I am no longer sure where I stand on the whole supreme being(s) thing anymore. But I feel like I need to find out where I stand before I move in any particular direction. Or maybe I don't?
The Old Testament
These books of the Bible make Yahweh out to be a jealous, vindictive bully with little to no self-esteem. I have a difficult time accepting that most of these scriptures were given to man through a deity. Without biblical scholars to do hours and hours and hours of research on each individual scripture, how could the common man (especially one that is not a Jew) ever hope to understand all of the figurative language and references? Surely Yahweh could not have expected that everyone throughout human history would have access to libraries of knowledge. Why was it not written more straight forward in terms of specifically what God expects? What fits more is that the Hebrew scriptures were written very carefully as a means to control a population. However, even if every single word of the Old Testament was completely made up by controlling priests or raving lunatics and that could be proven, it doesn't automatically prove that God or Yahweh doesn't exist. It just means that he/she/it/they didn't have a direct hand in writing those verses.
The New Testament
The Bible Part 2. Why was there so much time between the old and new testament. Did God not have anything new to say for four hundred years? Why is Paul ultimately more important in Christian theology than Jesus? Why aren't Jesus' commands of loving God and your neighbor enough? If they weren't enough, then why didn't Jesus say so? Why did Paul have to be the one to make the rules? Jesus' messages were pretty plain and simple to understand. No confusion there. Anybody could understand it who read it, even if they didn't understand everything about the history of the places and people in the Bible. Why is there a need for religion to enforce the beliefs in the Bible? Was it also written as a means to control people living at the time? Is it inspired or is the whole thing made up? If it is made up, does that automatically mean that Jesus (as a god or godlike human) doesn't exist or never existed?
Other Religions
Now I have never even read the Quran or religious texts of other religions. Mostly because I was raised as a "Christian" even before I was drafted into the WBTS pyramid.
Because of my upbringing, I am conditioned to believe in a supreme being that at least created if not controlls the universe we live in. Or maybe there are many gods as some religions teach?
Science
Evolution. This is the other "how we got here" explanation. It sounds much more plausible because there aren't any emotional godlike beings moving us around like chess pieces. Even so, there are still bits of evolution that do not make sense for me. The eye, for instance. The eye developing through evolution seems impossible for me to accept. I've read evolutionary theory on the development of the eye. It's full of maybes and possiblies and what-ifs. I know science is not all-knowing, but at this point in scientific understanding, the eye breaks evolution for me.
And then there is the "creation of the universe". To simplify, it comes down to this: Either everything came from something or everything came from nothing. Both of those explanations require a large amount of faith and neither make any sense to me.
Let's start with the Big Bang (everything came from nothing). Something had to exist in the universe in order for it to be big banged. What was it? Where did it come from? How long did it float around in nothingness? How did it float around if there was no time? How could it exist if there was no universe? What was there before the little something existed?
Then we have God, Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, Jesus, Zeus, Jupiter, Aten, Amon, etc. (everything came from something). The exact same questions apply. Where did the deity come from? How long was it there or were they there before they decided that the universe would be a nice thing to create? What was it doing or what were they doing before the universe existed? Did something create them? Do they exist out of time and, if so, how is that even possible?
Both ideas require large leaps of faith and more brain power than I have to contemplate.
Where I am right now.
Religion is based on interpretation of religious texts. Everybody's interpretation is different and even individuals or groups change their own interpretations over time so nobody can be fully trusted. Religious texts may not even be divinely inspired but that does not mean God/gods/evolved aliens/whatever doesn't exist.
Should I just be satisfied that I can't know the unknowable (agnostic)? I can't profess to be atheist because I am not fully convinced that he/she/they don't exist. I can't be theist because I have too many doubts. I could be deist, but that serves no useful purpose except to explain some things that I cannot comprehend.
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