I thought I was agnostic but that's not gonna help me in life

I can't really say I'm losing my agnostic nature, since I'm a Christian, but I can certainly relate to everything you're saying. I consider God to be the most important thing in my life, the thing that gives my life meaning. That being the case, you might think I could give you a ready definition of God and some proofs of God's existence. Not a chance. I'm whistling in the dark like everybody else. I respect agnostics, because to be completely honest I don't "know" that anything I believe is correct. Reality is damned ambiguous. I believe in Something Big Out There for reasons similar to yours: the apparent fine tuning of the universe (which even some of the best scientists marvel at), human consciousness that evolutionists haven't satisfactorily been explained by any apparent survival value, the uncanny coincidences of everyday life, the sense of a mystical presence, etc. All of this could be explained away naturalisticly, and there are good reasons for explaining them that way. Suspending judgment pending definitive scientific proof doesn't appeal to me, because science is pretty useless in dealing with questions of ultimate meaning, and I don't expect answers to be coming in my lifetime. I've decided to follow my instincts and bet on God, while trying to keep an open mind, and relying as best I can on reason, available evidence, experience and intuition, while recognizing that whatever I believe will probably be partially or totally wrong.

 

Are you a Pascal's Wager guy? I can see that as a rationale for being a deist, but how do you get from there to picking a specific religion? There are so many others that leave more room for uncertainty.

 

Not exactly. I don't like Pascal's formulation, because it's framed with eternal reward or punishment as the stakes. It reminds me too much of those chain letters that tell you if you send it on to ten friends, you'll win the Irish sweepstakes and if you don't you'll suffer King Tut's curse. I usually delete those. If we took that stuff seriously, we'd all be digging up our backyards because there might be buried treasure there and what do we have to lose? Pascal's wager gives the advantage to the religion that can devise the most horrific punishments or extreme pleasures in the afterlife. Can the Christian "lake of fire" top all those virgins Islam has to offer? I'm more like William James, trying to make sense of the reality we experience in this world, and betting on God as a working hypothesis.

As to how to get to a specific religion, I'm a Christian primarily because I like the example and message of Jesus as a hippie who rejected materialism and preached unconditional love and acceptance of everybody, including society's rejects. Jesus was by no means the only person to do this, and I see no problem in being a Buddhist too, but Jesus' attack on the religious establishment of his day is a particular draw for me--not to mention the fact that it's the religion I grew up with.

 

wow, my dad had a brain tumor recently and he had a near death experience
seriously

anyways... this was all very scary and sad ...but after his operation (successfully removed a tumor the size of a mandarin orange) he has changed completely... gone from a total atheist (not just agnostic) to a faithful/hopeful agnostic who understands that to have a successful life experience we all need to love eachother, he understands that the universe is all powerful, that we are destined to live happy lives and to be healthy based on our decisions in life... he is so full of joy and love I;m convinced that he did experience something out there...

He had some sort of experience with an Inuit on a snomobile who picked him out of the snow and placed him on the sled... and took him up over the snowy plains up to the stars and somewhere past forever where everything was good and loving...

what do we say?

 

I like the suggestion that there is a within, and a without of things. Consciousness seems to be the ability for organisms to have some degree of awareness and receptivity to the environment. Some people think all things are at least proto-conscious, even atoms and molecules and quantum states. Who knows. Agree with you here mostly though---there is something mystical and divine about coming into existence at all, and the phenomenon that life has been evolving in greater and greater unity. Makes you full of wonder and love for the cosmos. Is it God? Maybe, but you know, that Love or Divinity or Spirit, always seems to urge creative and novel emergence, so I think a God would definitely be beyond our conceptions and limits, urging us to do the same.

 

Love is without condition, everything else is respiration.