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)