Can We Have Faith Without A Religious Construct?

We All Assume that it is Religion that Defines our Faith, but is this True?

I was raised a Catholic yet as a very young child, I felt a connection to a supreme being before I knew any scripture or had any interest in religion. My most distant memories of my exposure to religion were the intense feelings of disinterest and boredom in a church service. I would tune out what the adults were saying and just daydream the service away like most children. My interconnection to a God had no textual connection, no doctrine, and no rules, just a feeling of a oneness with a greater loving being, a very simple connection that had attributes to Christianity. The connection to a morality probably stemmed by my mother’s example and by my own humility to respect others and to love others without knowing or reading a single scripture passage.

Once we are Educated, or Indoctrinated into a Religion, how does that change our Faith in a God?

As I grew older, I was placed into a private Catholic school through my grade school years, starting 3^rd grade. I was taught by nuns to pray to many divine entities. The first divine god was Mary, the second was Jesus, the third was the Holly Spirit; if there was time left, we would pray to a God, a father figure of the other three spirits. I was taught that we can pray too many “gods” (spirits), even to saints, and in doing so, the math would always equal to one. Well, the math for me never added up right and even though I was a child, I never accepted this and started questioning the religion construct itself at a very young age, not my faith. We would read only selected scriptures out of the New Testament, never in context of the whole, and only study a passage at a time. This educational experience I had created two identities, one, I still maintain my faith in a Christian like God I knew as a young child, the second, was a contradiction to education; strange, abnormal, and at times, bizarre. Catholic education only pushed me away from religion so much that the indoctrination was not working… but I continued to attend church services all of my life but never accepting the religious practices and doctrines as my faith. My religion became a cultural event at the time, and had no connection to my personal faith.

Can Atheist Biblical Scholars Alter our Faith when they prove that the “Bible” is a Fake?

As I approached my teen years, I quested why I was reading of 13th century English in scriptures then to modern English and felt that there was a disconnect of being authentic. This disconnection started my journey to discover the true history of the creation and canonization of the whole bible. At a very young age, I already knew that the “bible” was a manmade novel, part fiction, part historic events. No Bible Historian had to show me, I researched it myself in a Catholic bible under biblical history and in reference indexes of scriptural passages. Christ was represented as different personalities between the gospels and the Hebrew bible was completely out of place to Christianity. The Christian God was of peace and forgiveness, at least by the gospels, taken out of context, my selected favorites whom I believed represented Christ. I did not need an atheist bible scholar to “show me the light of reality” that the bible is a collection of writings by authors we know nothing about, written thousands of years ago by cultures that no longer exist or would I understand. Religion was pushing me away from my faith until I disconnected religion, the bible, from my own faith of a supreme loving, Christ like, God, not a god, or gods, from very old literary works that were disturbing and at times very violent. My connections to Christian churches remained because most religious people are kind, caring and moral. Going to the right church offers community, connection, self-worth, and family that would not exist if I abounded the religious construct completely. For me, it is the people that make a church, not the pastor, the building, or the doctrine.

“Christ”, “Jesus”, “God”, “Father” all have a meaning without a single reference of scripture. Most who pray to one are not quoting specific passages but relating to and recognizing mortality, forgiveness, protection, love, fear, loss of a loved one, comfort, and an eternal connection to a greater being, greater than our physical existence. Faith never started from a written account, faith existed long before biblical scripture. It is scripture that is legacy to belief. Atheists try to undermine Christianity thinking that proving scripture as Fake, old, baseless, are missing the point of faith. Many mariners who were stranded on islands back in the 17, 18^th century had no written “words” of a God, yet prayed to one and believed in one; they made a connection to something greater than the physical world.

Is Scripture based Salvation The Same As Personal Salvation?

The foundation of Christianity is first, life after death, the second, forgiveness so we can enter the first. Forgiveness is based on morality; everlasting life is the return to where we once came from. Forgiveness is self-explanatory, salvation is very complex based on the time it was written. Early Christian churches were so confused to what they actually believed that they had to send Bishops to Nicaea (Iznik, Turkey) to define who this God was, thus all Christians today, for over 1500 years, have to recite the Nicene Creed at each service so they are never “side tracked” in their belief construct. Eternal life is a hotly debated topic among atheist scholars. The answer to this is the no one knows who is alive. We have to be dead to find out. It is a personal belief and hard to reinforce, that we will exist beyond death. For most of us, living the hardships of mortal life, hoping that there is an alternative existence, helps us cope with life. We will never know for sure 100% that there is a heaven, but we can have faith, (hope), that there is a better place beyond this one. Creating our faith, supporting it and loving it, creates a possible reality. That is all we can do. The only physical proof of a possible life after are NED’s, (Near Death Experience), the out of body. Science cannot explain how a physically incapacitated individual who is pronounce “dead” can witness (recount), or “see” the operation room without physical eyes, in great detail, detected from their physical body. This has been proven in scientific research but researchers cannot explain how this can happen. There is this hope that heaven dose exist… or at least our souls could exist outside the moral body.

Why Would A Loving God Cause, or ignore, Pain A Suffering?

Pain, to that of suffering, is a part of mortal life. Most all living creatures experience it. Pain is a protectant in the physical world. Pain can pull our hand off a hot burner before injury. Mental “pain” (stress) to succeed in life will drive us to be challenged and to invent. We all will die at some point, and for most of us, this death will not be pleasant either. Whether we die by a knife of a murderer or the knife of cancer, death is inevitable to us all.. and the pain it will cause. Some Christians lose their faith over this very topic and become Atheist or Agnostics because their initial concept of a god has betrayed them or their religion did to why a god would not intervene and remove suffering/pain. I had to face this very analogy in my faith as a young adult. Scripture offers little help to us understanding suffering. Even the biblical scholars are amiss to understanding a god who would ignore human suffering scripturally or support it.  Suffering can be defined in so many ways. We are conditioned to our surroundings, we become acclimated and complacent. We cannot compare those living in poverty in a third world environment to a person in the West living in luxury and wealth to suffering. Those who claim to be poor would be rich to someone else. Example: Poverty in the U.S. is seen as suffering but in the third world, U.S. poverty would be middle to upper class in that country. So we adapt to our social and economic environment. Suffering with physical pain varies also to our conditioning to that pain if it is choric or short term. For my faith, to understand my God’s “acceptance” to suffering, is that I know very little to the reality of life or to why I even exist at all to challenge or accuse a greater entity to myself. I know we will all experience pain, and we all will suffer to some degree while we are alive as mortals.  As light cannot exist without darkness, (to know the difference between the two), no one goes through life with no pain physically or mentally.  The way I cope with the suffering of world events, including war or natural disasters, I offer up to my God “thank yous”. I have a list of all of my life events that were a great blessing to me. Example: Family events, having a child, my good health at the time, and the list goes in in perpetuity.  The retrospect to my “good times, and blessings” counter the events of my sufferings and losses. Thanking a supreme being for my existence and what this God has given me in life, has a profound connection of identity, worth, and fulfillment. I try to forget negative events and only remember or memorize the positive ones. How do I do this? I set aside a time I am alone, in silence, and recollect and thank to a supreme being that I hope exists. It can be rewarding. 

As I said in my opening statement, I felt some connection as a very young child to a spiritual entity of good… and I had no knowledge of a religion or a definition of a God. No one can tell another that their belief does not exist. As far as scriptura religions, we may all have some connection to a greater being that existed throughout human history. In early writings, “scriptures,” may reflect man’s attempt to connect to a pure form of morality that human emotions and primitive impulse fail to adhere to. Morality needed to be recorded for perpetuity because humility and kindness is not an instinct in the animal world or is it to the “wise human” hominid.

Why do Religions Battle against Other opposing Religions?

The simple answer is to force ones dominance over the other. They do this by discrediting the other religions to their “superior knowledge” that they know the true reality. No human knows what a “true reality” is. Atheist and Agnostics will have to say “this is what I believe” when they tag themselves to an intellectual identity.  We all have that right to identify; we all can choose our own belief construct. This is only true in free speech countries. In authoritarian Atheists countries, the one in power are the “gods,” the spiritual faithful, (not identifying to a mortal), are exterminated. In authoritarian religious sects, just like the Atheist, they too will eliminate any other belief other than their own.  This is proven all throughout human history and will continue to be so.

Why Believe Anything at all if there is No Written Construct?

All of us face reality and question something that is not seen, heard or touched. Religion helps connect our faith with a belief but for most of us, we still question to a degree… and this is normal. When in question for myself, I would rather love an entity that is real in principles, based on love and morality, then nothing at all. I, in effect, create a living God that becomes real in my life experiences, that is greater than a physical world, and even everlasting. When approaching death, I am ok with this. Where I end up, not even an Atheist can dictate the outcome after death. Atheist too have to come to terms and question, what if they are wrong?