@Foofie,
Foofie wrote:The way you stand up for Israel, I'd say you are a very practicing Catholic, just not into the ritual.
I'm not sure what the difference is. I defend Israel because I believe in doing the right thing and defending the innocent. And Israel is clearly the innocent party in these disputes.
I am a hard agnostic. I don't know whether there is a God, whether an afterlife awaits us after we die (those are two independent questions by the way), and what the nature of God and/or the afterlife is if either one does exist. I do not think anyone else knows these answers either.
I believe that
if there is a benevolent God out there paying attention to us, then religious differences shouldn't matter. A benevolent God would accept people who reached out to it regardless of which religion was used to do so.
I do
hope that there is some sort of pleasant afterlife awaiting us. The notion of ceasing to exist when I die terrifies me. And I'm not too happy about the idea of the same fate awaiting those who I care about. And some sort of divine judgement awaiting those who get away with horrible crimes would be nice as well.
But I don't claim to know that any of it is true.