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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (84004)	9/12/2008 7:01:47 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544178

One can't be neutral because Christ is denying man that option. Given my ignorance of the Bible, I google. Came up with this from Bartleby. "'He that is not with me is against me' A teaching of Jesus, which suggests that indifference to his message is the same as active opposition to it." And this: "Those therefore who rejected the doctrine of Christ, and slighted his miracles, were looked upon as adversaries to him, and in the devil's interest." biblebrowser.com Sounds like your basic "fer me or agin me" talk. I can relate to that. So the question remains whether rejecting the doctrine of Christ is the same thing as not believing in god. It would not seem so. 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.

To: Katelew who wrote (84004)	9/13/2008 12:17:36 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544178

>>An agnostic is someone trying to maintain neutrality and say I don't know. Since this is not allowed, such a person becomes, by default you might say, an unbeliever and thus an atheist. Now the agnostic might want to say 'phooey on that.....I don't know what I really believe, so that makes me an agnostic'. The problem with this is that it doesn't matter what we think about ourselves and how we label ourselves. In the end, it only matters what God thinks. And he has already told us, thru Christ that we don't have the option of being neutral.<< Kate - I don't get the logic of saying that an individual has to believe one thing or another because a being he or she doesn't believe in says so. I heard an interesting line once, which was attributed to a Catholic priest. "It doesn't bother me that you're an atheist. If you're an atheist, it's God's will for you to be one." I think it's a funny line, but I don't think it's truly logical. - Allen

To: Katelew who wrote (84004)	9/13/2008 8:12:58 AM
From: biotech_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544178

An agnostic is someone trying to maintain neutrality and say I don't know. Hi Kate, This is from someone who was an atheist and then an agnostic for a couple of decades, so take it with a pinch of salt. I think people who consider themeselves agnostics are not monolithic but represent a whole spectrum. There are those who say there is no God and even if He existed you cannot PROVE it, these are very close to atheists. And on the other end there are those who believe there is a Supreme being (how could it not be?) but that Science cannot prove it. The latter group are very close to the religious minus the symbolism. They are in essence saying "the divine is unknowable." But if one looks at the various religions - Judeo-Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam etc what they differ in is not as important as what they agree on. All that symbolism packs one simple message - "the unknowable is the divine" IOW the difference between true agnostics and the religious is just syntax! BB