In Reply to: Further discussion with Porcelain Doll and Ray from below posted by Occam on July 05, 2003 at 18:01:15:
I don't know that I'm afraid to put my faith into any philosophy, but rather into any religion, or organization. I do believe you need a certain philosophy to live by, a set of standards that work for you, to help you achieve the most you can in life.
As for endorsing Buddhism or not, I just think that if there is any 'religion' that would suit me, in the event I were to choose one, Buddhism would come close, though perhaps Confuscianism would come closer because Confuscianism seems to have no God figure in it at all, whereas Buddhism still retains an 'eternal being'.
What I want to get away from is being dictated to by an external being/person/shepherd/leader/god. I want to simply live my life here and now and not worry about the future, the past, etc. If there is another world around us, and I'm not saying there isn't, as my husband has seen many 'spirits', but I need to be convinced of it without a doubt before I say with total conviction 'Yes, there is!'
You see, I spent a great deal of my life wrapping the things I couldn't understand up in a 'blanket of faith', and leaving them there. And that was one of my downfalls from Christianity. I could no longer leave those doubts in their blankets, I had to understand them. I wasn't a child anymore who could be easily placated with some vague interpretation or explanation that didn't quite make sense.
I suppose if these things had happened to me in the name of Islam, or Buddhism, or whatever, I would feel as strongly towards that religion, but it didn't. It was the Christian faith and so-called Christian leaders who abused my trust in God. And I feel that if God were the ever-loving God, why would He allow things to happen to innocent children. Why would He allow their simple faith in Him to be perverted? He knew what was going on, He is the Omnicient, the Omnipresent, the All-knowing and Ever-seeing, the great I Am, so He also knew what was happening in the lives of myself and my siblings, friends and those in my care.
Which is why God must make Himself known to me in a way that I would recognize and acknowledge (and I have alread told Him that if He allowed harm to come to my kids in order to get at me, I would never again even give Him the chance to prove Himself).
So you see, I am still holding out for God, but as the years go by, the hope that He will somehow prove Himself grows slimmer.
You may argue that it should be I who approaches Him first, and perhaps you are right. But I already gave God my youth, my family, my body, my total and complete surrender. I was what you would call a 110%er and willing to do anything (except FF or have sex with guys I didn't want to--is this the Huddersfield that God is able to withold Himself from me on?) to further His cause, to be His disciple. But what I saw allowed in the group in the name of God didn't coincide with my own sense of right and wrong.
And so, God, being so powerful as He is supposed to be, has some explaining to do. And if I'm not important enough for Him to take the time with, then that's fine with me. I'll live my life the best I can, I'll raise my children as best I know how, I'll offer them an open-mind and the freedom to choose for themselves, and one day, perhaps in the afterlife, God and I will make amends?
I actually have found many interesting things in many religions, Buddhism, Confuscianism, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, Christianity. I guess I just don't view one particular religion as the answer for everyone. I think each holds a truth in itself and life could be lived with a bit of each, no?
I have enjoyed James Penn's use of Mark Twain's quote: If a cat sits on a hot stove and gest burned he'll probably never sit on another stove again (or something like that). In reference to religion, it sums up how I feel, I never want to be burnt again.
Just a final little thing: again, your arguement does come only from a Christian viewpoint, which is fine since you are a Christian. But it doesn't work for me cause I don't view life, the world and etc. as such.
And I personally think it takes just as much faith to believe God formed a person out of dust and breathed life into it, then took a rib out of their body to create a woman, as it does to believe in a big explosion being the beginning of life, or amoebas, or monkeys or however. Each thought on the origins of humanity and life requires faith of itself to believe in since none of us was there to begin with.