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what_is_truth_what_to_believe
anne-girl I used to be a christian... back a year and a half ago, starting when i was ten, and gave my heart to christ, they said, was "born again", my decision. I thought it was beautiful... the pure love that it was based on, the simple principle "love thy neighbour as yourself", let myself be pulled into the worship songs we sang at camp, at night, around the campfire

Late at night, flames, songs... this was what christianity was - I'd go back to real life, to school, and not see the correlation, but I went to church every Sunday... all that
It's always difficult to stay strong in the real corrupt world, they say, and it was. No sex && corruption stories here, though... it's just that i didn't pray all that much, just quietly held beliefs that i'd occasionally express when nobody was listening

And then i became friends with a slightly outspoken atheist and had a hopeless crush on him for a year or so around the age of fifteen, and we'd discuss life and meanings and i couldn't reconcile my faith anymore and it went away

So I was standing on a hill today, by the park in the heart of suburbia next to the airport and wondering what truth is, what to believe... all kinds of metaphysical crap. Because religion/faith in my experience was a wonderfully comforting and securing thing... but it doesn't make any logical sense to me at the moment...

And I think i'm falling in love with math, the sciences, with the abstract theorems, like fractals, everything related in weird and quirky ways that i would never have thought of... so much there, and i just want to jump in the sandbox and play all day...
I'm seeing the surface, the beginning of what's possible, and i want to see more... find truth, somewhere

Truth can't be any one thing... no view of everything's absolutely right... there's so fantastically much to know about everything and even if you knew everything intellectually maybe there'd still be stuff you couldn't understand

what to believe...

wonders
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anne-girl (when i pass by some kind of christian gathering, i get somehow magnetically attracted... can stand around kind of hovering at a safe distance listening to the singing for hours, happily... nostalgia burns

and people ask, so, what are you doing here, and I say i don't know... i used to be one of you, i've read the pamphlets, and i know he's the savior and all that
i was 'born again' once
and they say what happened?
concerned for my immortal soul, perhaps

doesn't quite know
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machina ex Deus there are absolutes and there are vagaries, those grey areas to which there are no quick and easy answers.

so many converted "born-again" christians seem to be so overly dependent on the absolutes for the structure (and stricture) they impose that they forget that in the Gospels, Jesus was prone to answering some questions with a question of his own:

"What do you think?"

for this reason i could never understand or embrace the literalist approach to scripture
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andru235 there are elements of truth in - *gasp* - everything

knowing thyself is the starting point

what is true to one is false to another; this fact has begotten more animosity throughout the ages than nearly any other i can think of

when one finds truth, it is always a challenge when another does not find the same truth. are we really still in the_dark_cave? it is a decision one makes for oneself.
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