But even if it were, the denial of options is from the perspective of god. (It would never have occurred to me to look at it from the perspective of god so thanks for connecting the dots for me.) From the perspective of non-believers, neutrality and disinterest are options. One's options can hardly be constrained by what does not exist or is irrelevant
Yes, but remember the context that brought forth my response. I had referred to Syb's atheism, and she responded with this...meaning she considers herself an agnostic. And I said there's no such thing.
Actually no, you didn't know I'm an atheist, because I'm not one. Surprised? I bet you are. Facts. Always good to get them in advance.
Now go back to what you said and you'll see the
problem then becomes one of a logical trap. Basically what you said in the bolded part above was that even though this is God's perspective, one's options can hardly be constrained by what does not exist. Meaning one's options can hardly be constrained by something I don't believe in in the first place. So once a person, like you did here, veers off into this kind of rebuttal, which is the only rebuttal they have, they have denied the existence or declared their unbelief, and thus meet the definition of an atheist. An atheist being defined as a person who doesn't believe in the existence of God.
So the question remains whether rejecting the doctrine of Christ is the same thing as not believing in god. It would not seem so.
Christ is considered in Christian theology as the mouthpiece for God. God sent him to the world for that purpose. So rejecting the word of Christ IS the same as rejecting the word of God. Not to the Jewish world, of course, but to Christians.
In the Book of John, Christ is described as God incarnate in the world. And Catholic theology has the Trinity doctrine which views Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit as sort of all one and the same.
The only way (logically) to reject what Christ said, i.e. his doctrine, is to deny his existence which then means one is denying the existence of God.......and so we come full circle back to the category of atheist. Agnosticism is disallowed once again.
In terms of logic, I mean. We can all call ourselves anything we want. |
