LT,
Many thanks for your post.
That is why I said that as a religionist, yourself and others are prepared to believe without answers, in fact, without even the expectation of answers and this presents me with an enormous difficulty.I think (without rancor) that this is a little disingenuous. You presume to know the hopes and expectations of all those you broadly define as "religionists" (allegedly including myself in the generalisation). My position isn't unique, hence even biblical source claim efforts to "know the height and depth and breadth", and an anticipation to "know even as we are known" and to "see him face to face, for we shall be like him".
It is not the 'hopes' and 'expectations' of believers that I presume to know. It is the fact that 'hopes' and 'expectations' are not tangible and subsequently by definition can only lead to answers based in feelings and not facts, or as Narkissos suggests a mystic definition.
You suggest that at some stage we will have answers to the mystical questions that people have been yearning for answers for for tens of thousands of years. Do you believe that will occur after death or before?
An obvious example of these questions that I imagine has been asked by every person who has ever lived is 'why does God permit wickedness?' Even with the surety of the WTS psuedo-intellectualism under my belt, I never felt that there was a satisfactory answer to this question, and now it once again looms like Everest above me.
Another question. Why does everything on this planet need to stalk, trap and kill everything else in some way or the other in order to survive? Evolution without an attachment to God gives us a tangible answer, but it presents believers with a huge moral dilemma which they have struggled for centuries to answer - and are even further from knowing as more scientific discovery is made.
If we knew the answer to such questions, it would make the path to believe much smoother for all of us. Yet the answers evade us. When I question a believer ( I will not use the term 'religionist' until you get a real dictionary ) about these issues it easily confounds them - yet they believe. One responded recently to such a question by saying, 'Well, no astronomer has ever seen a Black Hole, yet they know that they exist'. This example actually underlines my argument, in that there is an expectation of answers ijn this situation as we are dealing with the tangible; the trajectorary of the suns around a black hole can be mathematically evaluated to prove the existence of these vortexes.
This is what I mean when I note that religionists believers are prepared to believe without answers, or even the expectation of answers.
Sorry my posts are so long-winded, but this is an enormous subject and I lack Didier's incisiveness.
Best regards - HS
PS - Hello Steve! Long time no read. Hope that you are in good form.