Yes, you seem to reject quite a bit!

Maybe that works for you. Stick to your convictions. I believe there may come a time when you will have to suspend disbelief, at least for a moment, in order to expand your awareness. But for now you can stick to what you believe are absolute proofs and see how that serves you. If you are happy with the result (your life as you are experiencing it), then there is no reason to change or try anything new.

I might add that by my definition, you cannot have "faith in" something. That is an oxymoron. Faith is unknowing, openness, willingness to expand. Children are full of faith. As people collect beliefs, they tend to close down.

When someone says have "faith in" this or that, they are using the word as belief.

EDIT: Well, I suppose you might be able to say 'have faith in something', if you mean being open to experiencing that something without prejudice or preconception, simply opening to the truth of it, without knowing what you will find. But that is not how most people use the phrase "faith in".

The belief that anything is "absolute" is quite amusing to me. You can prove it? So what? In two years, there will be another set of facts and/or data from such a peer-reviewed source that discredits the previous truth you held as "absolute". Take for example the talk above about the theory of Heliocentricity and Galileo's problems as a result of it. Granted, science has evolved in leaps and bounds since then, but the same analysis should apply, as in another 400 years what we call "science" will be equated with banging two rocks together. Galileo was correct in theory, but wrong in science. However, neither his nor the prior notion of Geocentricity were correct in full, even though they were somewhat indoctrinated at the time they were held as "absolutes".

Relativity, and therefore subjectivity, become the only "absolutes", which I realize is an inherent contradiction, and this should itself indicate that nothing is in fact "absolute". Confused? You should be, and we all should be.

Sorry, I guess you said "original meaning", not "original definition". My bad.

If you look up the etymology of "faith", you find something along these lines:

Or, in the online etymology dictionary:

Online Etymology Dictionary

Confusion is the birthplace of enlightenment.

I wouldn't label myself as either. I don't like labels generally as I think they are just societies way of pigeon holing people to make themselves feel more comfortable. Labelling someone as agnostic or atheist causes the same problems as organised religions. It's just a way of binding things up nice and neat with a list of rules and beliefs.

I was brought up catholic and both my parents were religious in different ways. My beliefs today are much simpler. I think there is some power to the universe beyond what we can see. Whether that is deity, science or other I don't know.

If you spend any time studying religions from pagen to modern day religions you are struck more by their similarities than differences. I know some pagan practices were actually adopted by christian religions.

Organised religion I believe has more to do with our need to believe in something outside ourselves that we can hold responsible for anything that happens outside our control. That doesn't mean there is no God just that the need to wrap up our beliefs in a set of rules and regulations bound up with ritualism is just our way of trying to control what we do not understand.

What organized religions historically sought to control was people. They used fear and claimed authority to control and exploit people. In some cases that hasn't changed much.

Most of them have honest teachings at their core, however distorted by the politicians who followed the teachers. And you're right - the similarities are striking.

While that may be a possibility, I think confusion is closer to the conception of enlightenment. The true birthplace is when you admit that there's no way to either prove or fully understand most things. That's enlightenment... for some reason.

I guess Socrates put it best in Diogenes Laertius: "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance."

I have spent many years studying Pagan, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian religions, as well as a host of others, and I'm more struck by contrast than similarity. Granted, the overarcing principle that there is a powerful force which has the ability to create is central to all of these religions, but that is essentially where the similarity ends.

I will concur, a number of Pagan practices were adopted into Christian practice. The recognition of "Sunday" as the Christian day of rest/worship was adopted by Constantine in the 3rd C. AD (CE, whatever) as this was the day (not suprisingly) that Pagans worshipped the sun.

I do not believe this statement is accurate, though. While religion or faith may be an attempt to explain that which we cannot control, organized religion has been for centuries a method of control. It has been instituted throughout the world to assure conformity and a united belief among soldiers and civilians alike, particularly in times of war, and although some would have you believe there is a separation between Church and State, you need not look further than "In God We Trust" scrawled on American bills and coinage to see otherwise. If everyone in your country believes something, it is worth fighting for, and this was the prevailing ideal throughout every war right up until around 1812. Since then, there have been few wars attributed solely to religion, but that does not at all mean it has not been a rallying point.

I am absolutely certain that it is impossible to strike a match on a jelly.

Dip the jelly in some liquid nitrogen. Scratch the surface so its rough. I suspect you will be able to strike your match on it.

You are mistaken. I agree there is no way to prove or disprove anything. You may prove it to yourself as a working conclusion. Nothing absolute.

As for ignorance (no way to understand), that is the illusion of ignorance. It is the belief that humans just can't understand God/the universe. Nothing could be further from the truth. The universe is understandable. There is an intelligence throughout it, and nothing happens outside of that design.

Most people hide out in the belief in ignorance. It saves them from having to think about things. "God only knows." At the same time, they believe they know everything.

That's not to say everything is understandable from our current human perspective. But that perspective is impermanent. We all evolve in our understandings, eventually becoming one with all of it (we become God - there is no where else to go).

I would say you are not looking deeply into these religions. If you look at the core teachings, before politicians added a lot of baggage, they teach the same things, much more than just that there is a central force.

For example, 'we are all one and one with God'. 'Do unto others as you would have it done unto you.' 'Faith accesses the creative power of the universe.'

Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha - they would have gotten along perfectly. They all said the same things, using the language of their culture. They saw and communicated the same truths.

Christianity does not teach us that we are one with God, it teaches that we are created in His image and that paying reverence to Him puts us in His favour. Being reunited after death does not make you "one with God". Islam teaches to do unto others as you would have done to you, except in the case of an affront to their religion, in which case a very different scenario ensues. I agree that I was over-simplifying, but certainly you know that there are fundamental differences in the beliefs and practices of these religions which is why they still exist today as individual entities.

Perhaps you could explain further how I am mistaken and you agree. Whether someone rationalizes something to themselves to make it "true" or "absolute" is irrelevant.

You say the universe is understandable, how do you know this? Do you communicate with it? Have you deciphered a way to crack eons-old mysteries? Sorry to play the sarcasm card, but realistically the universe is, at this point in history, unknowable, unseeable, and un-understandable. To say that nothing happens outside of the universe's intelligence is both baseless and untrue, because, quite frankly we don't know.

I do agree with this.

There is somewhere else to go - straight into the ground. The idea that our conscience continues after the expiration of our bodies is one which, although it may (and I stress may) be possible, cannot be asserted with any sort of confidence. Persons who claim that it can are acting on faith, and faith is inherently devoid of reason. I may believe I can fly, but that sure doesn't make it so.

your technically wrong on this, because the universe is defined as everything and everywhere, so if something happens, then it happens in the universe.

Yet Jesus did teach this, as have all master teachers. So Christianity does teach it (and often ignores it.) There is a reason for this - it is the truth.

I view your understanding of religions as shallow. For one, you seem to lack the ability to discern the core, original teaching, from layers later added by politicians.

This is not unusual and I am not putting you down. It is hard to discern until you have your own spiritual experience. Then, the teachings make sense, and the genuine core of them stands out. This is not something I can impart to you. But I believe when you arrive there, you will see the dissimilarities as shallow, and the similarities at the core.

I believe I'm technically right on this. Tell me - have you seen the entirety of the universe? Has anyone? Do you know FOR SURE that this is the only universe? Does anyone?

We can't rule out the possibility of a multiverse, or parallel universes, because quite simply, as I've said a few times already in this thread: we don't know.

The notion that if something happens, it happens in the universe is actually quite amusing given the content of this thread. You've confined everything to the material universe, something that again, we cannot do, because we don't know.

I agree nothing can be proven (or disproven) in an absolute sense. We may feel we have proven something to ourselves, but it is a working conclusion, still subject to change by later data.

Yes and yes. I know because I see it.

I realize you see it that way, just as I (and others) see it differently. And I can't really explain it to you, because you do not see what I see, or communicate with the universe in the way I do.

Let's just say that the universe has communicated to me that it is understandable, and its communication was clearly understood by me. This is not to say that I understand everything. But enough things which once seemed mysterious have been made clear that I now understand it is I who is not aware, not the universe that is not making sense, or is by nature un-understandable. Further, I can take it on faith - the universe would not lie to me about what it is communicating.

Again, this is not something I can impart to you. I am merely bearing witness to it.

I do know. Who is this "we" you refer to? Conventional scientific consensus? There your statement may be true.

I believe you should review some of the books that recount NDEs, and what people experience and bring back (including knowledge they could not have had during the period they were "dead", such as what their surgeon said). You might also review the mountain of data related by children and people who remember past lives, and know details of faraway places and people that they could not have known.

The evidence is overwhelming, even in the conventional sense, let alone the 'common sense' one. You merely need to open yourself to it. You are living in a tiny bubble of belief created by narrow-minded thinkers. That is not to say you cannot dismiss and ignore this evidence. That is common.

Excuse me, but: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27). By simple definition, one cannot be the same as one's creator. There is creator, and there are the created, the Bible is very clear in this. Please go back and read the rest of my quote which you cut out in your reply. I said that Christianity teaches that we were created by God, which as I alluded to is then directly opposed to the idea of our being "one with God". We are, according to the Bible, God's people, not gods.

View my understanding however you wish, but do not tell me what I am able and unable to do. If you believe I am incorrect, please show me my fallacies. As I can tell you do have some spiritual investment, you should know that I have absolutely none. This does not, however, heighten or lessen my understanding of these matters, it just makes me more skeptical and in some cases cynical towards them.

The teaching always make "sense", regardless of whether or not one has had a spiritual experience. Most of these writings were done for a populace who had scarcely any education. Yet, if the dissimilarities are shallow, why were millenia worth of religious wars fought? Why are many militants to this day claiming a religious war against the US? I do understand - contrary to your belief - that the core values share similar attributes. However, they are all starkly opposed in how to practice these values, and their application of them. It is these dissimilarities which have caused so much strife, and are quite a bit deeper than you imagine them to be.