Originally posted by: 6000SUX
I'm not arguing, just asking. My heart is open, sincerely. If God is real I want to believe. Right now, I don't.
You don't have to believe.
The desire to know, or at least understand, is a good part of the impetus to believe. Belief for many is a temporary suspension of disbelief here and there, a gathering of information, in a quest for greater understanding and a quest for meaning and purpose.
Belief and faith by definition are adopted frames of mind, temporary and changing. These get changed to conviction and knowledge if things go well.
Belief has a spiritual aspect and a logical aspect. God is simply too profound to prove or disprove with limited means. The desire for miraculous proofs is a misunderstanding of proof and a lack of spirituality.
Originally posted by: 6000SUX
1) How can I possibly begin to believe in something without belief? For instance, how can I believe in a supernatural savior that seems to be fictional?
Again, you don't have to believe.
The "savior" business IMO, is largely a marketing phenomenon designed to sell you on one particular religion for the benefit of its priests and community, etc. That's a bit harsh. I believe that savior concept is of some importance to seekers, but that it's misapplied by the masses and the priests who actually don't really understand it well, but have attached a great significance to it.
In your case, this is an apparent barrier to belief. Where it is a barrier to your own spirituality, you should not let yourself get hung up on it.
You might understand this savior business a bit better if you go deeper into different religions. You do not have to understand it to start. The marketing folks want to impress you with their books that their savior is where it's that. It's just that.
Is Jesus the savior of humanity? Quite possibly, literally. The world might have been much more savage and unpleasant without his message of love.
Would he have been taken quite as seriously and with the same sort of impact of compassion had he not been crucified? Probably not. So perhaps he did literally suffer on the cross for the benefit of humanity.
Do you need more than that to start? Of course.., but perhaps that'll help get over some barriers.
Originally posted by: 6000SUX
2) How can I accept a savior that seems to be fictional?
You don't have to; it's marketing, etc. If you believe that all but the Christians are essentially sub-human and not deserving of heaven despite leading saintly lives, then you need to understand Jesus better, and to develop a better heart.
Originally posted by: 6000SUX
3) Why should I believe in the Christian religion instead of other ones, each of which claims to be the one true religion?
This is one of the questions for our times. The beginning of the answer, obviously, is the attitude of taking this business of one true religion with a grain of salt; seeing it as chauvinism and marketing propaganda.
Mohammad for example was asked a form of this question (I'll paraphrase here and so also exemplify the loss of historical detail) -- were not the Jews or Christians given the word of God? His answer was essentially, yes, they received part of the word of God. But the word of God is infinite (something about if all the seas were ink and all the trees were pens, they wouldn't be enough, etc.), so not contained in any single religion or even the collection of all religions to date.
If you look further, you'll see similarities in other religions. Where you see significant contradictions, you can try to exercise discrimination -- is it because of the time of the giving of a particular religion? Is it a misunderstand or misinterpretation willful or accidental by the various translators, interpreters or priests? Probably. For the most part these are very very old words. They have been twisted and expanded, etc., over time. The core may or may not still be present and pure, but the husk may very well not be what it once was.
You don't have to believe. You can live a good life as a strong atheist. You can live a bad life as a regular church attendee who satisfies superficial requirement without the underlying spirit. Which one do you really think would be better?
However, the point about "better" here stands without a dependence on belief -- rather, it is given independently. This is to say that you don't get to be a strong atheist and throw away everything that people by large call the good and still be able claim to have led a good life. Or the opposite, to have fulfilled every apparent requirement of a specific religion, but lived a full lie underneath and still claim to be good. Those are paths of self-delusion, madness and regret.
When Jesus said that he was the word beyond the existing words in the book, he was referring to this fact -- that there is truth that goes beyond the statement of the current religions. This applies to current Christianity as much as anything else.
We have words. We have words and words and words. The current world has no shortage of the words of God and others. With some effort one can easily go and round up the accepted classics and some gems even which aren't as generally well known and learn and interpret all of this and understand it much better.
Or you can try to have a good heart, lead a good life, and quiet your mind to try to better hear the living word of God. In that spirit, I'm going to shut up now.