thanks for the replies everyone, even before I read any of them, I felt that I was warmly welcomed and that everyone was willing to help, I'm very grateful. Before I continue, I must first give to all of you my apologies if at any instance I expressed a point of view that might be insulting or disrepectful to you, I only do so in my sheer ignorance and I apologize to you again, please understand me.

For micheal_legna,

To tell you more about myself, I'm a teenager from South East Asia, I wasn't born a Christian and I don't live in a Christian community (actually I can even say I live in a community which has certain prejudices against Christianity). Thus I am new to the religion and the best answer I can give to your two questions is, with all due respect, "no".

As for your assumtion that I believe in God, I'm quite confused, did you assume that I believe in the Christian context of God or that I believed in the existence of any  monotheistic God as in Islam or Judaism or the existence of multiple divine beings like in Hinduism?

For Ollie,

When I said "a faith", I meant any faith or belief, I meant to say I envy people who submitted to religion and hence found meaning, pupose and happiness, a few Christains, some Buddhists, some Hindus, some Muslims.

As for "dogma", I meant the doctrinistic views that some/most religions have which are to be believed by its followers without reason or logical judement on their part. After thinking about it for a while, I have to say that it was naive on my part to have said that. Again, I must apologise that I say this in my ignorance and would be very grateful if the questions I have about Christianity or any religion can be made clear to me.

For allinall,

thanks for the link.

For Evangelist,

I couldn't thank you enough for spending  your time to write such a long reply for me.

Yes, I admit that what you assumed is true, I don't know that there is or isn't a God.

I didn't say "proof" in my post but I think most peple will get the idea that i wanted empirical or scientific proof for the existence of God, this is not what I meant, although I have great respect for scientific enquiry, I am vey aware of the limitations of science and when I said I was skeptical, I am also skeptical about some dogmatic proposals that are made in the name of science and the believe of some people that science makes religion obselete, I certainly have a strong beleive that this view is wrong and I believe that religion and spirituality is above and beyond science.

So, as you said, I would greatly appreciate "the reasoned and rational look" you talked about.

The rest of the reply, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) is an argument for the Teleological Proof for the existence of God. I have been aware of the pros and cons behind the 3 main different arguments for the existence of God, namely the Cosmological argument, the Teleological argument and the Ontological argument.

But I beleive my knowlege is obviously incomplete and I'll browse for a few hours on the net and spend some time at the library tomorrow thinking and reading up more about what you said, maybe we can continue tomorrow with the conversation.

Once again, thanks everyone and hopefully with your help I can gain something beneficial out of this.

fats

Hi everyone,

I'm an agnostic who look up in envy at all the people I've met who have commtied their lives to a faith and henceforth found peace and tranquility in their lives.

But the problem is I'm a very skeptical person and I am not willing to believe in dogmatic viewpoints, hopefully all you christians here can convince me about something that I could value my whole life and liberate me from this curse of answering everything with "I don't know" without engulfing me with dogma (the response that I got when I tried this in various other forums and discussions).

thanks all,
Fats.