Yuku free message boards

I am twenty years old, and I was raised Mormon, even though I left the church when I was 15. I have been praying to God since I was a little girl. Now that I have no religion that I identify with, and I am always thinking critically, I often wonder if the warm feeling I get when I pray is even real. I really, really hope it is. I would love to believe that God loves me, and that he protects me, and that all of the times my prayers have been answered, it wasn't coincidence. Am I comforted by the fact that someone MIGHT be listening? Or does God comfort me because I am speaking to him? I'm totally unsure as to whether or not it's real. In Christian terms of "faith", I have zero faith. I only have hope. Can you have faith based on hope?

My husband is the most logical person I know, and he has worked out, for himself, what/who/how God is, for the most part. He has canceled out most other theories through logic. I have tried to listen to his arguments, and they make perfect sense, but I can't help acknowledging the possibility that there is no god, and that we are creatures, just like monkeys or mosquito, who have evolved most.

I comfort myself by acknowledging the truth behind this one concept: Many "miracles" that people account for are statistically borderline-impossible. And nature falls so perfectly into place. On an explicit, sometimes even mathematical level, everything in nature exists for a reason. Every animal is both a predator and a prey. Except for us, humans, the only creatures that can reason. The only creatures that are conscious of being conscious.

I don't like to think of myself as agnostic, because being agnostic is defined as a person who believes that there is no way to know, right now, if there is a god. I always argue that you could know! What if God was like "Melanie, I do exist. I am right here, standing in front of you!"? My agnostic friend said, "Right. But you might be delusional, so you still wouldn't know for sure." Touche.

Everything in this world is so temporary. Love is temporary. Happiness is temporary. Sleep is temporary. Relationships are often temporary. And life as we know it is the prime example of something that is temporary. We are all going to die...everyone. Although sometimes, it sounds appealing for the world to cease to exist, and for my conscious mind just to disappear into nothing, I'd like to think that my progression on Earth has a point, and that, like everything on Earth, this world is temporary. A passage way to something else temporary, or hopefully something eternally happy.

I can't stand thinking about the future.. and the people I love so much dying. I really hope that I will get to see them again. Let's just hope I don't need true "faith" to get that chance.