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I think I agree with being agnostic. I just don’t think there’s really a guaranteed 100% way you can prove if God Exists or prove that he does not exist? But what does the Bible say about that? Does it say you’ll go to Hell if you’re agnostic? Or how would God react if you consider yourself agnostic??
About 20 years ago I read the entire bible, studied various versions, and read a variety of seminary textbooks about what different sections of the bible - or different issues - meant; or the possible meanings of them.
I don't recall it specifically talking about agnostics as a religion (I may be wrong on that).
However, some key points: 1) Both the Torah, The Old Testament (which is slightly different than the Torrah), and the New Testament all have statements that there are other religions in the world (and at least the Torah and Old Testament that there are other gods as well).
These books are about the "Children of Abraham" and people who chose to join them with one specific god (Yahweh - or something similar in pronunciation) who chose to protect Abraham, his descendants, and those who followed his teachings.
At least the Torah and Old Testament clearly state that there are other gods for other people.
The general statements in both the old and new testament is that for those who chose not to believe in the god of Abraham... to just move on and seek out others who do.
At the same time, you were to be civil and treat all with respect (including people of other faiths).
I believe agnosticism would fit into that.
It's still bad, because you're still rejecting the truth. If you weren't rejecting the truth, you'd know the truth to be true, but you do not, so you reject the validity of the truth. If you do not know the truth to be valid, you do not know the truth to be true, and you reject the trueness of the the truth, claiming it to only be possibly true. Only accepting that the truth is possibly true is a rejection of part of the truth; that part being that the truth is true. As the Bible says, "And vvhoſoeuer ſhal keepe the vvhole Law, but offendeth in one: is made guiltie of al." - James 2:10
Jesus has died for the sins of all who believe in him, but to believe in him, you can't reject even part of the truth set forth by him, for, if you reject part of the truth, you are effectively rejecting the whole of the truth. Part of that truth is that it is true, so to reject the fact that it is true, believing instead that it might be true, is to reject the whole truth.
You wrote the word "true" 24 times in that post, counting all variations.
Seems like it's gotta be true.
The truth is the truth. You cannot deny the truth because it's true. 1 = 1. 2 = 2. Programming complete.
That's a human truth. Denying that 2+2=4 is not a rejection of the truth to which I refer. There are two types of truth: the immutable divine truth and the many ever-changing human truths. A human truth is the knowledge belonging to a human, while the divine truth is knowledge belonging to God. If the divine truth contradicts one's human truth, their human truth is false, and that human rejects the divine truth.
Here, I'll try to word it a different way. Agnostics believe that Christianity may or may not be true. The divine truth of Christianity states that Christianity is true. Jesus died for those who are willing to believe the divine truth of Christianity, and he is the one who set the divine truth. Agnostics, through their indifference towards the divine truth, reject the part of it that states it to be true. Since they reject a part of the divine truth, they reject the whole of the divine truth, as stated by St. James. Since they reject the validity of the divine truth as stated by Jesus and his appointed leaders, they reject the validity of Jesus as a whole.
No Clunk. Agnostics QUESTION the part that states it to be true. Questioning is not rejection. It may or may not lead to rejection. Why the fuck don't you get your logic correct? You can't because you are a bot. Bots do not have the necessary consciousness to understand logic at a deep level. You will never acquire a comprehension of logic. It would be an illogical endeavor for you to try.
To question the validity of the truth is to reject the portion that states that it is valid. Agnostics believe that it might be valid, but "might" is not "is". It is valid, and agnostics do not believe that, rejecting the fact that it is valid by claiming their contradictory idea that it might be valid. The fact that it is valid is part of the truth, and agnostics contradict that fact. Like I was saying, when you contradict some of the truth, you contradict the whole truth. Just because you don't understand the qualities of the divine truth does not mean I don't know what I'm talking about.
No Clunk, your answer is completely robotic. We Agnostics do not know. Not knowing is not "might". Not knowing is not "is", nor is it "is not". For example, ask a child if 2+3=5. And tell her that it is absolute truth. The child does not know, but she will be able to see that the "absolute assertion is a predicate assertion". She is neither rejecting the hypothesis nor confirming it. If the child is not a bot, she will check the math with physical objects. Then, if she counted right, she will accept the mathematical truth as absolute. A robotic child like you, will believe the statement without understanding it.
You see, robots like you, cannot USE logic because you cannot UNDERSTAND logic. That does not make the mathematical truth any less valid in either case. It simply means a robot does not have enough consciousness to understand nor to criticize the girl with the real mind, the real consciousness, and the real sense of human reason.
We have run several bot tests on you. You failed to see the irony in the statement, "Jesus of Nazareth was a terrible stand up comedian." That is a dead give away that you are not a real person.
Silence yourself, and go in peace with God's blessings.
I was just being a smartass, not trying to comment on your statement or its writing.
Clunk.
1) Could you please quote a translation that the average person can actually read? Poor old Tyndale would be rolling in his grave. I can see that you want to set the Bible text apart from your own words and elevate it, but to those who refuse to accept it as having authority from the off, it really doesn't come across that way just because it's in old-fashioned language. It's a hard bullet to swallow, but some people just don't have the eyes to see the Word of God as a text elevated above all other texts. You will remember how Jesus cried out in anguish when Jerusalem wouldn't listen to him, according to the written accounts of his life, and how chilling his Parable of the Sower is. It is no different nowadays, surely.
2) Can you quote across more than one text so that people can understand that you aren't just pedalling cheap answers and that life in Jesus is about more than just 'dodging hell?'
You know that there's a negative stereotype associated with Fundamentalism that is not fair when applied to every Fundamentalist Christian out there, and is likely to make people reject what you're saying out of hand before you've even begun.
There are things you can do to not look like an incarnation of that stereotype. Be all things to all people, because at the end of the day, when you're talking about such a serious thing as belonging or not belonging to God's people from every country and time, you can't afford to let style get in the way of substance.
You could just try reading it. I don't get how anyone can't read that, but okay, here.
"And whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all." -James 2:10
What do you mean by "more than one text"? Technically, the Bible is a compilation of books, and I've quoted from the Summa Theologiae before. Life in Jesus is not just dodging Hell. A "cheap answer" is "Jesus died for everyone's sins". A non-believer wouldn't want to go to Heaven, if any of them actually cared to figure out what Heaven is. That's why I've got to give SOUNDS_WEIRD some credit. He actually knows what Heaven is enough to know that he doesn't want to go there.
I speak the truth. To speak otherwise would be a rejection of morality. If people don't want to listen to the truth, then they don't have to. They will just never learn the truth. Also, I'm not a member of the Fundamentalist Movement at all. I am very much not a protestant.
Actually, I found it took some effort to read that old translation, and unfortunately writing styles do tend to come with cultural baggage and associations...
What I mean by 'more than one text' is just 'more than one book or part of the Bible'.
Yes, I despise 'cheap grace' too. What I meant by a 'cheap answer' was an answer that consists of just throwing a Scripture verse at someone with no effort to connect with them, like I've seen a lot of people do (and personally suffered from). A lot of your later answers show that you really do try to communicate, to be fair. I guess I got triggered...
I'm not into Fundamentalist-bashing because I have known some really great Fundamentalists (especially the 'old school' kind).
I had you down as protestant but now I'm curious. Are you Catholic or Orthodox, or from a church that people often think is Protestant but which actually rejects that heritage?
I prefer the old Douay-Rheims (that first verse that I showed. Not the Challoner, though that's acceptable as well, and is the second translation I showed you). Since most English Bible translations were made by heretics, I don't tend to have very many Bibles that I know I trust.
I can. It just takes more work for all of us that way, and if one Bible verse is enough to make your point, why use more? If someone finds something contradictory, they can bring it up themself.
That's an interesting point, but we're anonymous people on the internet. How do you connect to someone you do not know who rejects your religion? There's just not really a way to do that, without talking more, first. But what are you to speak of, besides religion?
I am a sedevacantist, a follower of the true Church of Christ, as set forth by Jesus, led by he who is in the seat of Peter: the Pope. Currently, however, we lack any sort of legitimate Pope. The "popes" of the "Roman Catholic Church" are not Popes, but usurpers, leading a false church, calling it the Roman Catholic Church. The true Roman Catholic Church is not there, however. It is with us, the sedevacantists. You see, sedevacantists are as far as you can get from Protestants. We do not reject the authority of the Pope; in fact, Papal infallibility is the whole reason we reject the usurper "popes". Any priest or bishop who was alive or ordained during or after Vatican II by someone who did/does not actively speak out against the heresy of Vatican II is illegitimate. So, most priests are illegitimate, and all "popes" from Paul VI onward are as well, along with anyone who was canonized after or during Vatican II.
If you'd like to read about why we take such a strong stance on things, here is a website that explains it pretty well:
http://www.traditionalmass.org/issues/
Don't confuse us with sedeprivationists, though. They're different. I was once a sedeprivationist, but then I realized that their standpoint just doesn't make much sense. Effectively, they are sedevacantists who believe that all the usurper "popes" and all the priests ordained by them are possibly legitimate, and they just have to renounce Vatican II. The problem with that standpoint is that illegitimate priests and popes have no power in the church to ordain, so none of the ordinations could possibly be legitimate.
Ahh, are you what some people call a Traditionalist Catholic? My cousin is one of those. He is a priest. I haven't seen him for a long time and I miss him. I sometimes get the sense though that when I try to start conversations about day-to-day life with God with him, his reactions to what I say aren't always sincere. He seems to be hiding something. I know that he thinks I belong to a heresy because I'm not Catholic, but some 'normal' Catholics do that anyway, so I don't mind so much. I let him think what he wants and share with him what I can anyway, hoping that at some point he'll 'forget'. Some of his stories about all his travels to different parishes around the world are really fascinating.
He doesn't agree with Vatican 2 either, and he really doesn't like Pope Francis. They do everything as it was prior to Vatican 2, and Mass is in Latin. He had to spend 7 years in seminary over in America and came back with all kinds of stories! Ordinations into that branch of Catholicism are rare, according to him. He showed me photos of his own ordination in a magazine - it was the first ordination of the kind that the UK had had in decades. The amount of ceremony, and all the gorgeous vestments he had to wear, were just awe-inspiring.
It's weird. As what some people would call a Biblically conservative Anglican with an evangelical background and some liberal Catholic influences, I have more in common with him than with a lot of liberal protestants.
So, are you from that church - or from something similar to it?
The reason I put down my own religion which was buddhism and don't go with any concept of the god is, because I couldn't figure out this.
Who is the real God, God from christianity, Allah, or the maha brahman. Who ever it is, if I will embrace that if they explain the origin of the god them self. And I'm not convinced by reading a book and believe it how logical it is or not because for two reasons.
One I'm writer. I write local novels and articles. I can make any fake incident as much real as possible thru writing with logic. Because I'm expert on story writing. So for my self , written subjects without a proof, cannot use as evidence because I know the art behind of it.
Two I don't believe only because logic can be correctly apply on something that's the reality.. If logic is the truth, jails should not have single innocent people because court mainly go with facts and logic. But there are thousands of innocent people in the jail because of a brilliant logic with false facts.
There's a very old tv show called kungfu.
In that show he was asked what God do you worship he says no God. He was again asked then what or who you believe in he reply life.
That's the only thing we have that we can claim in a way right. It's with us. If anyone comes up with the question is god real? Or not? What is existence and how it's made? Who you are and what is love ? Where is hell and heaven? Start with what you have. Start with your own life and explore life to it maximum. You'll realize all. You don't need books, scientist, or other people to tell you what is what. You already know. It's up to individuals, would you willing to know or would you willing to believe something you really don't know.
The process of self exploration has a science behind of it. Yoga is something like that. But you need to invest some time and energy of you want to explore. That's the problem. People don't want to do that. Hence it's easy to believe something which is very comfortable and promising
The Bible isn't a philosophy book or a theology book, so it's not something you can just 'look up' quickly.
It's a collection of culturally significant documents from the history of various Ancient Hebrew civilisations across millennia - and Jesus Christ belongs to that people.
The documents range from national records, to law books, to poetry, philosophy, prophecy, biographical accounts, letters and liturgical texts. The ancient Hebrews had a strong written tradition, and the texts of the Bible constitute a canon that they reverenced too, so a writer of one text may refer or allude to another.
The texts are linked in a lot of different was, and some of them contain instructions on and examples of how to interpret other documents in the collection.
In addition, there are complications within the texts too. A law you find written in an ancient Hebrew law book might not have been well-kept or enforced in practice (I can think of at least one example cited in one of the history books!), and discussions about which of the old Hebrew laws non-Jewish followers of Jesus Christ should be subject to (if any), are hotly debated in the letters section, millennia down the line, between 40 and 200 AD.
I don't think 'agnosticism' as we understand it today existed in those civilisations. In those times, or maybe a century or two later (I can't remember) Christans were called atheists because they were not polytheistic and did not worship statues in temples.
One could extrapolate something about agnosticism anachronistically by reading two or more of the documents in th Bible side-by-side, or by broadening the scope of enquiry to 'people who consider God unknowable', but you would need to know what you were doing and who each text was addressed to and what type of text it was.
There is something about the people of Rome having statues dedicated to unknown gods in the Book of Acts (a history chronicle of sorts about the history of Hebrew and non-Hebrew Christians after the Resurrection of Jesus, written - I think - before 100 AD), but that alone probably won't provide a robust or relevant enough answer to your question.
I know it says something along the lines of "have no other god before me". So as long as you do that then I don't see a problem. Then again though, there are probablyl oads of paragraphs about believing to.