"Precautionary Principle"

My titles are starting to sound an awful lot like like one-hour legal dramas on T.V. But stick with me because this morning I bring you a brief discussion of God, a tale of innocence, innocence lost, heartbreak and much, much blathering. Let's get started.

By Porcupine Porcupanimosity
Staff Writer
It was some time in elementary school circa 1984? when I began hearing lots of talk on the nightly news about atheists and believers, about prayer in schools and about using the word God in the Pledge of Allegiance. I began learning about the messy laws that bind and tear apart the religious and the secular and why it was such an emotional issue. Heady times. I wore leg warmers. Ronald Reagan puttered around the White House.
With this in mind, my brother, on break from college and no doubt a Philosophy 101 class, quizzed me and a friend -- who was sleeping over-- all about God.
"Why do you believe?" he asked.
"Why not!" we answered in unison as if it was obvious. Why wouldn't you believe if it got you into heaven? Or led to all manner of good things? Seems silly to mess with what we don't know. Even now, this seems a sensible approach.
That night I think we danced and sang to "What A Feelin'" by Irene Cara about 20 times and didn't concern ourselves again with my brother's question. Pragmatism had driven our faith. We just decided to believe, and moved on with our slumber party.

Little did I recognize the philosophical heft of our stand, courtesy of a mathemetician who didn't believe in playing the odds. It remains unclear to me whether deciding to believe in God means that we actually do believe in Him. Let's just hope that either way God doesn't welch.
For me and many others, that youthful pragmatism has been eroded by one devastating reality after another: that the world is host to random catastrophe, poverty, violence, selfishness, meanness and unbearable amounts of sadness. It also has lots of good things, but there's no point in trying to counterbalance. It can't be done without exquisite lying.
So though I am on record to whomever is taking notes that I am still a believer, details of that belief remain vague.
For now, the closest thing to surety I have about life is that in death we all turn back into the earth or cosmic dust or whatever it is and it starts all over again. Whether souls or consciousnesses or essence or other etherea is saved for a special date and time TBA, I can only hope. Or wager.
In the meantime, let me say this: I don't disrespect religion or the religious, though I am more than happy to disrespect all manner of individuals who represent all kindsa suck. (A distinction I make, unlike degraded blowhards who have lost all touch with reality.)
But I do find discussions of "working on" or "practicing" or "strengthening" faith to be troubling. Faith isn't something to be worked on, in my opinion. In reporter academy, ideally, we don't pick our favorite conclusion, find ways to support it, and call it "faith."
We call it bad journalism.