Am I, technically, a person of faith?

[Taverner]

I beleive in a God. Or Goddess. Or Force. Or Chi. Or foot. Whatever you want to call he/she/it. I think the universe was the result of a prime mover who willed something out of nothing. The rest is documented in science, and goes basically along the lines of what we learned from Einstein and Sagan.

I believe that if it cannot be quantified, then it does not exist, and if it cannot be qualified, then it is meaningless.

I think religion is a hinderance to our existance. Sure it has been the formulation for humanity's progress in the social context: civil rights, womens sufferage and abolition of slavery were all borne out of churches. But so was the anti abortion movement, the current trend towards theocracy and the prohibition. Add the drug war to that as well.

I am a Christian in the true sense - I try to be like Christ. I do not beleive he was God, for he never claimed to be. I feel he was a social philosopher way ahead of his time, who paved the way for Rousseau, Locke and eventually Marx. He was the first to suggest the the poorest of us had the strength to topple the richest of us, and to do so non-violently.

So am I a person of faith?

[Shell Beau]

1. I think that is for you decide!

[Taverner]

2. Well if it were up to me, I would say I am not a person of faith

Since faith has very little to do with my beliefs.

But I guess it goes back to the definition of a person of faith...

[Shell Beau]

3. I think if you believe in what you can't physically see or what

can't be proven, then I would say you have faith!

[tjwmason]

4. You're a Deist

as far as I can tell.

As for Christ not claiming to be God - I'll have to disagree with you there. "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" - but playing the proof-text game won't get us anywhere. I'm afraid that I'm of the C.S. Lewis school of thought which (to put it bluntly) is that Jesus was mad, bad or God.

As to whether you are a person of faith - nobody other than yourself can answer that.

Edit typo

[UncleSepp]

6. I've always wondered if there was more to that...

Like "I am in the Father and He is in Me"... "and also in you, and you, and you over there..."

[Taverner]

9. That's what the Gnostics beleived

Gospel of Thomas has a line to the tune of "drink from my mouth and you shall become me, and if I drink from yours I will become you."

[UncleSepp]

12. Did "drink from my mouth" mean to listen?

To listen, and to really hear?

This is neat :-)

[Taverner]

7. Knowing a little bit about Gnostic Christianity

I'll take issue with that line. Being an Essene Jew, Christ very often spoke of the oneness of mankind and the universe. A lot of this was excised out of the books by the destruction of Gnostic scripture by the Catholics, but some was discovered in the Nag Hamadi books.

Gospel of Thomas clarifies what he meant.

[WCGreen]

5. You have faith in reason.....

[Tallison]

8. The term's a stab at inclusiveness on the right's part

to create the pretense of census. "Religious" dennotes an institutional affiliation that some find exclusive. The irony is that most right wingers would consider you neither.

[khashka]

10. Yes you are

in the truest sense.

True faith isn't about one god or goddess, it isn't about blindly following a creed. It's about believing that truth exists, that goodness exists, that we can strive for that. It's about care, it's about love.

There are no easy answers. But the questions are important. I truly believe that faith without works is empty.


I don't think faith can save us, I think salvation takes a whole damn lot of work. But it's worth it.


And that's the end of my lttle rant.

Khash.

[southlandshari]

11. Wow.

What he said!

:applause:

[WCGreen]

15. This is the post I mentioned in my thread.... Great....

[TroubleMan]

13. Yes, having faith doesn't mean being a sheep.

You can follow your own path. In fact it takes much more faith and conviction to blaze your own trail. Being a sheep is much easier, and that's why so many are willing to be sheep.

[sweetheart]

14. So much depends on now

If you put aside all your pretensions about life, or are willing to
even, not to "know" an intellectual god, but to see that god now
realizing that only now will god ever exist, and if you were not awake,
*now* is the reincarnation of the previous *now*. And like a string
of beads the moments of life are strung by time; a necklass of the
skulls of dead moments.

In each now, is that choice to be open to the unknown, or to project
the preconceptions of ideals, and i call the lot of it "religion".

So if you've walked away from preconception, you are a person of faith.