What religion/lack thereof are you?

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That helps explain thing's a little better.

I'd best be described as a Deist, but I really don't think about it too much. I just believe in a god. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Hmm so they are separet beliefs then.

I am one of many expressions of infinite awareness.

Atheist, but I think I'd be more religious if I could connect more to the way people express it nowadays.

Hmm I just get confused okay so some say athesits are agnostic but those are two diffrent thing's agnostics can believe in God atheists don't believe in God but some how they are not two seperate beliefs wow my head is spinning.

That graph seems to carry a serious misunderstanding of Gnosticism. Gnostics believed God was not found through knowledge gained in dialogue, discourse, book study, and abstract thought, but through direct experience. "Gnosis" was a Greek term for experiential knowledge.

Christian orthodoxy, on the other hand, asserted that the knowledge of God was found through the study of their cannon, and that's why they persecuted the Gnostics.

An Agnostic, in the original sense of the term, had no conflict with Deism, the idea that God can be found through scientific inquiry, but had a philosophical disagreement with the idea of truth being found in personal experience, since the basic assumption of scientific rationalism is that truth can only be verified through consensus. Its arguable, though, that when experience and observation is translated into verbal or written language to share and compare observations, a lot of the content of the original experience is lost, being that many aspects of human language is inherently subjective. The fact that the meaning and context of words, like "Gnostic and agnostic", change so much from century to century kind of proves this point. The Gnostic idea was that there's too much of reality that's ineffable and impossible to accurately model with language that its best just to experience certain things directly, rather than take someone else's word for it.

Another theme of Gnosticism was the platonic or neo-platonic idea that there's a more pure, archetypal language, interwoven in the fabric of the cosmos and emanated from the divine, beyond space and time. They believed this language, the logos, to be un-corrupt, where human language was seen as inherently corrupt. The Hagelian dialectic, a cosmic argument of contrasting forms, is a good example of what this concept of the archetypal language entailed, and the idea was also resonated in Hermeticism and alchemy. The archetypes could encompass Euclidian geometry, the wave-particle duality, the contrast between form and void, etc etc. This is where these platonic ideas could even re-intersect with modern science, since its been found that certain patterns, like Planck constant. the flag manifold, and specific atomic laws construct the cosmos.

This muddling up of terms really makes it difficult to have a conversation, being that, by the logic of the graph, all fundamentalist Christians could be considered "gnostic" However, tell a modern Christian that, and most of them will flip out, since a lot of them are familiar with the original meaning of the term and assert that knowledge of God can only be found in the language of the Bible, not through direct experience of the language of the logos.

Atheists and Christians apparently have completely different definitions for the same words and so do opposing sides of the political paradigm. Conservatives and liberals have different understandings of the term "socialist". One side believes it means Stalinist, centralized governments, and the other uses it as a term to mean socially democratic services that are paid for with taxes. The original meaning of that term was a hypothetical state in which the working class owned the means of production, which is very different from the newer, contradicting definitions. I think its very dangerous how the meaning of words keeps being shifted around and that two groups have a completely different understanding of the same language.

This is, too, where I agree with Gnostics on the inherent corruption of human language.

Last edited by JNathanK on 01 Apr 2012, 5:42 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I was going to vote "atheist," but then saw the "agnostic" choice. I am both. Most atheists are both. Even Richard Dawkins says he is both. Atheism refers to what you believe. Agnosticism refers to what can be known. Many people are unaware of this difference. It is possible to be an agnostic Theist, but it would require faith, since logically, if you think that knowing that a god exists is impossible, you wouldn't believe that he does.

Thanks for explaining it to me now it makes more since also if most of them are both then their is a slight 50% chance that they could one day become religious?

All babies are atheists, at least until they become indoctrinated to believe. If that is what you mean, I agree. Otherwise, you will have to elaborate.

You seem like a big Dawkins fan, Rocky.

Just saying it because you're quoting him almost word-for-word.

To answer your question, I would say that the only way that most Agnostic Atheists would become religious (or even just believers) would be compelling evidence, like an appearance in person visible to everyone of a god. If the god of the Bible exists, and is all powerful, he could do this. I know that religions say that there are reasons that he would not do this. This seems suspiciously convenient to me.

By doing that though it would contridict free will God to us doesn't force anyone to believe in him he lets you choose and yes it is a suspicious beleif but if you was God would you really want to show yourself even if he did people would stop choose not to worship him.

I am a big Dawkins fan, but I wasn't aware that I was quoting him. I did read "The God Delusion." I was impressed by his knowledge, clarity, and logic. I mentioned him because he is one of the better known atheists.

I didn't mean in the post you mentioned it by name, but when you claimed there were no religious babies. That's also in 'The God Delusion'.

To bad he never said anything bad about Stalin when he was asked what did they think about him being atheists and having so many people killed.