For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'
Either there is a God or there isn't. Both possibilities are frightening.
My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.
Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
Designedly God covers in dark night the issue of futurity.
They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels weren't entirely sure that this was a good thing.
Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.
Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing...Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.
The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.
You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God ... I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.
