Truth. Such a simple thing to desire for, yet such a resilient thing to attain. While I read articles, comments, videos, etc on religion and faith, all I wanted to find was truth. Absolute truth. Just when I thought I had something worked out and convinced myself I had the truth, I was blown away by the numerous valid counter arguments. Why is it so hard to find truth?
Background
I was raised by a devout Christian family who raised me well. As a result, from the beginning, I had a bias towards Christianity. But ever since I got my first taste of atheism through one of my best childhood friends, I've always been toying with skeptical thoughts even while keeping my Christian status.
When I was enrolled to a Christian high school, I was taught numerous things about Christianity that convinced me of the truth of Christianity. Not only did the school teach me about Christianity, they also introduced other concepts such as Greek and Chinese philosophy, Islam, Modernism, etc, and how all of those are inferior to Christianity. I loved it. I took to the internet, to forums and video comments as a Christian apologist. Here was my first experience with a lot of people all having different opinions and perspectives. It was also the first time I got exposed to specific topics such as evolution, old earth vs young earth creationism, big bang theory, etc. I jumped in convinced that I could convince them with the arguments that I had, but the more I tried and failed, the more I got frustrated and eventually I quit having religious discussions. However, my faith would never be as strong again because their opposing arguments got to me and made me doubt some of the things I had been taught. I was only around 14.
For the next few years, religion would play a secondary role in my life. Although I kept going to church (mostly cause of my parents), wrote nice Christian journals (cause I know the Christian worldview very well), sang in the worship team, and even got rebaptized, I don't think it had ever truly come into my heart (at least to the same extent as some of my peers).
Then university happened. In America. Basically, the intellectual climate of college got me back into serious thought on the nature of religion and faith. I wanted to find truth, undisputable undeniable unarguable truth. Long story short, I couldn't find it. I couldn't find a set of beliefs that I could defend from all of its critics. No religion seemed to be free from flaws. Eventually I gave up trying and convinced myself that as humans we cannot know 100% truth because only God can comprehend 100% truth. I wrote an introspective song about what I should do with this newfound belief. Should I settle for the mystery of never knowing 100% truth and live my whole life without convictions? Or should I settle for Pascal's Wager and have a faith that's based on chance? For me this was a pivotal moment and my next decisions would be heavily influenced by discussions I've had with my family.
Decision
My grandpa said that life is hard enough as it is so why bother thinking too much about things beyond humans. He became a Christian solely for practical purposes at first (only because he couldn't read Arabic!), but since converting all he could see were blessings for his family. My mom said that if I only think of religion in terms of rationalism, then I truly will never find truth. There has to be an element of faith.
Based on this, I feel that I should give faith another shot. I feel like I've gone as far as I can with trying to rationalize everything and it gave me no answers. Maybe by leaving that mindset I can have a peace of mind and maybe, just maybe, even get closer to knowing truth. It feels strange to me to leave behind the ardent rationalizations that I've gotten accustomed to and instead try to look things through a faith perspective.
However, despite this decision, there are still some questions that haven't been answered yet. I've decided to give faith another shot...but faith in what? A supreme creator or an infinite nature? Why should I be a Christian and not a Muslim, etc? To answer these questions, I looked to Pascal's Wager and the law of the path of least resistance.
Pascal's Wager states that believing in a god is always preferable than believing in no god because if we believe in a god and he is actually real, the reward will be infinitely good while if we believe in a god and he isn't actually real, there is nothing to lose. In contrast, if we don't believe in a god and he is actually real, the punishment will be infinitely bad while if we don't believe in a god and he isn't actually real, there is nothing to gain. Other than Pascal's Wager, I accept other arguments for the existence of a god such as Aquinas's Quinque Viae and the argument of design.
So I believe in a god but why am I a Christian not a Muslim or Hindu? Simple. Because I was raised Christian and my whole family is Christian. Path of least resistance. Why convert to something else when you're not even sure of the undeniable truth of that other religion? My dad gave me a book written by a Christian who converted from Islam and talked about all the arguments against Islam in favor of Christianity. It's a good book but even my dad acknowledged that perhaps other books who take the exact opposite stance could theoretically be just as convincing. This goes for all religions. I, like my mom, accept that it is futile to try to prove which religion is more true than another religion because again, humans can never know 100% truth because only God knows 100% truth. Since I don't actually think that any religion is perfect and converting to another religion would just be a hassle, I'll just go through my life following the one I grew up with.
This means that I'll stay as a Christian and try to be a good Christian without imposing my beliefs on other people, not because of blind faith (typing this is painful because Jesus loved children's blind faith), but because of practicality. Slightly contradictory but whatever.
