Questionnaire for seminary project

[Whateverist]

Hello everyone,

First of all, if this is not appropriate for this message board, please let me know or delete this thread. Causing controversy or breaking any rules is not my intention. I am a Roman Catholic seminarian who will be ordained to the priesthood in May. I am working on a project for one of my seminary classes and am in need of two volunteers to answer some questions for me.

If you could begin by telling me about yourself (age, gender, occupation, married/single/divorced, etc.) and then answer the following questions:

1. How would you define God?
2. Can a person know God? (How?)
3. Who was/is Jesus Christ?
4. What is the biggest problem, in your opinion, facing humankind today?
5. What is (how do you define) sin?
6. How do you feel about the church (and/or Christianity) and why do you feel this way?
7. How would you define the concept of salvation?
8. Do you think that there is only one way to reach God? (Elaborate)
9. What happens after we die?
10. How would you define a Christian?
11. Which is more important to you, knowing God or loving God? Can they be separated?
12. How does a person get to heaven?
13. What is your philosophy of life?
14. What do you think is common to world religions? How do they differ?

Thank you for your help in this regard. Have a great day!

1)  Not sure how much general agreement there may be on this but I suspect that 'God' is one way a person's psyche can get wired, a kind of partitioning of consciousness within a believer.  That's the only sense I can make of it.
2)  I don't know.
3)  Not really interested.
4)  Take your pick but I think there are way more humans on the world than is healthy and we're negatively affecting the rest of the web of life.
5)  Not a concept for which I find any application.
6)  I don't like them.  It looks as though they huddle together in order to maintain a common delusion.
7)  Salvation is another concept for which I find little use, I guess I could apply it to personal integrity somehow.
8)  Probably there is none but there is any number of ways to come to believe you have.
9)  Game over.  Compost.  The feeder becomes the food.
10)  Someone who attributes undeserved significance to just one book.
11)  Understood in my way, as a kind of inner mysterious other, you can't really know God but what matters is that you esteem its significance.  So love.  However one can esteem the mystery without personifying the other as 'God'.
12)  Good sex, yummy food, dancing, creating, loving, learning .. lots of ways but always changing.  (It is structurally impermanent.)
13)  Let each day reveal something anew.  Stay open to finding out what matters.  Don't cling to creeds.
14)  Everyone wants to make the life we intuitively feel to be finite matter.  Religious people hope the crowd will lead them there.  (Much better to embrace the insecurity.)

I'm 65, male, a retired math teacher, married and not responsible for increasing the biomass of the human species.  I enjoy long walks on the beach .. with my dogs.