Talking To My Zelph

My quest for freedom from the LDS religion.

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Location: OA, Offworld

Friday, February 15, 2008

My Current Religious Status

Once I left Mormonism, I briefly considered looking into a more mainstream branch of Christianity - something non-denominational, but my personal studies had extended from Mormonism to Christian and then Religion in general. The only logical (for me) conclusion I could come to was that I didn't know, so I adopted the label of being an agnostic.

I didn't really think that anyone else in the world had an absolute knowledge of religious truth, either, so my mantra became "I don't know, and neither do you." I later learned that this attitude is called Militant Agnosticism. I don't really care much for the term though - it has an air of "I'm going to force you to believe as I do". That's not my intention at all. I'm willing to allow people to believe in whatever the hell they want. What I will argue with, however, are statements like "I KNOW this, that, or the other." That's such a foolish mindset. Nobody KNOWS anything about god, one way or the other.

So having said all that, I suppose I'm still a Militant Agnostic, but I'm bordering ever so precariously on the edge of full fledged atheism.

I agree with much of what Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, says on the matter. One great quote of his is (and I'm paraphrasing here): "we're all atheists when it comes to the gods of ancient religions. We just go one god further."

I'm still reluctant to come right out and deny the possible existence of some omnipotent creator, but until presented with absolute proof, I must seriously doubt that such a being is real.

I'm still trying to sift through my thoughts and feelings and overall beliefs with regards to god and religion, and for the sake of my own sanity, I need to find a way to boil it all down to the simplest terms possible.

Bear with me here.

Either god exists or he doesn't. I've seen virtually NO evidence to properly validate the existence of god. God then, most likely does not exist.

If there is a god, which god is it? Whose god? Just one or many? This idea opens up a can of worms and raises exponentially more questions than answers.

As a follow-up, if god exists, which church is His church? Again, there are no real answers, only subjective opinions.

Just on this reasoning alone, the likelihood that the mormon church is "the only true church on the face of the earth" is pretty low.

(I'd like to close with a disclaimer here - this blog is intended to assist me in my transition out of mormonism. I'm not trying to start any fights with TBMs of any faith. As I've said, you're free to believe whatever you want. If anyone even reads this blog and disagrees with me, that's your right and you're entitled to it. Any comments attempting to "set me straight" will most likely be ignored or deleted. I don't have the time or energy to fight with anyone.)