Is there anything wrong with having a faith?

I find that religion is a very good way for people find solace in what they recognize as a pattern. "I prayed, and something good happened, therefore, there must be a God. Plus, the Bible proves it." Well, The Da Vinci Code said Jesus had kids. No, no, it's true. Dan Brown said so.

The problem with the Bible is that God didn't have a direct hand in writing it, and neither did Jesus for that matter. The Bible is, at best, "Inspired by Actual Events". It's a series of unauthorized biographies, the greater majority of which we don't even recognize because we happen to like these four over the others.

Oddly enough, i go to a Christian University (yeah yeah say what you will, it's fully accredited and in the AUCC) and the thing that made me realize i didn't have a faith was taking religion courses here. After i realized what was happened i asked one of my profs if maybe i was interpreting the lectures wrong he just looked at me and said i had "found what i was supposed find to in the Bible".

Most of the professors here have given me a speech similar to Shepherd Book's line in the Firefly Episode Jaynestown "You don't fix religion, it fixes you". Basically, the objective of this brand of Christianity i've chosen to associate with comes with a mission statement amounting to "find your own way through thinking critically about what you see and read" and ultimately to "live for peace". If you can do that second part, then you are living out the essence of what Jesus taught, and doing it better than a lot of Christians out there. Then the people who really need that supernatural crutch to structure themselves on can get together every once and a while and reinforce a strong, yet inoffensive faith in an ideal state of the universe.

Basically what i've found through my experience here is that Einstein was right:

[quote: Einstein, from Wikiquote]# The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.[/quote]

This is just one of the many quotes Einstein has on this topic. What you can get from this is an understanding regarding inspiration as the greatest thing we can grasp and use. The concept of a God can really drive people to be better people, but that's a touchy area to go to, as people who are easily influenced in their beliefs can be led astray by corrupt or ignorant people calling themselves "leaders" or be misled into a false understanding of the Bible.

But you (Angel) are not the only person who's felt like this, obviously. One of my favourite theologians was a borderline Atheist and prominent critic of relgion. Ernst Troeltsch wrote many papers and articles which can be summed up as "The Bible is problematic because of a human sense of Dogma. Only once we remove the Bible from the Dogmatic Pedestal we've put it on and expose this antiquated work to science and historical context we will bring the Bible into the realm of reality where we can better apply it to the real world and better understand what it means.

So basically, it's not wrong to have a faith. I'm pretty sure there's something out there, but i can't claim to have any answers, so i'm by definition an Agnostic, which sounds like where you're coming from.

Jam it back in, in the dark.