Religious Questions from the Faithful and the Believers

That when my best friends mom died when she was 40 that it was because God needed an angel right then. That my grandparents are in the most perfect existence imaginable. That a woman raped and murdered and treated awfully in this life is now in eternal bliss.

Remember the book of Ecclesiastes. Everything is futile/meaningless…a chasing a after the wind. It doesn’t mean we lose faith because we can 't comprehend greater purpose .

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

That when my best friends mom died when she was 40 that it was because God needed an angel right then. That my grandparents are in the most perfect existence imaginable. That a woman raped and murdered and treated awfully in this life is now in eternal bliss.

Remember the book of Ecclesiastes. Everything is futile/meaningless…a chasing a after the wind. It doesn’t mean we lose faith because we can 't comprehend greater purpose .[/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else?

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
You certainly wouldn’t be convinced in a forum, that’s for sure.
I do find it interesting that while ‘your brain won’t let you believe’ you are very curious about it nonetheless.
This curiosity of your’s may be the unidentified spiritual nag laying deep with in you.

I get it though. If I were looking at a lot of Christians from the outside, I would see a bunch of people in their hands in the air in some sort of suspended reality. And the problem only increases when you talk to them and they sound clueless.
But not everybody is clueless, not everybody is in it for some self-serving purpose of avoiding hell.

I am not religious to avoid hell. I am religious because I love God. He answers my prayers. He communicates to me, sometimes in very bizarre ways that when I realize, make me laugh. He has a good sense of humor.
It’s not an easy life, it’s not happy-go-lucky ‘I am saved!’ kind of existence.
I wouldn’t do it just to avoid hell. I wouldn’t do it if it were not a reciprocal relationship.

I look at my life, and all the multitudes of blessing in it, and I know I didn’t do it alone. There has always been someone or something there that has gotten me through each stage, each phase. I am not the product of the work of my own two hands, though I did that as well. The crosses, the sufferings in my life were too much to bear. And I feel like I have had more than my fair share. I am threadbare and worn out from them, but I am still standing. And yes, I will spare you the details as I am still going through a lot. But I am the product of being on the good side of grace. It’s no accident. I have learned a lot from my crosses, most of all how lucky I am, and how blessed I am. Through them, I have always gotten support where none seemed to exist. I have clung to faith when I could have easily said “Screw this!” I will never give up, though I don’t understand suffering. Why God, with all His power good not have made life exist without it, I don’t know.
I know, that I wouldn’t know what I know and feel the humility I feel without it.
In the end I know I will be great, never better, that’s just a matter of time.
A Christian life isn’t a charmed life, it’s a tough life, but a life worth living. There is a joy to it that cannot be expressed or understood, it can only be experienced. And once you do, you could only be a liar to deny it. When you experience it, it’s undeniable.

I think that’s what Christian’s cannot ultimately understand. How do you not see ‘it’? And for non-religious, how do you see anything?
[/quote]

Honestly I see this as one giant contradiction. If I couldn’t see it in a forum then why are you constantly trying to convince non believers they are wrong on here? Why are you constantly trying to prove your point of view correct on here?

Of course I’m curious about people who believe something so vastly different than me, but CLEARLY you are as well. You are a frequent contributor to discussions based around people like me. We are very similar in that regard? Is that the atheist spirit in you? Frankly I think coming to that conclusion is ridiculous.

The personal stories are fantastic, but the religious and the non religious share them from these threads. I have had many things happen in my life as well, but I give a lot of the thanks to my family, friends, and mentors for creating what I am today. None of us did anything fully alone and I give a lot of credit to the PEOPLE in my life who helped me. If you feel as if that was the holy spirit guiding them then again that isn’t really a conclusion I’m going to agree with.

I can see with my eyeballs. I don’t particularly like when the religious try and act as if the non religious are suffering from some type of disability. When they come out and say stuff like “well you don’t believe in anything. How can you be moral? How can you live without a higher purpose?” I dunno, how can the people who claim to be loving Christians hate gay people if they believe they are God’s creations. Hate Muslims is they are God’s creations? Doesn’t seem to stop them much.

Is it really that impossible for someone to believe the problems with proving the existence of something they have never seen nor heard? “You gotta be crazy if you can’t see/feel/hear him!”

Well, I can’t do those things and I’ve tried. Maybe God needs to turn up the volume? Some of these threads have a tendency to have believers talk to non believers as if the problem must completely lie in them.

[/quote]

If you want to argue philosophical points, I will argue back. But I only argue on a philosophical basis, not a spiritual one. Why do I do it? To learn more and hopefully others do as well.
I do it to defend theism on a rational basis, to show that there is some very sound logic behind it and it’s not a brain-dead existence as many non-believers try to accuse it of being.
Perhaps nobody goes away changing their beliefs, but they damn sure walk away knowing there is some solid reasoning behind it (theism), it’s not beatable and hasn’t been for centuries. And should damn well know that their previous reasoning isn’t as sound as they thought it was.

Aside from that, I don’t see where there is any contradiction. I was merely sharing my own experience. I was sympathizing with the fact you cannot relate to it.
You put invaluable trust in your senses. I put invaluable trust in that which responsible for experience. You consider sensory experience very trust worthy and valuable. I consider is a very flawed way to understand the world around us. I trust in the systems that run it, the unflappable metaphysics that runs the show. I trust more in the law of nature then the nature itself. I look more at the reason something is, than that it is.

Sure other people helped you in your life? Same here, why? Because they love you? Perhaps? Why do they love you? What is love? Is there a rational explanation for someone to love you when its no benefit to them to do so?

As far as you accusations about what Christians are or do, seems to me you’re just applying a stereotype. Who says Christians hate muslims? Or gay people? That’s a stereotype propagated by our friend the media. It’s horseshit. For instance the piano player at my church was queer as a 3 dollar bill, everybody knew and nobody cared. He was treated just like everybody else. Wasn’t our business, didn’t make it our business. So you are just following stereotypes there.
The only Muslims we have a problem with are the ones trying to kill us in God’s name.

As far as sourcing your morality and purpose, you don’t think those are reasonable questions? What do you base your morality on? Just yourself? So that if you change your mind about something, then morality itself changes? I don’t think that, and I seriously doubt you believe that.
And I don’t know if I have a ‘higher purpose’ or not. I don’t believe I or anything exists for ‘no reason’. I very much side with Spinoza in that there are ‘no brute facts’. It’s not necessary reasonable to believe I exist for some ‘higher purpose’. It’s not reasonable at all to believe I exist for no reason. That I am a brute fact of the universe which itself is not a brute fact.

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I think that one of the reasons that there seems to be a smaller market for answers from atheists is that intelligent Christians tend to understand atheism* as well as, and even better than, many atheists.

To take an example from here, Sloth, Pat, and Push have a better grasp of what Dostoevsky referred to as “permissibility” than do most of the atheists I know, among whom are a few people who are very celebrated and successful academics.

*Philosophically, I mean. The evidential and scientific aspects of non-belief are another story.[/quote]

I think its simply because there is something everyone doesn’t believe. Santa Clause, global warming, other religious beliefs that conflict with their own, What Obama says, aliens, etc.[/quote]

Well for me there really isn’t anything to ask about atheism.

There’s only two versions that I seem to encounter.

  1. The atheist who simply has no faith in God.

They tend to gel with theists. The reason being is that while they have no faith in God, they often admit to putting faith in certain things/thoughts being in reality evil or good (example). So, while they don’t have faith in God, faith itself isn’t necessarily silly, backwards, foreign, or whatever.

  1. The atheist who has no faith in anything he can’t potentially measure. God, things/thought actually being inherently good or evil, inherent rights, real moral obligations (being charitable a real good, instead of a personal character flavor).

The actual atheist part of the whole deal is just a lack of faith in God specifically. It isn’t necessarily a lack of faith in all things that can’t be counted.

So, there really isn’t much to ask of atheism specifically. There aren’t doctrines, moral codes, or ceremonial practices to ask about.
[/quote]

Well you can ask them if they think Hitler was right… When Dawkins was spouting off about his moral relativistic beliefs, they (a british radio show) asked them that question. His answer? ‘I can’t really say Hitler was wrong…’ Nice.

Aside from that little anecdote I think there are good questions to ask atheists:
Why is there something rather than nothing? ~ Leibniz
Where is morality?
Where does morality come from?
Is there any good reason to behave in a way that is not beneficial to yourself?
Is there any reason not to hurt other people with your actions that please you, especially if you have no connection to them or have no love for them?

If you wanted to rid the world of religious dogma, would there be any harm in killing off religious people and burning down all religious institutions? Seriously, what’s wrong with that?

What rules should people live by and why?

I think some of those are good questions to ask non-believers.

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?[/quote]

Why not just bang’em and kick them to the curb? What’s wrong with doing that? You got what you wanted…

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?[/quote]

Clever analogy, but it doesn’t hold up. “Correct woman” is a subjective matter of taste, whereas religions are matters of what is, and what is not. The religions that claim exclusive ownership of the “truth” are, indeed, being treated fairly when they are asked to put up and vanquish their competitors.

It is, in fact, probably the simplest and most effective weapon that the non-believer has: Ask the apologist for holy book X why holy book X is to be taken as the truth, rather than holy books Y, Z, A, B, and C. And, even more portentously (for the apologist), rather than what science has managed to come up with.

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?[/quote]

Why not just bang’em and kick them to the curb? What’s wrong with doing that? You got what you wanted…[/quote]

Or take a page out of old Mitt’s ancestral playbook and marry 'em all.

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]AceRock wrote:
I enjoy the thread started by SexMachine. In it, it was suggested to start the opposite thread, a place where Christians/Jews(can I say that?)/Muslims/whatever(no offense) can openly question those like me that so frequently question their religion. So here it is, let’s do this.

I do not have faith. I do not believe in God, or a higher power, a creator. I have given it plenty of chances, and continue to do so. It feels like banging my head against a wall.

I have a belief system, that is constantly reaffirmed in my daily existence. It is malleable, constantly growing, and always striving for improvement. I am eclectic in this regard. I like to see the commonality among the major faiths, rather than the differences.

Do not kill, rape, hurt, steal, lie, and cheat. Treat others with kindness, respect, dignity, and compassion. These are the tenets by which I live my life. Sounds familiar?

I’m open for anything, historical, current, family, whatever floats your boat.[/quote]

I’m in my 30’s and I’ve been a lifelong atheist. Even one who thought I was a clever dick and the believers were braindead zombies. I have known a lot of religious people and they seem to have found religion as a way to cope with traumatic things and belong to a welcoming community.

Without trying to brag nothing gets me down. My mother died 14 months ago and although it was a very difficult time I pulled through on my own without support and improved my life. After about 12 months the grief subsided and by chance I decided to learn the history of the Israelites. I’d been studying Greek and Roman history for twenty years.

Soom after I had a nasty accident with multiple fractures. Right now I don’t know if I’ll be crippled for life but I don’t ask or expect to be healed as Mephibosheth was. That was for the sake of Saul anyhow. I don’t blame anyone else for my own mistakes and I try to curtail my excesses. I have done things in ignorance that would cause the Lord to turn his back on me. I deserve no better but seek the chance to bring joy into others’ lives, bless the Lord and have a family. Well that’s about it. Sorry for getting too personal there.[/quote]

I can relate SM… We were called to ‘Carry our crosses’ and follow Jesus. That’s what your doing, that’s what I am doing. I know what it’s like to live as a part cripple and in constant pain… Never give up, even when you feel like it. I felt like it and I didn’t and now I have great hope for the future, because now I have hope for relief.
And the way I was led to it was down right providential, because every doctor prior had given up… I had little reason to hope when every doctor said, ‘I don’t know, there’s nothing that can be done.’
I also know what it’s like to lose a parent, in the most awful way…I too didn’t have support, I was the support. I was the one who had to be strong for everybody else.[/quote]

Thanks Pat. Good to know you’re recovering/ed. Everyone here seems to have fucked themselves up. Goes with the territory I guess.

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

So do you disagree with those who say atheism is a religion?[/quote]

Ja.

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Clever analogy, but it doesn’t hold up. “Correct woman” is a subjective matter of taste, whereas religions are matters of what is, and what is not. The religions that claim exclusive ownership of the “truth” are, indeed, being treated fairly when they are asked to put up and vanquish their competitors.

It is, in fact, probably the simplest and most effective weapon that the non-believer has: Ask the apologist for holy book X why holy book X is to be taken as the truth, rather than holy books Y, Z, A, B, and C. And, even more portentously (for the apologist), rather than what science has managed to come up with.[/quote]

You’re forgetting the matter of learned experience. If I was bitten by a poisonous spider and got very sick I would develop an aversion to all spiders precisely because I don’t know if that particular spider is poisonous. What I have learned is to avoid all spiders.

Now if I catch a sheep and roast it on the fire I will learn that sheep are good and to be sought out. Both learned behaviour.

The same concept can be applied to religion when one examines the teachings of the scriptures and the behaviour and character of the adherents.

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?[/quote]

Clever analogy, but it doesn’t hold up. [/quote]

Eh, I think your bullshitting yourself if you really think that. (And I swear on anything I KNEW you were going to say that, lol.)

What you’re doing here, and what I feel a lot of both believers and non tend to do to regarding this subject is “trying too hard”.

Think about it, humans compared to an omnipotent being are morons (we kinda are compare to our potential too). No way this is at all complicated.

Choosing to live your life with one woman is pretty damn straight forward. Having faith isn’t all that different. You think she is someone you can be with forever or not. God is either…

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Clever analogy, but it doesn’t hold up. “Correct woman” is a subjective matter of taste, whereas religions are matters of what is, and what is not. The religions that claim exclusive ownership of the “truth” are, indeed, being treated fairly when they are asked to put up and vanquish their competitors.

It is, in fact, probably the simplest and most effective weapon that the non-believer has: Ask the apologist for holy book X why holy book X is to be taken as the truth, rather than holy books Y, Z, A, B, and C. And, even more portentously (for the apologist), rather than what science has managed to come up with.[/quote]

You’re forgetting the matter of learned experience. If I was bitten by a poisonous spider and got very sick I would develop an aversion to all spiders precisely because I don’t know if that particular spider is poisonous. What I have learned is to avoid all spiders.

Now if I catch a sheep and roast it on the fire I will learn that sheep are good and to be sought out. Both learned behaviour.

The same concept can be applied to religion when one examines the teachings of the scriptures and the behaviour and character of the adherents.[/quote]

In what specific way(s) do you mean that it can be applied?

As in, “I believed and good things happened to me?”

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

Choosing to live your life with one woman is pretty damn straight forward. Having faith isn’t all that different.
[/quote]

It is monumentally different. One consists of a set of claims with objective truth value. That’s the difference, and it means night and day.

I don’t know if we’re really on the same page though. The question that I posed in my last post, about holy books X, Y, and Z–are you saying that it is not a legitimate critique of religion? I have put it to the best posters here and to the most intelligent people of faith I’ve known–at least one of whom was close to deserving the title of “genius”–and it has never been bested.

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I think that one of the reasons that there seems to be a smaller market for answers from atheists is that intelligent Christians tend to understand atheism* as well as, and even better than, many atheists.

To take an example from here, Sloth, Pat, and Push have a better grasp of what Dostoevsky referred to as “permissibility” than do most of the atheists I know, among whom are a few people who are very celebrated and successful academics.

*Philosophically, I mean. The evidential and scientific aspects of non-belief are another story.[/quote]

I think its simply because there is something everyone doesn’t believe. Santa Clause, global warming, other religious beliefs that conflict with their own, What Obama says, aliens, etc.[/quote]

Well for me there really isn’t anything to ask about atheism.

There’s only two versions that I seem to encounter.

  1. The atheist who simply has no faith in God.

They tend to gel with theists. The reason being is that while they have no faith in God, they often admit to putting faith in certain things/thoughts being in reality evil or good (example). So, while they don’t have faith in God, faith itself isn’t necessarily silly, backwards, foreign, or whatever.

  1. The atheist who has no faith in anything he can’t potentially measure. God, things/thought actually being inherently good or evil, inherent rights, real moral obligations (being charitable a real good, instead of a personal character flavor).

The actual atheist part of the whole deal is just a lack of faith in God specifically. It isn’t necessarily a lack of faith in all things that can’t be counted.

So, there really isn’t much to ask of atheism specifically. There aren’t doctrines, moral codes, or ceremonial practices to ask about.
[/quote]

Well you can ask them if they think Hitler was right… When Dawkins was spouting off about his moral relativistic beliefs, they (a british radio show) asked them that question. His answer? ‘I can’t really say Hitler was wrong…’ Nice.

Aside from that little anecdote I think there are good questions to ask atheists:
Why is there something rather than nothing? ~ Leibniz
Where is morality?
Where does morality come from?
Is there any good reason to behave in a way that is not beneficial to yourself?
Is there any reason not to hurt other people with your actions that please you, especially if you have no connection to them or have no love for them?

If you wanted to rid the world of religious dogma, would there be any harm in killing off religious people and burning down all religious institutions? Seriously, what’s wrong with that?

What rules should people live by and why?

I think some of those are good questions to ask non-believers.
[/quote]

Meh. I already know the possible answers. The only thing to discover is who is a relativist and who–though an atheist–still puts faith in objective good and evil. I’ve pretty much received those answers from other threads.

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

How am I supposed to convince myself to listen to that book over all the other religious texts out there? How do I know I have found the correct answer there and not in the words of someone else? [/quote]

How am I supposed to convince myself to marry one woman over all the other women out there? How do I know I have found the correct woman for me and not the woman for someone else?[/quote]

These decisions have absolutely nothing in common.

[quote]H factor wrote:

These decisions have absolutely nothing in common. I can easily prove to you women exist without anyone in the world doubting me.

[/quote]

How? I can’t even objectively know you exist beyond a doubt. All I ‘know,’ and supposedly sense or perceive, is kicked around by my ‘mind.’ But, since any test to objectively prove even your assistance is examined by the mind in question, mine, I’m sort of stuck taking existence and reality (or at least my perception being anything remotely accurate) as a leap of faith.

Let’s blow this thing wide open!

And what if our will is an illusion, an after the fact illusion of consciousness constructed only after sub-conscious processes have already made the “decision” for us. Maybe none of us are making decisions (about women are holy books) in the conventional usage of the word.

Gotta go!

[quote]pat wrote:
Aside from that, I don’t see where there is any contradiction. I was merely sharing my own experience. I was sympathizing with the fact you cannot relate to it.
You put invaluable trust in your senses. I put invaluable trust in that which responsible for experience. You consider sensory experience very trust worthy and valuable. I consider is a very flawed way to understand the world around us. I trust in the systems that run it, the unflappable metaphysics that runs the show. I trust more in the law of nature then the nature itself. I look more at the reason something is, than that it is.

Sure other people helped you in your life? Same here, why? Because they love you? Perhaps? Why do they love you? What is love? Is there a rational explanation for someone to love you when its no benefit to them to do so?

As far as you accusations about what Christians are or do, seems to me you’re just applying a stereotype. Who says Christians hate muslims? Or gay people? That’s a stereotype propagated by our friend the media. It’s horseshit. For instance the piano player at my church was queer as a 3 dollar bill, everybody knew and nobody cared. He was treated just like everybody else. Wasn’t our business, didn’t make it our business. So you are just following stereotypes there.
The only Muslims we have a problem with are the ones trying to kill us in God’s name.

As far as sourcing your morality and purpose, you don’t think those are reasonable questions? What do you base your morality on? Just yourself? So that if you change your mind about something, then morality itself changes? I don’t think that, and I seriously doubt you believe that.
And I don’t know if I have a ‘higher purpose’ or not. I don’t believe I or anything exists for ‘no reason’. I very much side with Spinoza in that there are ‘no brute facts’. It’s not necessary reasonable to believe I exist for some ‘higher purpose’. It’s not reasonable at all to believe I exist for no reason. That I am a brute fact of the universe which itself is not a brute fact.[/quote]

Here’s your stereotypes from the media:

“conservativedog” is a Christian and he has filled the forum with attacks on black people, posted pictures of penises, and all sorts of other outlandish stuff.

kneedragger has posted all sorts of things about gay sex.

pushharder talks about cum in other mens hands.

As far as I can tell the non-believers on this forum seem to have a lot more love for gay people than the believers do. I’m sure that’s just the media though.

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

These decisions have absolutely nothing in common. I can easily prove to you women exist without anyone in the world doubting me.

[/quote]

How? I can’t even objectively know you exist beyond a doubt. All I ‘know,’ and supposedly sense or perceive, is kicked around by my ‘mind.’ But, since any test to objectively prove even your assistance is examined by the mind in question, mine, I’m sort of stuck taking existence and reality (or at least my perception being anything remotely accurate) as a leap of faith.

Let’s blow this thing wide open!

And what if our will is an illusion, an after the fact illusion of consciousness constructed only after sub-conscious processes have already made the “decision” for us. Maybe none of us are making decisions (about women are holy books) in the conventional usage of the word.

Gotta go!

[/quote]

So your defense for proving God exists is how can you know I exist? I can drive to where you live and you can reach out and touch me with your own hand.

You’ve never done that with God no matter how much you have prayed to him.

I’m to believe that a higher power must exist outside of Earth because I can’t rationally make up my mind that people actually exist.

That doesn’t make any bit of sense whatsoever.

Please explain how people on this planet do not deny the existence of women but the vast majority of us come to different conclusions about whether God exists, how many, what he/she is like, what he/she can do.

That’s complete nonsense my man. If you’re going to convince me of a higher power bring out some better ammo.

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

Choosing to live your life with one woman is pretty damn straight forward. Having faith isn’t all that different.
[/quote]

It is monumentally different. One consists of a set of claims with objective truth value. That’s the difference, and it means night and day.

I don’t know if we’re really on the same page though. The question that I posed in my last post, about holy books X, Y, and Z–are you saying that it is not a legitimate critique of religion? I have put it to the best posters here and to the most intelligent people of faith I’ve known–at least one of whom was close to deserving the title of “genius”–and it has never been bested.[/quote]

Again, you and H were expected to take this stance, and I understand it. Because if you were to see how the relationships are similar, it would shatter what you believe. (Much like I assume certain theists face in the presence of particular science and evidence.)

I’m not a genius, and I’ve never studied any particular religion but big picture, they all tend to have some common themes. Is it really outlandish to think each one of these books is part right and part wrong, imperfect like man? Because it isn’t like we would understand the communications of an omnipotent being…

So, as to why book X is right and the rest wrong:

I once asked my grandfather how he knew grandma was the one. His response was “I don’t. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. I’ve asked every I could how I could tell, and no one knew. All I know is I can’t hold her tight enough, because when I’m with her, I want to be so close, squeeze her so tight, that I want her to become part of me forever.”

If you are going to sit there and tell me you don’t see the blatant similarities between that and faith, you are either full of shit, or afraid you might actually have some.