From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!iz328
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Re: unknown
Article-I.D.: sdccsu3.268
Posted: Tue Feb  1 14:50:42 1983
Received: Thu Feb  3 02:12:49 1983
References: tektronix.934

    I, sir am an agnostic, and I find your article a little closed-
minded. You are saying, like many others, that agnostics don't want to
believe in God because they don't want to obey His moral strictures.
I disagree. It seems to me that religion has two parts. The first is
the belief in an overbeing. The second is the obeying of a code of
ethics, a set of moral laws that make life run more smoothly and
easily with the least strife for all. I can't believe in the first part;
to take the whole story on faith seems ludicrous- where's the proof?
I'm told to read the Bible, and everything will be clear. Well, I've
read  parts of the Bible, and I found a muddled account that wandered
all over the place and espoused all sorts of terrible things along the 
way; the sacrificing of young virgins to a mob of rapists, etc.,etc.
It doesn't make any sense. The believers tell me that once I've taken
the Step of Faith all will be clear. It's impossible-to understand,
one must have taken the step of faith, and one must take the step of
faith to understand.

      However, though I can't believe, I CAN have morals. I feel that I
must form my own ethical and moral choices. I think that people give
a lot more thought to morals than the religious people give them credit
for. God doesn't need to hand them down to us; I think we can form
them for ourselves. Many of the Ten Commandments are just common sense;
of course you don't kill people; would YOU like to be killed? Or
cuckolded? Most of them are implicit in the way we animals live, and to
behave otherwise would cause dissent and fighting; not conducive to the
continuation of the race. Maybe we agnostics don't have faith in your
god, but we aren't amoral.

          
                                       Jack of Shadows.          (UCSD)