I do not attend church. I do not own a copy of the Bible. I am what you call an Agnostic. I don't let religion interfere with my life. I don't let it rule my life. I don't wear shirts that say, "I (heart) Jesus". If I have a religious practice, I do it in private. I don't talk about my religion in school. I think that people who make their religion public are morons. Are you like me?
Agnostic
- Thread starter UberDragon
- Start date
ConsequentAtheist
Registered Senior Member
Respectfully, do either of you claim that belief is God(s) is warranted?
I think you'll find your position valuable
Or I could look at the guy I knew whose faith compelled him to keep a bad employee because the poor snot's life would only get worse if he was fired. In the end, they built a positive relationship that not only improved the employee's work habits, but eventually resulted in his settling and starting a family. I can't say it would have come out the same were it not for my Mennonite boss' faith in patience. To the other, in the same town, is the guy who comes across me on the street, while I'm vomiting some horrible food poisoning picked up at a Mexican restaurant and says, "Here, need a hand?" and gives me a tract on twelve reasons why I need JESUS in my life.
My boss was happy to state that his conscience and faith compelled him to such patience; indeed it saved my ass a few times, as well as his penchant for forgiveness. And, having never preached a word of scripture to me in the years we worked together, I have to say he's given me some respect toward the Mennonites, even though I've never bothered to find out anything more about them. Perverse stoicism is acceptable in other forms, why not in the Mennonites?
Or a different environment. I once attended a pagan party attended by various and diverse traditions. The organizers were OTO, and damn near militant. I walked out on a service (I was drunk, and had to piss) and shortly thereafter, an associate of mine was removed by armed guards. This show of faith in ritual was discouraging to many, but the weekend went off without a hitch as the conventional authority--a more loving and charitable nature--established by the assembled ruled the day. While the organizers were OTO, the festival looked more post-Gardenerian. And the prohibition of children from the magick circle: that pissed a few people off. But nobody got up and thumped their books. In the face of "civil disobedience" (e.g. parents telling their children to sack it and return to the circle if they wanted to) a wonderful modified Crowleyan ruby-star ritual (or sapphire-star, I cannot recall which) became even more playful. Even where conventions of expression specifically respect the religious, there is ridiculous expression. A church does not require armed guards, period.
I think of Savatage's Streets album (1991, Atlantic). I suspect that the rift in the band may have had to do with issues of drugs and religion, as despite the band's penchant for controversy, their songs always abided by Christian underpinnings, including such phrases as, "We should have listened to what Christ had to say" ("Devastation", Hall of the Mountain King, 1986, Atlantic). It was a little like accusing Peter Gabriel of Satanism in the face of "Solsbury Hill" and "Here Comes the Flood", or accusing the same of Styx's blistering anti-cocaine song "Snowblind". With Streets, Savatage pulled off a number of public faith exhibitions that were more than simply respectable, and tread upon admirable. From the adaption of "Suo Gon" to the mocking "Jesus Saves" (about a drug dealer named Jesus), from the bewildered "Saint Patrick's" to the triumphal "Believe", there exists a core of decency about what the lyrics try to say that is clearly influenced by the Christian voice. It is, in essence, what groups like Stryper, Bloodgood, D.C. Talk, and others could not accomplish--a subtle statement of decency filtered through a Christian-influenced lens.
We tend to notice the poor expressions of faith more than we do the positive ones. It is the nature of divisive ideas. It had never occurred to me to consider Van Morrison a "Christian" musician until I read an interview in which he talked about faith in Campus Life, a missionary magazine.
In another topic, I addressed with TruthSeeker the idea of rhetoric versus example. It seems to me that expressions of faith would not be so ridiculous if more of them could be attained. We might consider Mother Theresa, whom I appreciate despite doctrinal differences, for her efforts to alleviate suffering. These efforts formed her primary expression of faith, one which I can appreciate especially in contrast to the run-of-the-mill televangelists with emotional blackmail and hypocrisy painted across themselves like scarlet to the whore of Babylon.
Religious assertions generally pertain to those issues humanity is not yet capable of resolving broadly and agreeably. If expressing those conditions is of use, then no, one is not a moron. However, given the moronic waves bashing at the bulkheads, I do believe I understand your concern, or at least a certain degree of your perspective. I won't say it's wrong, but merely a wonderful springboard for me to rant from.
thanx,
Tiassa
First off, I think you'll find your position quite valuable in the long run, Uber. The only comment worth making is that it's the manner of publicizing one's religion. For instance in Catholic School, there were at least two kinds of faith. One was brash and forward and familiar to all who would criticize Christianity for its evangelical fervor. The other was a quiet confidence in being Catholic which manifested itself in some positive intercourse. I knew high school kids who were capable of doing service work because it was service, and not just because it was God, and they were few and far between. But they existed, and I have no objection to their public exhibitions of faith, especially since it doesn't give me a headache.
Or I could look at the guy I knew whose faith compelled him to keep a bad employee because the poor snot's life would only get worse if he was fired. In the end, they built a positive relationship that not only improved the employee's work habits, but eventually resulted in his settling and starting a family. I can't say it would have come out the same were it not for my Mennonite boss' faith in patience. To the other, in the same town, is the guy who comes across me on the street, while I'm vomiting some horrible food poisoning picked up at a Mexican restaurant and says, "Here, need a hand?" and gives me a tract on twelve reasons why I need JESUS in my life.
My boss was happy to state that his conscience and faith compelled him to such patience; indeed it saved my ass a few times, as well as his penchant for forgiveness. And, having never preached a word of scripture to me in the years we worked together, I have to say he's given me some respect toward the Mennonites, even though I've never bothered to find out anything more about them. Perverse stoicism is acceptable in other forms, why not in the Mennonites?
Or a different environment. I once attended a pagan party attended by various and diverse traditions. The organizers were OTO, and damn near militant. I walked out on a service (I was drunk, and had to piss) and shortly thereafter, an associate of mine was removed by armed guards. This show of faith in ritual was discouraging to many, but the weekend went off without a hitch as the conventional authority--a more loving and charitable nature--established by the assembled ruled the day. While the organizers were OTO, the festival looked more post-Gardenerian. And the prohibition of children from the magick circle: that pissed a few people off. But nobody got up and thumped their books. In the face of "civil disobedience" (e.g. parents telling their children to sack it and return to the circle if they wanted to) a wonderful modified Crowleyan ruby-star ritual (or sapphire-star, I cannot recall which) became even more playful. Even where conventions of expression specifically respect the religious, there is ridiculous expression. A church does not require armed guards, period.
I think of Savatage's Streets album (1991, Atlantic). I suspect that the rift in the band may have had to do with issues of drugs and religion, as despite the band's penchant for controversy, their songs always abided by Christian underpinnings, including such phrases as, "We should have listened to what Christ had to say" ("Devastation", Hall of the Mountain King, 1986, Atlantic). It was a little like accusing Peter Gabriel of Satanism in the face of "Solsbury Hill" and "Here Comes the Flood", or accusing the same of Styx's blistering anti-cocaine song "Snowblind". With Streets, Savatage pulled off a number of public faith exhibitions that were more than simply respectable, and tread upon admirable. From the adaption of "Suo Gon" to the mocking "Jesus Saves" (about a drug dealer named Jesus), from the bewildered "Saint Patrick's" to the triumphal "Believe", there exists a core of decency about what the lyrics try to say that is clearly influenced by the Christian voice. It is, in essence, what groups like Stryper, Bloodgood, D.C. Talk, and others could not accomplish--a subtle statement of decency filtered through a Christian-influenced lens.
We tend to notice the poor expressions of faith more than we do the positive ones. It is the nature of divisive ideas. It had never occurred to me to consider Van Morrison a "Christian" musician until I read an interview in which he talked about faith in Campus Life, a missionary magazine.
In another topic, I addressed with TruthSeeker the idea of rhetoric versus example. It seems to me that expressions of faith would not be so ridiculous if more of them could be attained. We might consider Mother Theresa, whom I appreciate despite doctrinal differences, for her efforts to alleviate suffering. These efforts formed her primary expression of faith, one which I can appreciate especially in contrast to the run-of-the-mill televangelists with emotional blackmail and hypocrisy painted across themselves like scarlet to the whore of Babylon.
Religious assertions generally pertain to those issues humanity is not yet capable of resolving broadly and agreeably. If expressing those conditions is of use, then no, one is not a moron. However, given the moronic waves bashing at the bulkheads, I do believe I understand your concern, or at least a certain degree of your perspective. I won't say it's wrong, but merely a wonderful springboard for me to rant from.
thanx,
Tiassa
Mother Teresa
Yes, I think that Mother Teresa was a deeply unpleasant, immoral human being and I can think of no ways in which she added anything to the world, except perhaps as an example of what not to do, how not to live. I find it frightening that so many people – even otherwise sane people – think that she was a good person, or dare not say otherwise. There appears to be a taboo against speaking out against people like Mother Teresa. Perhaps it is the taboo against criticising religious ideas?
Stop reading now if you'll be offended by strong criticism of this “saint”.
Mother Teresa was a conservative Catholic who supported the evil Pope's hard line on abortion, contraception, divorce, women priests, and generally had very bad ideas about women. A woman's highest virtue was to do her duty to the church and her husband – to be a “good” wife and mother and to serve the Catholic church.
She built up and ran an international corporation using slave labour. It was not slave labour in the legal sense, of course, but the psychological reality was precisely that of slave labour. She chose India as her base and got many young girls for her convents. Those young girls/women were not there voluntarily in the psychological sense, they were there because their parents put enormous psychological pressure on them to become nuns. Mother T had a hideously austere set of rules for them, summed up by chastity, obedience and suchlike, and that meant obedience to the church, i.e., her. (One wonders what happened when chastity and obedience came into conflict. I'll bet it was chastity that got sacrificed.)
She got off on playing the part of the ministering angel, and chose to save the souls of the lowest of the low – the people who were dying. The problem is that she was not interested in curing anyone. An English nurse actually left after Mother Teresa had refused to help a child who would certainly have lived had he had a course of antibiotics. Her response was that it was irrelevant because he was going to meet God anyway! She wasn't interested in the living or potentially living, only the dying, and she was only interested in the dying for her own selfish pleasure in getting off on playing the ministering angel. She wasn't interested in helping them to get better, only to save their souls.
She betrayed the dying too. What she was doing was incompatible with having moral relationships with people. When you develop a relationship with someone, you thereby acquire an obligation to treat that person differently from how you might treat a complete stranger. A parent who has a child adopted at birth does not raise obligations to that child, but a parent who chooses to parent does thereby raise an obligation to the children she chooses to bring up. To the extent that Mother Teresa developed relationships with people in her care, she was acting immorally in not using the available money to treat them where that would have made a difference to whether they live or die, for example.
In her own case, when she got sick, she took herself straight to the best heart specialist in New York. There is nothing wrong with that! It was right for her to spend that money on curing herself, but it was wrong of her not to find a few dollars for a course of antibiotics to save a sick child with whom she had developed a relationship.
The logic of Mother Teresa's organisation was such as not to allow her to spend extra money on helping to cure anyone, let alone improve his or her life – all she did was to minister to the dying. So Mother Teresa was giving the dying the impression that she cared but in fact she didn't. Had she cared, her whole organisation would have collapsed overnight, because when you care about someone, you want to save their lives if you can, even if that means spending less money on ministering to others (whom you do not know). When you have a relationship with someone, it is wrong to betray that person by sacrificing him or her to the idea of “fairness” or “equality”. Doing the right thing for those with whom she had a relationship would have reduced the money for ministering to the others, and her whole agenda was to save souls, not help anyone improve their lives (or even live).
She could have had Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy or whatever it is called – the thing where the person (nurse, etc) gives herself a role by making people die or nearly die, so she can then play the ministering angel. The only difference between this evil and that of Mother T is that she never had to take any murderous actions because there was a steady supply of dying people, it being Calcutta.
That's another thing – why Calcutta? Why not somewhere even poorer? There are places in Africa that make Calcutta look like a rich place. So why didn't she want to be in those places?
So – my main criticism is that all her relationships with those whose souls she saved, were immoral. She betrayed them. She also did everything she could to oppose the progress in terms of women's place in society.(Sarah Lawrence)
mother theresa
hitchens
Yes, I think that Mother Teresa was a deeply unpleasant, immoral human being and I can think of no ways in which she added anything to the world, except perhaps as an example of what not to do, how not to live. I find it frightening that so many people – even otherwise sane people – think that she was a good person, or dare not say otherwise. There appears to be a taboo against speaking out against people like Mother Teresa. Perhaps it is the taboo against criticising religious ideas?
Stop reading now if you'll be offended by strong criticism of this “saint”.
Mother Teresa was a conservative Catholic who supported the evil Pope's hard line on abortion, contraception, divorce, women priests, and generally had very bad ideas about women. A woman's highest virtue was to do her duty to the church and her husband – to be a “good” wife and mother and to serve the Catholic church.
She built up and ran an international corporation using slave labour. It was not slave labour in the legal sense, of course, but the psychological reality was precisely that of slave labour. She chose India as her base and got many young girls for her convents. Those young girls/women were not there voluntarily in the psychological sense, they were there because their parents put enormous psychological pressure on them to become nuns. Mother T had a hideously austere set of rules for them, summed up by chastity, obedience and suchlike, and that meant obedience to the church, i.e., her. (One wonders what happened when chastity and obedience came into conflict. I'll bet it was chastity that got sacrificed.)
She got off on playing the part of the ministering angel, and chose to save the souls of the lowest of the low – the people who were dying. The problem is that she was not interested in curing anyone. An English nurse actually left after Mother Teresa had refused to help a child who would certainly have lived had he had a course of antibiotics. Her response was that it was irrelevant because he was going to meet God anyway! She wasn't interested in the living or potentially living, only the dying, and she was only interested in the dying for her own selfish pleasure in getting off on playing the ministering angel. She wasn't interested in helping them to get better, only to save their souls.
She betrayed the dying too. What she was doing was incompatible with having moral relationships with people. When you develop a relationship with someone, you thereby acquire an obligation to treat that person differently from how you might treat a complete stranger. A parent who has a child adopted at birth does not raise obligations to that child, but a parent who chooses to parent does thereby raise an obligation to the children she chooses to bring up. To the extent that Mother Teresa developed relationships with people in her care, she was acting immorally in not using the available money to treat them where that would have made a difference to whether they live or die, for example.
In her own case, when she got sick, she took herself straight to the best heart specialist in New York. There is nothing wrong with that! It was right for her to spend that money on curing herself, but it was wrong of her not to find a few dollars for a course of antibiotics to save a sick child with whom she had developed a relationship.
The logic of Mother Teresa's organisation was such as not to allow her to spend extra money on helping to cure anyone, let alone improve his or her life – all she did was to minister to the dying. So Mother Teresa was giving the dying the impression that she cared but in fact she didn't. Had she cared, her whole organisation would have collapsed overnight, because when you care about someone, you want to save their lives if you can, even if that means spending less money on ministering to others (whom you do not know). When you have a relationship with someone, it is wrong to betray that person by sacrificing him or her to the idea of “fairness” or “equality”. Doing the right thing for those with whom she had a relationship would have reduced the money for ministering to the others, and her whole agenda was to save souls, not help anyone improve their lives (or even live).
She could have had Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy or whatever it is called – the thing where the person (nurse, etc) gives herself a role by making people die or nearly die, so she can then play the ministering angel. The only difference between this evil and that of Mother T is that she never had to take any murderous actions because there was a steady supply of dying people, it being Calcutta.
That's another thing – why Calcutta? Why not somewhere even poorer? There are places in Africa that make Calcutta look like a rich place. So why didn't she want to be in those places?
So – my main criticism is that all her relationships with those whose souls she saved, were immoral. She betrayed them. She also did everything she could to oppose the progress in terms of women's place in society.(Sarah Lawrence)
mother theresa
hitchens
I'm an aparent agnostic who spent 7 years at a christian school in the bible belt(georgia to be specific). it's given me a large degree of experience with very religious and conservative people.
I don't think people are morons for expressing any sort of belief per se, but it is damn annoying when people try to make every single conversation about how awesome they think god is.
I understand why people like religion. it's comforting to have something to believe in and some aparent purpose in life.
i personaly am totally comfortable with the idea of having no idea if some sort of god does exist. hey, it's a tough question to prove either way.
I don't think people are morons for expressing any sort of belief per se, but it is damn annoying when people try to make every single conversation about how awesome they think god is.
I understand why people like religion. it's comforting to have something to believe in and some aparent purpose in life.
i personaly am totally comfortable with the idea of having no idea if some sort of god does exist. hey, it's a tough question to prove either way.
Thank you Asguard!! Thank you!!! Finally, someone gets the point!! And the morons I was talking about are the ones who pray in front of their lockers and wear "Jesus Freak" shirts!!
ConsequentAtheist
Registered Senior Member
Dumb. Really, really dumb.
Actually, agnostics don't necessarily believe in a higher power. Agnostics are simply people who say there is not enough evidence to prove or disprove God exists, and no way to know if he does or doesn't. They can either believe in a God, or not. The difference between Agnostics and Atheists is that atheists demand God does not exist, while agnostics admit God may exist, even if they don't believe he does.
Religion without practice is not really religion. And if a Christian would practice, s/he should do what the Bible says to do. Things like "Love one another" and service, adn so on. Instead of trying to bring people to God through trying to convince them, they should just do their jobs. Unfortuantly, not even our pastors seem that wise to give people this advice (eventhoghu I heard mine talking about it, as I see most Christians doing the opposite I believe most pastors don't have this wisdom...)...
Straight from the dictionary (websters)
Agnostic: person who believes that it is impossible to know whether god exists.
It's a simple concept. Since god would be an omnipotent and infinite power, man could not comprehend, least know whether there is a god or not. Basically it's out of our reach.
The only belief for agnosticism is that people are limited.
Agnostic: person who believes that it is impossible to know whether god exists.
It's a simple concept. Since god would be an omnipotent and infinite power, man could not comprehend, least know whether there is a god or not. Basically it's out of our reach.
The only belief for agnosticism is that people are limited.
ConsequentAtheist
Registered Senior Member
God(s) as "omnipotent and infinite " is a relatively modern concept. These were neither requirements nor attributes of the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman deities, for example, were the crucial distinction between God(s) and man was immortality.
ConsequentAtheist
Registered Senior Member
Zip
Agnostic: EPISTEMOLOGICAL stance stating that one cannot know something (usually the existence of a god or gods)
Athiast: GIBBERISH
Atheist: THEOLOGICAL stance -- Strong Atheism is the belief that there is not a god; Weak Atheism is the lack of belief in a god
No.
Agnostic: EPISTEMOLOGICAL stance stating that one cannot know something (usually the existence of a god or gods)
Athiast: GIBBERISH
Atheist: THEOLOGICAL stance -- Strong Atheism is the belief that there is not a god; Weak Atheism is the lack of belief in a god