Nope. €uroMeinke pretty much covered my own answer.

I believe in chaos, order, Infnity and absence. There is being and there is nothingness.

Dust to dust, but energy is never truly lost. So, in one way or another, our existence is both finite and forever.

Oddly enough, I love writing plays and stories about God, new souls versus old souls, reincarnation, etc., 'cause it all makes for a lovely and fun metaphor.

I've also known some very highly intelligent people who believe in God, so I leave a little room for doubt. I'm so often wrong about other things...why not this, too?

Ah, the Modern retelling of the Watchmaker God. [wink]

If there is a God, I think he's a lover of stories, and we're all (Word breathed into us and all that googly moogly) great storytellers. God as Theater in the Round. God as the greatest listener of all time. You know. Shakespeare kinda stuff.

I'm not sure that the Self had been invented when the Torah was written. To be sure, Jews were exhorted to examine how they had fallen away from the law. However, the Torah as interpreted by the Talmud is supposed to provide the answer to every situation. While this may be an exercise requiring rigorous study, I don't think it remotely equates to open-mindedness, as we understand it. I think that openmindedness, i.e., rejection of tradition, is more a cultural product of numerous beatdowns, emigration and self-interested assimilation.

Perhaps understandably, Jews are reluctant to say that any portion of the law was wrong, the same way that we readily say that American slave owners were wrong. The nasty parts are always dismissed as primitive, tribal or needing to be put in context. Further, while there are Jewish groups that take this position, if you want to see liberal Jews' hair stand on end and their minds snap shut like dominoes, tell them that you think circumcision is wrong.

When I think of the watchmaker god, I like to think he didn't create an old-looking world 6,000 years ago but rather created an old-looking world in 1986. How would we know the difference?

Yes - because according to my perception of the world I've seen his/her/its work and influence.

The harder question for me is: what next?

I have, at various times in my life, considered converting to just about every organized religion out there. It's difficult to evaluate, because I find myself looking for the one that's the most convenient for what I'm already doing, which doesn't seem proper.

I still from time to time toy with the idea of converting to Judaism, for many of the reasons GD articulated. However, that particular religion is so enmeshed with a cultural and ethnic background I can never share that I feel it would actually be rude to try to follow that path.

I have also considered adding more "pagan"-style practices -- not because I want to go about casting spells and whatnot, but because I don't think contemporary mainstream religion pays enough attention to the wonder that is nature. If (for example) Christians believe that God created the natural world, why don't congregations spend more time in amazement of nature?

Lately I've even been contemplating a more..hmmm....fantastical view of Christianity, complete with vigorous, unseen battles between the forces of good and evil. (Is it heretical if I picture these unseen forces using unseen light sabers?) I've probably been reading too much about manicheans again.

I see myself currently as on a quest for knowledge. And since I seek knowledge of something ultimately unknowable, it's a journey without a destination. To some, this is dangerous thinking - and a further example of immoral rootlessness. I don't think exploring other ideas is dangerous or puts my soul on the fast track to demons and pitchforks. I think the most dangerous thing I face is a tendency to want to shape my beliefs to please others. It's difficult to walk the line between not concocting a convenient faith on the one hand and not blindly following charismatic practitioners on the other.

If I may quote myself...

I've always considered myself an Atheist. The idea that the "Universe" (aka God, Allah, Buda, etc...) gives a rats posterior about me, who I am and what I do always struck me as way way too optimistic. The universe just is.

The same with fate and predetermination. If it's predetermined it had to be planned and frankly who has the time for that sort of thing? Some all powerful being is out there working to infinity so that today, for no apparent reason, I choose to put on my left shoe before my right rather than the other way round? I can't buy into that.

However it cannot be denied that many very reasonable people seem to swear by the higher power concept in one form or another. So it does seem a bit rude (not to mention egotistical) to just blow them ALL off as delusional.

So trying to be a "polite" atheist would seem to lead one down the path to being an agnostic but I've always seen agnostics as wishy-washy and frankly a bit on the sissy side. Not able to decide one way or another. I'd never make a good agnostic so I had to pass on that.

Which left me looking for a reasonable universal doctrine that I can practice. One that I can live with inside myself and at the same time not be perceived by the faithful as attacking their beliefs with my beliefs. It took some time, but I finally decided. I'm an Apatheist. God? No God? Fate or just luck? I don't really care. Let's talk about where we'd like to go to lunch instead.

Just wanted to quickly clear up a misconception. Buddha isn't considered a God in the Buddhist religion. He was just an ordinary man who searched for and found enlightenment. Buddhists don't believe that he created the world or anything else for that matter, just that he was able to attain a higher existence through meditation and such and then taught his followers how to do the same. Buddhists also believe that anyone can attain the same enlightenment through devoted practice. So, in a sense, we all have the ability to be a Buddha.

There are sects of Buddhism that do believe in various gods, but generally speaking, it isn't mandatory that one believe in these gods.

In our endless explorations, my wife and I attended an Episcopal service in the hills of Sausalito fairly recently after 9/11. The minister's explication of Jesus's message that Sunday was basically that everyone should have brunch. So we did, at the Alta Mira Hotel, which provided a lovely view of creation. Unfortunately, the hotel has turned its brunch operation over to Il Fornaio, which has gone the upscale buffet route. Jesus's message is now more expensive but not as good.

That's a rather important qualifier. Talmud is a whole other story, a giant safety net intended to ensure that one comes no where close to crossing the line of the laws of torah. I have major issue with the way that Talmud has been elevated to a point where too many people have lost sight of what it actually is and venerate it more than Torah itself.

But I digress. My point was that organized religion is a tool and nothing more. Other people's use or miss-use of the tool are something I have no control over and are not my concern. All I'm concerned with is how I can make use of a tool that I've felt has helped me in my life.

As for circumcision, we've gone through that discussion before. I'll leave it at the fact that a mohel-performed bris bares little resemblence to radical circumcision performed in many hospitals which involved constriction and tearing.

Obviously, I didn't have the pleasure of that discussion. I've been to just one bris. The actual removal was done with just the parents present. The baby howled. The mother wept. I've heard a number of other anecdotes to the effect that "If I'd known it would be like that . . ." I submit that if Jews did not practice circumcision, Jews would have no trouble condemning at as something akin to female genital mutilation.

For some openmindedness: http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/