Zach,
Having given it a great deal of thought, I don't think you can believe in something you don't believe in.....either you believe it or you don't and are playing lip service to it.
I've personally wished, in a weird sort of way, that I was able to believe that deeply in something unproven. But, alas, I cannot. I can't even pretend to very well.
If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. - Steve Allen
I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me.
-Isaac Asimov
(This one fits me perfectly)
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
This other one is perfect for me as well:
If someone were to prove to me - right this minute - that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior. - Luis Buquel
Hi Accer- I'm a believer in a "Great Spirit" , not an entity. For me, science and spirit hold no contradictions. I do have some problems with religion, though. God or no God, this world sure is big and beautiful, and I believe what we think, say, do and leave behind matters. And I don't think we have free will accidentally. I wonder where brilliant people like you get their brilliance, and I don't mean IQ!
Well, in my case I'm a dog lover and I can speak in my personal point of view. Dogs really fogive, people not always.