Why I chose to be a Gnostic

Imagine a religion that has no God. I understand that the Buddhist Religion is not based on a belief in God. The secular world has Atheism. Richard Dawkins book does an admirable job of outlining why so many scientists and philosophers have chosen to reject the idea of a God. Most religions require that you not only believe in God, but that you must accept their concept of what God is like. I was attracted to the Gnostic Way because the Gnostics do not pretend to know what God is like. God is a mystery beyond our understanding. Perhaps someday we will know God intimately, but that day is still very far away. The Gnostic searches for God inside ourselves. I have pointed out many times the words of Meister Eckhart that to know God we must empty ourselves fully; only then can God enter into us. All anyone can do realistically if asked to prove the existence of God is to shrug one's shoulders and pass on the question; anything else is speculative at best. I prefer to be honest and say that I am searching for God, and since I believe fully in reincarnation, I expect that at some point in the future that search will succeed. If someone chooses to believe that God can be known I have no trouble with that if the knowledge is metaphoric rather than literal. When you tell me that because of writings that occurred back when people believed that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it rather than the other way around, I cannot go there with you. I am willing to accept anything as metaphor, and the Gnostics were masters at metaphor. In the world of metaphor, we are all brothers and sisters no matter what we believe. As literalists we are divided and shall always remain so. As a Gnostic I can listen to all points of view and need not adopt any single one of them. Hence, the Gnostic Way.