What is Your Approach?

[Kayenneh]

When I say 'we' I simply mean people in general, not people on this forum, or atheists.. just people in general.

This bugs me a lot. Generalizations, generalizations. If you're making a piece that's basically about source criticism and not taking the easy way out, you shouldn't do so yourself.

In our present age, we have more information at our fingertips than we can find time to process. With so many signals thrown at us, we tend to latch on to the simplistic answers we find to complex questions in life. When we want to know something, a quick google search sometimes suffices in place of a thorough investigation - after all, with so much to know there's little time to investigate every matter. We find quick results on wikipedia and turn around to spit out opinionated views on every subject. Rather than fleshing out the truth of a matter, we can decide what we think about something and then pull up the evidence that supports our claim.

Just because we have information more readily at our fingertips, doesn't mean that all of the information is corrupt. Once again, source criticism.

If we really want to find answers to the questions we have, or find direction in our lives, can we really look it up on the Web? How do we know the person who wrote a wikipedia article has a better answer to the existence of God than we do?

Actually yes, the internet is a brilliant place to find scientific articles containing decent studies, confirming or rejecting my ideas.

However, considering the possibility of whether or not God is real and existent outside of our psyche, the only way to derive the answer is through a more thorough search. Confronting the issue from an impatient angle can form a fruitless cycle. On the other hand, anyone willing to pay attention, consider and weigh all possibilities, will find answers.

You talk about this like it's a new subject. As long as there have been gods, there have been skeptics. And even better, in this modern day, especially thanks to the internet, I don't only have to read the books, essays and studies, I can more easily go straight to the source and contact the people behind it all.

But before we begin such an endeavor, we must honestly ask ourselves whether we are approaching the task with a determination to justify our opinions, negate another's stance, or discover the truth.

Hmmm.. This smells of self-satisfaction to me. I'm sorry to be blunt, but just because it took long for you to figure out your stance in life, it doesn't mean that everyone else need to. Actually, it makes you seem fickle more than anything else.