If your not one of them then are you one of those?

I wasn't really planning on writing tonight. Its late and I kinda want
to be in bed right now. Damn I'm getting old. But, out of the blue I
started feeling all philosophical so I figured I'd grace my wonderful
readers with the wonderful present of my vague and meandering thoughts.
The problem is when I havetough ts they are all over the place and
without much planning and contemplation it is hard to really pin down
exactly what I am thinking about. For example over the past 30 minutes
I have had intense internaldialogues with myself about Christianity ,
religion in general, free will, and the fact that I do not believe in
absolutes, that I believe we are equally good and evil and neither is
really good nor evil. By all standard weighs and means that is some
pretty heavy lifting in such a short period of time. Now the trouble
occurs when I am trying to decide what to discuss here on this fabulous
blog because each topic could easily be lengthened into an entire book
worth of contemplation and discussion and I'm already getting lengthy
with this single blog and Ihaven't said anything worthwhile yet.

But, the thought came to me is I haven't
really discussed my religious affiliation other than to say that I
don't call myself a christian. But, I suppose that statement deserves
some clarification. I originally said I don't consider myself aChristian because
of the example I set in my life. This statement is wholly incorrect
while at the same time was spoken with complete truth. The entire
statement should have included the phrase that I don'tbelieve in
Christianity because I don't really believe Jesus Christ died for my
sins on the cross and rose from the dead. Now that statement (as I
understand it)immediately and easily gets me disqualified from the Christian religion (at least most contemporary versions of the religion).

This is all very difficult to explain and I am sure if many people (say my parents) know this about me the will immediately
begin worrying about my eternal soul. That is one reason I haven't been
upfront about it in most religious conversations I have ever had.
(Honestly, I am not sure what is causing such frankness at this moment)
But, I have also mentioned that I believe in God and believe I have
found faith in my own life. But, I don't really have any problem with
religion perSE. Honestly my problem with most religion is the self-righteous most dogmas preach.

Now it is no secert
that I have a bad taste in my mouth of the Christian religion because
of the cult like tendencies of the church I grew up in. I was going to
right a blog about my experiences growing up. I started brainstorming
it and had nearly 4 pages and just quit. I might still blog about it
but, I'll give you a brief summation of my findings. The thing that
bothers me the most about the way I was raised in the church was the
way I was sheltered from the outside world, how I was indoctrinated to
believe a certain way, and that I was never given the freedom to
explore otherthoughts outside this tightly constructed view of the
world. Oh, and I think our church was self-righteous in the way the
congregation felt that church was the only way to God. Thus all the ill
will.

So what am I know. I guess you could call me a man without a religion. Lately, I have taken up calling myself an Atheistic,
agnostic, believer in God. I love how it makes no sense when said out
loud but, somehow it makes sense to me. It reminds me a lot of theincomphrensibility
of the Trinity. I am all in one. I am finding a certain amount of
comfort in the thought. Know if I was going to explain it I would
explain it something like this. Through scientific thought we can not
explain that their is any so called god. I believe that. But, I also
believe that there are things in this world that we can't explain so
therefore you can't prove their is no god. So I amagnostic . But, I
also believe in God. I believe that there is something brewing in me I
am not sure what you wanna call it and God seems like aconvenient enough title to me.

Know all this thinking is what leads me to absolutes. We have this ingrained theory in our head that their is such thing as absolutes. It is often referred to as meme ala Richard Dawkins. I was reading up on some Jungian theory today and to me it just makes a lot of sense. This idea of the male and female, anima or animus, a shadow, good and evil, or ying
and yang if you will. I think we are all of these and one time. We
always trying to determine are we originally good or bad. I think ourconsciousness and unconsciousness holds both aspects of life. Their is no such thing as absolute and you can be all things at one time. Thus my whole atheistic
, agnostic, believer in God. Though I am kinda of curious in the
Buddhism and eastern religions though what I know about them is rather
simplistic and not really any good indication of whether or not I
should convert. But, it is the idea that theyaren't really deistic in the sense you have to believe in a certain God to find Nirvana or whatever it is they believe in.

So that is a lot for one evening I had thoughts of tackling free will tonight. Maybe if you guys care I'll hit it tomorrow depending on how philosophical I am feeling. But, since I don't feel like proofreading either. GUESS WHAT?

Thus ends Michael's religious belief in an slightly overlarge nutshell.


edit

and I'm not sure what happened to the formatting but I sure don't feel like fixing it. Nighty night time for bonzo.