiving her sins?

Another thing about the Catholic church - my grandmother would dutifully send in her "donations" even though she felt she wasn't well enough to actually attend church.  I never heard her say a priest ever came to visit her at home.  They'll take your money readily enough, but don't ask for any favours in return.

And I've heard plenty of horror stories about various couples and their nightmares trying to get married in the Catholic Church.  How about being told you must meet with the organist on a certain date, regardless of the fact that you are working on that date, and, oh, by the way, miss this or any other meeting and I won't perform the ceremony?

And then there's the fact that my daughter briefly went to a Catholic School (public schools around here weren't an option, and we couldn't afford the ritzy girls' school), but she didn't even know who the twelve apostles were!  Not only was she practically falling asleep from boredom during math lessons, she wasn't even being taught anything religious! 

Right now, I attend church once in a while.  After the problems with tranferred priests we left the one church, only to end up at another rather rogue parish that wanted to do morning prayer instead of mass.  I became quite disillusioned with the Episcopal Church after our bishop became vocally opposed to the ordination of a gay bishop.  Again, what about accepting other for who they are, forgiving sins, turning the other cheek, and all that sort of "good Christian" stuff?  (The first things that seems to be forgotten in these debates are the whole core ideals of Chritianity itself.)  However, they retired our bishop, and the new one seems more reasonable.  Now we just have to find a convenient local church (they eventually closed the church that we used to attend).

Now, I know there are bad seeds everywhere, and there are critics of each and every branch of every world religion.  I just know what I'm most comfortable with.

As for the belief in something higher - I've said before that I've had too many weird experiences to deny the existence of something else.  I truly believe I've felt both good and evil, beyond just the good and evil that men do.  I also truly believe that all religions have at least a grain of truth.  They all serve a purpose, although that purpose can be twisted and corrupted.

edit: DB wasn't glossing over your great post, we just cross pollinated. Strange that so many people involved, in one form or another, with baptists and ecspecially southern baptist should be here on this board--mostly because I've always seen it as a small set compared to others. Maybe I was misinformed.

My parents were Church of England and regular churchgoers, but weren't fanatical about it; I don't recall ever discussing religion with them. I went to Sunday School and to church with them into adolescence, but can only recall positively being a believer in my mid-teens. This phase only lasted a year or so, after which I drifted into agnosticism. I've basically stayed there ever since (and I'm now in my late 50s), except that my views have firmed up over the years.

There was no life-changing reason for this. I simply put it down to being educated in critical thinking: logical analysis and assessing evidence. When I applied these standards to religion, I found nothing there I could believe in, no reason to believe in any of it.

My attitude to religious belief in others depends on its nature. I have no argument with those believe that there is a spiritual side to life, or who believe that there is a supreme creator who kicked off the whole universe-formation exercise for reasons which we could never understand. Maybe that's true, although I can't believe in it personally because there's no evidence for it. If people want to believe that there is a God who cares for them personally, then that's fine with me. I can see that it would be a great psychological help in times of stress. I can also see that belief in an afterlife would be a great comfort, especially to those with a terminal illness. I respect those who devote their lives to helping others as a result of their beliefs. I just don't feel the faintest twinge of belief myself.

As readers of religious threads here may have gathered, I do get - well, I suppose "puzzled and incredulous" would be the politest term - about how intelligent, well-educated people can believe that the world (and presumably the whole universe) is just 6,000 years old, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I won't say more about that because expressing what I honestly feel about it would only cause grave offence to those who believe it. But I have no restraint about condemning those who try to pretend that there is scientific support for completely unscientific beliefs, and who use that to try to corrupt the scientific education of our young.

Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

I think it's hard to discuss religion without having emotions get involved.  How does the old saying go?  Two things you never want to discuss with people are religion and politics.

Me, I think intelligent people can discuss religion intelligently as long a certain level of respect for the beliefs of others is maintained.

To get back to the idea of faith - for the faithful, faith assumes a willingness to believe without prove positive, something completely contrary to the scientific method.  The whole concept of "faith" is contrary to the concept of "science".  That's why it is so hard to reconcile "faith" with "science", and "belief" often becomes a matter of one or the other.

Personally, I'll take a bit of both, thank you very much.  But then again, I'm strange.