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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (78048)	10/21/2003 9:19:31 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

You might be interested to read what Tolkien thought about reincarnation... "'Reincarnation' may be bad theology (that surely, rather than metaphysics) as applied to Humanity... But I do not see how even in the Primary world any theologian or philosopher, unless very much better informed about the relation of spirit and body than I believe anyone to be, could deny the possibility of re-incarnation as a mode of existence, prescribed for certain kinds of rational incarnate creatures." crossroad.to

To: Solon who wrote (78048)	10/22/2003 1:40:13 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

It is a serious question because I waver myself between atheism and agnosticism. Naturally, I don't give any credence to primitive conceptions of God as reflected in any religious movements. But I might allow for some sort of conception of a mind/energy essence as underlying matter...and I wonder if that is intellectually dishonest? I don't find the distinction difficult. No, I'm not agnostic in regard to the tooth fairy. Nor elves in my fridge. Nor the Christian myths. We can say that we can't know anything, for sure, that we are too dependent on our puny little brains and our sense of reality. In that framework, one cannot rule out fridge elves. But in that framework, nothing is certain and there's nothing further to discuss. Moving right along to the framework in which we operate, the one where gravity is real and the sun rises daily, we can "know" that there are no elves--believe that with sufficient certainty that we can say we know it. Likewise we can effectively have certainty about the Tooth Fairy and the Christian myths. But even in that reality, it's a stretch to have anything remotely resembling certainty about the origins of the universe. Like where did the universe come from? Boggles the mind. So, I don't find it intellectually dishonest to be certain about the non-existence of the Tooth Fairy and uncertain about the existence of a deity that created the universe.