Nice one Sam~ always food for thought. 

 Thank you sagefever. We humans have a lot to think about.

I have had a life long search for the spiritual.  I did a lot of research and was willing to give anything a chance ,accept Christianity! God in His great love for me broke down my pride bit by bit till I came to where my heart knew it belonged.  The Orthodox Church.  Now I have the grace of God and the collected wisdom of the spiritual gaints from the beginning of time; I still have to do the daily work for spiritual growth.  That means a daily prayer rule, keeping the prescribed fast of the Church, giving alms and all the other things that Christ laid down for our growth.  I no longer have to play God and have all the answers.  Now I have to be authentic and not live in vain fantasies.  This means accept God as God and me as me and work out my salvation as it was set before the beginning of time.+All glory to God+ 

What am I supposed to believe? 

We can believe whatever we want to believe.  Even when churches, my mother and others were trying to tell me what I should believe when I was a child, I questioned “but why?”   Finally found my own answers on my own.

I do believe infants are capable of questioning, just not, at that moment, via the voice of words. If you really watch an infant awake or asleep you will see, they know.  Their nightmares tell you they do know about the afterlife.  Why else would an infant have such dreams (night terrors) if they had not seen it before and been there?  An infant has basically nothing with which to base a dream on.  It is the same when they are awake and crying and crying – they are the tears of knowing and not being able to verbalize same.  When a child smiles and giggles in their sleep or awake and laughing and happy – they know the joys of the “other side” they know the horrors/joys of another life – immortality.  Moving from life to life, century to century – being born, living, dying, being born again, and again, and again.  The soul is not a seed it is a part of every being and is there from conception.  I do not believe children are “born bad” genetics or no genetics.  When we receive a child into our lives, it is our “job” to care for and to do the best we can as humans to direct that child.  That said, I do believe from conception we will be what is written before us on a tablet on the other side.  Yes, I do believe in the “other side”. Sometimes the best intentioned parent(s) can do all the right things and that little human still makes bad choices, still takes the “easy way”. 

Then there are the children who are angels from the get go. Don’t know what we would do without them.  They are the ones who come into our lives not so perfect, mentally, physically, but oh what they teach us and could teach us if we would only listen.  They know from the day they are born that they will only be here a short time and only have a short time to make us believe.  What are we supposed to believe?  That there is unadulterated love if we just open our eyes and our hearts and close our mouths.

Why can’t we know?

We DO know, we just aren’t listening.

Witters~ you are a very wise woman.((((hugs))) 

I no longer have to play God and have all the answers.  Now I have to be authentic and not live in vain fantasies.

 It's interesting that some just can't help but take a shot at people who don't believe as they do.  I have a proposition, Wayfarer.  I'll not speak on the behalf of Orthodox Christianity if you'll stop trying to pigeonhole people who don't agree with your theology by claiming to understand that which you don't understand.  Quite a few atheists have tried to explain our thoughts to you, but it's clear that you have no desire to see us as individuals.  That's sad.

How can you say you "no longer...have all the answers", but at the same time suggest that the answer to every problem or issue is God?  And, it's ironic that you have the hubris to speak about vanity.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not the blogger who posts a daily devotional to your own faith and can't help interject childish and misapplied projections towards the atheists in this community?  Note that, for at least four months (and possibly longer), I have not made ONE post degrading your beliefs to come about justifying my own.  Why, in a question about what YOU believe, do you constantly feel the need to point to others? 

As for believing in fantasies, I hope NancyII is reading.   If any atheist dared suggest that you, or any other Christian on these blogs, believed in a fantasy, we'd have our heads handed to us on a platter.  You reap what you sow, Wayfarer. 

Sam, you mentioned politics and politicians.  I think part of the problem with the current climate is that politicians are so concerned about wooing certain demographics of religious people that they've become completely disingenuous about what they really believe.  I've heard candidates on both sides contradict themselves about their faith.  I know I'd have a whole lot more respect for candidates if they'd say, "Look. This is what I believe and we may not agree 100%.  But, I believe x and you believe y...and that's okay.  We're all in this together."  The subject of religion has become such a divisive subject. 

 Sorry Possum, but I spoke out of my beliefs and where I am at.  No were did I speak against any one else's beliefs.  If you feel threatened by my beliefs then that is your look out.  I won't change mine because you don't like them and I will not agree that people shouldn't be free to speak and peacefully practice their beliefs ,because others brand them as politically incorrect.

 Interesting that you mentioned freedom of belief or skepticism here in America. If you spoke those words in a Moslem state, you'd already be beheaded.

The truth.  You're supposed to believe the truth, Sam.

The problem is in discovering and discerning what that is, in any given instance.

Believing what your parents believe isn't a horrible move.   It is an evolutionary strategy for efficient belief -formation.  We individually have a limited set of experiences in particular situations to form beliefs from:  we have very few of those while young and encounter more of them as we mature.  An ability to copy and paste our parents' beliefs, formed by lifetimes of experience and consideration, would be an amazingly powerful way to bootstrap a fulsome and developed set of beliefs into a young cogitator's head.  We can't Xerox mom and dad's heads, of course, but we humans have gotten darn good at that.

The problem is that mom and dad may have a whole pile of incorrect, unjustified, and just plain loopy beliefs.  Blindly copying their ideas might well end up a disaster for the child.  Still, one would think that copying with some additional ability to modify clearly dysfunctional thinking would work.  And it does, sorta.

An even more promising strategy for the budding understander is not to copy mom and dad's beliefs, but to copy the beliefs of the smartest and wisest and most successful member of the village.  After all, they are likely the ones who figured more of it out, have figured out the right stuff, and have been most successful at putting that to work for them.  And we do that. 

Of course, the problem with believing what the head man believes is that, for many villages, the head man got that way through deceit, trickery, and just plain brute force.  That's how we get preachers and witchdoctors (deceit),  politicians and prime ministers (trickery), and warlords and gangleaders (brute force).  While they all have valuable life skills, their beliefs track the opposite of truth as much as they do the truth.

Still, if a budding youth could accurately figure out which people in the community had the best and most fulsome set of existent beliefs and could then figure out how to copy that person's beliefs into their own heads, that would be even better than always copying mom and dad's heads...

One solution is to understand that the head man, while strong and vicious, may not be the brightest bulb in the pack.  A society could divide labor and specialize:  let the big thug do their thuggery but set up a separate person to be the smart guy who keeps the knowledge.  The philosopher and the teacher and the seeress join the ranks along with the preacher, imam, faithhealer, and cleric.  If the kids copy that person's beliefs, then they will likely have a better head start on the truth than if they copied mom and dad's ideas or if they copied Big Thug's thoughts.

And of course there is a lot more to this...  much too much for a morning missive. 

A lot of folks never get much beyond simply copying someone's beliefs ...  that is good enough for the lives they choose to live.  A few folks go on to innovate, edit, correct, and develop the ideas they booted up with.  Here, in our advanced knowledge economy, we have specialized and developed the technologies of belief-formation, creation, and revision far beyond what they were even 100 years ago.  But people are people and we're still working the kinks out of the system:  still a whole lot of garbage ideas around holding on and still a lot of people exploiting it all for power and profit.

But the simple answer is that you're supposed to believe the truth.  How to do that is the hard part.

 Believing what your parents believe isn't a horrible move

In a lot of ways this is very true.

In my case, however, my Father believed the Govt was the answer for all our problems. "They" will take care of us......

Little wonder I learned to eschew this philosophy. The Catholic (universal) Church and Govt (he only wished it was  "universal") would take care of us. The Pope=FDR, we will never have to worry about a thing if we just go to Mass every Sunday, go to confession (confess your sins to the Church), pay your taxes (confess your sins to the Govt), and everything will be OK.

The only problem with all this is I learned one really  "universal" truth!

(psssst! Hint: The Church is composed of mere mortal men. So is the Govt!) 

Believe the truth, while at the same time, filter out the bloviating.

 Believe in the "truth"  nice.  However, what exactly IS the "truth:?  I still say it is what you as a person wish to believe after haveing heard all sides and diserning for yourself that content which you believe to be the "truth".  "The truth shall set you free" is a misnomer. It did not set me free at one point in time in my life and was therefore up to me to take the content of the information and decide what I was going to do with it.  The "truth" gave me information with which to think upon.  At times I wish I had not hunted down the "truth" - but I did and at that point it was up to me as to what I wanted to believe or discard as "mis-information".  After wading through all the information I decided what to believe and what part was the "truth".  One man's "truth" is another's idiocy!

I suppose we could rant about this all day and everybody will have a different take on what is or is not the "truth" or whether babies have souls - they do.

 I'm not sure how I got drawn into this or what I'm expected to say other than my usual philosophy of "live and let live" where religion is concerned.  (as well as most other areas of life.)

Possum, I almost didn't read this one because I rarely read anything on here regarding faith.  I've suggested over and over that people who are offended by posts regarding religion ignore them but people can't resist getting into controversial issues it seems.  And yes, I do object strongly when I'm told I believe in a fantasy where faith is concerned.  I also object when a Christian insults any non believer.  (merely questioning is another matter)

If people want to post their belief or lack of, it should never bring insults from either side.  However, people don't seem to be able to discuss religion without the conversation disintegrating into insults no matter how politely they are couched.

I appreciate it when my intelligence is not questioned where faith is concerned and I appreciate it when people do not tell me that my faith is due to a fear of dying (which has been said here) when in actuality, that faith is renewed by the miracles, small and large, that happen in my life.

By the same token, you will never hear me criticize people who do not believe as I do.  In MY world, no one made me judge and jury. 

Funny how it's ok to say, or insinuate, that people are naive, idiots, morons, or any other little slur when it comes to politics but ....I guess it's because those insults just don't strike us at the core of our being the way fatih does.

Criminy..this is way too philosophical for me this early in the morning with allergy sneezes clogging up my head. 

 Not to make light of the profound Nancy, but to quote Chester A. Riley: "My head is made up!" And when someone's "head is made up" you aren't going to get past that.

Concerning Not living for "vain fantasies"  The greatest concern of genuine spiritual life is not to build a idol of hollow religiosity and worship a idol made up of what you think God is.  As they say "truth is a person"  the meaning of living authentically is to enter a real loving relationship with that person as He is and only by coming to know your creator as He is can you really know yourself.  Or as some will have it "Know yourself to know God."  On not believing what your parents believed.  Realistically it is not that easy.  It is their genes and the socialization into their world that makes you what you are and not some Eskimo living in Timbuktu.[ If you are a Eskimo living in Timbuktu.  No offense.]  Your choice is what you make of that. Some choose to accept the traditions and wisdom of their parents.  Some spend their whole lives in rebellion.

The world would be a better place wayfarer if there weren't so many so presumptuous as to tell others what they are supposed to believe about God. If the Great Spirit wants to tell me what I'm to believe I'm easy to find. Short of that the words of people remain only the words of people whether in or out of the Bible.