Being a Mathematician, I'm very used to the idea that any system is based in the axioms that you select. They are not "self-evident" (for example, the more basic of them, the existence or not existence of God is everything but "self-evident") but they are impossible to avoid. Not everything can be demostrated. You need a base that you accept and build everything else over those assumptions.

Karl Popper idea was that falsifiable theories (if there is a way to prove them false) are scientific, and not falsifiable ones are not science. That's why believing in God will always be faith, out of the scope of science: it's not falsifiable.

Well, here are my main axioms (or "almost axioms", because some of them can be demostrated from the others and, therefore, removed, but this is not Mathematics and I didn't want to reduce the list). And with them, a personal explanation about why, in my case, I selected these axioms and no others.

• I believe in God

  It is not an exact quote of Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov but the idea was there: if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted. I know that for a lot of people (many friends of mine, among them) it is possible to have a moral compass without assuming the existence of God, but for me it is not possible. Each time that I imagine a world without God, as an exercise of the mind, I don't like the conclussions that I reach. It's also difficult for me to conceive an Universe without purpose.

  Being more specific, I also believe in the teachings of Christ, the power of prayer and that the writers of the Bible had divine inspiration, making the Bible a book full of wisdom that I read in a daily basis. I also think that the differences between all the Christian churches are more in the details than in the essence: all of them are ways that help to know God.

  Looking backwards, there were times where God was not an important part of my life, occuping a very small place. In the last years my life became more spiritual. I'm not proud of many of the things I did in the past and I realize that frequently I acted as a jerk. (That doesn't mean that I don't do that anymore). But believing in God has been (and is) important for me because it's helping me to become, day by day and little by little, a better person than I used to be.

  I seldom pray asking for things because I don't think that God is Santa Claus, but each time I ask for guidance I receive answers.

• I believe in good and evil

  This is a consequence of the first axiom, but I decided to keep it in the list. Nowadays there is a growing tendence to consider good and evil relative terms, depending on the time and culture. And that is true for many rules (probably for most of them) but, for the basic ones, I think that it is a very destructive trend.

  Not all the cultures are equivalent. There are some that keep rules basically evil. And others had them in the past (slavery was evil).

  Without the idea of God, I realize that it is difficult to see it in another way but I believe that there exists some absolute concepts or good and evil (the more important ones), even when others, less important, depend on when and where. For me, the places where such basic definitions are expressed in the most simple and clear ways are the Ten Commandments and Christ's Sermon of the Mountain.

• I believe in freedom

  Karl Marx wrote that It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. For me, that makes human beings robots whose behavior is a consequence of their circunstances, without freedom of choice.

  I believe that God gave us free will, and that, whatever are our circunstances, we can choice, being the most important the choice between good or evil.

  And nobody better that Thomas Jefferson to express the idea, in the famous quote of the Declaration of Indepence, widely known, but never enough quoted:

  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

  Yes, I believe that we are free and that freedom is the main gift that God gave us. And that all the bad things in the world happen precisely because of that. I never understood why those bad things could be the proof of the non existence of God. They are the proof of our freedom of choice.

  The circunstances define the set of choices that we face in each moments but I believe that is our decisions who make the difference. John Steinbeck constructed a novel around the Biblic word "timshel" (you can).

  The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt', meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But is the Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest' - it is also true that 'Thou mayest not'. Don't you see?

• I believe in personal responsability

  With freedom comes responsability, and, being human beings free to choice, they have also to face the consequences of their choices. It's not the state, neither the government, the society, the parents or a foreign country the main responsable of our situation (in most of the cases). In the last instance, it's our decisions in a given set of circunstances what decide our destiny. Nobody else has to be blamed.

  Tiranny arises when somebody with authority tries to decide instead of us and to deprive us from our freedom and responsability. In one of my favorite quotes, C.S. Lewis wrote:

  "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."