Agnostics “R” Us...

Hey @Jazzer -- The POST you're referring to is one in which I describe how I eventually came across the spiritual path called Eckankar. Wanted to let you know that I just discovered a new YouTube channel by a "parapsychologist", who interviewed a member of Eckankar about his personal experiences with "Soul Travel".

Interestingly, even though Eckankar is a "spiritual path", not once (that I can recall), was "God" ever mentioned in the interview. It just wasn't in the framework of their discussion. It was mostly about the understanding of other levels of consciousness and experience, and how we can learn to explore them for ourselves.

So, if you're up for a non-weighty 47-minute interview with a "nice guy", you might want to put on the "skeptic's hat", and take a look. If you don't have an interest in watching the whole thing, you might want to jump to the 41:29 mark, where Doug talks about his first controlled experiences with Soul Travel at the age of 19.

The Art and Science of Soul Travel with Doug Marman

 

Thank you Lane - I’ll give it a go.....x

 

Or if you want to bypass all the who dunnits find a comfortable chair and read Letters from the Earth.
Or maybe read The Bible according to Mark Twain that should cure all belief.

 

Hi @Lane
Okay - so I found the clip and initially gave it twenty minutes.
I soon decided that I didn’t have a pickled clue what they were on about.
I left it a couple of days and then jumped to the 41 minute mark as you suggested.

I have to accept that the out of body visitation story was genuine.

However I personally would not muster up enough interest in parapsychology to delve into it to any depth.

I am quite happy ‘not knowing’ something.

When I started really getting into the jazz language everything unfolded for me very logically, and with an exceptionally good ear I could make sense of it conceptually.

Perhaps I am intellectually lazy - I don’t know.

An understanding of child psychology regarding infantile neglect and it’s implications in later life, was so crucial to me that I studied it as literally as matter of life and death.
But there of course, I had lived through the experience, and recognised the relevant concepts.

However Lane - I did give it a reasonable go - as I promised.
Dave x

 

Faith is believing what you know ain't so. If Christ were here now there is one thing he wouldn't be----- a Christian.


It isn't those parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bothers me, it is the parts I do understand.

 

From the movie The Revenant:

"I had been walking for days, and hungry, I came across a tree standing by itself, I found god and god is in this tree. I shot the sonofabitch and ate it, a squirrel."

 

DOG spelled backwards.

 

Actually Luman

“A Red Herring !!”

- deflecting from the true business of life.

 

‘God is alive and well
- and living in the
imagination of the believers.’

 

Shouldn't the title of this thread be changed to 'Atheists R Us'. I don't see anyone in here who's unsure, ie Agnostic.

 

Well I think with the title if it had been Atheist not many would have responded. Agnostic is like dangling a chocolate bar in front of a child. You can't change beliefs.

 

I think if you're going to be quite mocking of religion, you should probably make it clear in the title that you're anti-religion, rather than open to discussing it, which is what 'Agnostic' suggests. And I say that as an Atheist who also doesn't really like religion.

 

That's why @Jazzer set it that way so folks could discuss their thoughts and express the reasons why. Seriously, has your god answered anything? Most would say "No"

I spent a tour in the Nam and there were NO GODS to stop the destruction of human life.

 

Back in school I had a Christian RE teacher, and when asked about this he would say that God was a non-interventionist and didn't get involved in people's lives so that we could have free will.

I know this is completely at odds with what the Bible suggests, but then the Bible is basically a human interpretation of God -- believers by necessity have to take and leave the bits that they feel apply as it literally contradicts itself throughout.

If I were going to believe in God, I would like the idea of one who didn't play with our lives but let us live them out as we pleased and then rewarded us for a good life once we had died. I don't like religion because that is man made, but I can understand why people might believe in this kind of God.

 

Tanni - an atheist is one who does not believe in God.
He has no faith that a God exists.
He is not necessarily saying that there is no such entity as God.
He admits that we do not know,
because we cannot know.
Perhaps there is a god.
I have absolutely no idea.
Nobody knows.

 

The difference between an Atheist and Agnostic gets a little confusing at times at least for me. Different people have different views on the definitions. I heard Matt Dillahunty (a prominent USA Atheist who you can find on YouTube with interesting Q&A with believers... he does a regular show) argue that Agnostics are a subset of Atheists. There are even categories of Agnostic Atheists and Agnostic Theists. I personally am an Agnostic Atheist. I don't believe in any god but I also don't know if there is a god or not. There just might be one for all I know. I don't think so and I don't think anyone can know. The bottom line on how you classify folks is being an Atheist is basically about what one believes. Being an Agnostic is about what one knows. Thus the difference is based on knowledge (Agnostic) versus belief (Atheist).

A really great article on the topic is here:
https://www.learnreligions.com/atheist-vs-agnostic-whats-the-difference-248040

My two cents he says with a smile.

 

If the above were true, then there is no difference between an atheist and an agnostic, surely? An atheist cannot be someone who knows for sure that there isn't a God, because none of us do. Therefore, if an agnostic is someone who doesn't know whether there is a God or not, it's a useless label because it encompasses all of us, both believers and non-believers.

I personally believe that an agnostic is someone who isn't sure whether they believe or not, and a Christian/atheist is someone who is sure what they believe -- whether they are right or not.

 

Very interesting post . It gets confusing for me too. As I mentioned to @Jazzer above, I don't believe there's much point in labelling people based on whether we 'know' if God exists or not, because none of us do.

Richard Dawkins actually invented a new term for how he defined his religious beliefs (I cannot find it anywhere so hoping I haven't dreamt it!), as he felt that 'atheist' wasn't strong enough -- he felt that it implied someone who didn't believe in God but might like to. His new term was for people who didn't believe in God, and didn't want to.

So I guess you can have a term for everything!

 

With all the suffering on Earth and seemingly no answers to prayers, it’s hard to believe in God let alone any kind of afterlife, but you never know. Living with tinnitus seems like a form of hell though.

 

I guess the titles are essentially academic.

I take your points Tanni; Dawkins says he is 99.9% certain that no god exists - but by scientific parameters he cannot be 100% sure.
I guess I am with him there.

I do think that the world has been held to ransom by the fear of ‘hellfire’ that all religions have propounded since their inception.

I do think it is very difficult for a person raised in an essentially Christian country, home, school, Sunday school, to take an objective view of their (albeit) subtle indoctrination.

 

Glad you enjoyed the post. I think maybe you are talking about Dawkins "Spectrum of Theistic Probability". You can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability I had not heard about that one.

 

My father who did not believe in god or written explanation called the bible had one thing to say about it after reading the thing twice. "I read this now 2 times and the only thing that makes any sense of it, it took 7 jews to write it."

As I posted on this earlier, reading the bible makes you a good Christian, but reading it from page one to the very end, makes you an atheist.

 

The reason behind a so called god to give people freedom is this according to god's best friend Biff, while god was shagging his sheep, Eve was getting ready to eat the apple, by the time Biff told this god what was happening mankind became a failure and everyone had to put clothing on.

 

I strongly identify myself to your depiction of ''agnostic atheist'', but from a slightly different perspective. I consider myself actually as a ''Cultural Christian'', as we say it over here. My parents actually raised me & my siblings in an ecumenic christian philosophy (with emphasis on Catholicism, however), as my father is a Roman-Catholic and my mother a Dutch Reformed Protestant. They aren't hardcore christians in that we're all obliged to go to church on a Sunday or that that we have to belief in a benign being that created this world 6000-10.000 years ago, but they felt that the teachings of the bible (and especially the power or narrative) allows each and everyone of us to develop a moral compass; a set of values and a view on life that are formed by learning about key figures &''historic'' events in the bible, such as how people developed character during hardship, what values are considered more noble than others in the pursuit to live a virtuous life (cardinal virtues, e.g. love thy neighbour), what justice exactly entails, and so on. For my parents, christian philosophy has more to do about teaching values than a belief in an all knowing being that intervenes in our lives. For them, Christianity offers via easily understood narratives more structure in developing a moral compass, than any other philosophy (such as atheism, that is considered by many as an ''empty shell'').

As I grew up with the teachings of christianity, I believed then as I belief now that some christian values stood the test of time and are applicable even today (humbleness, devotion to community, stewardship for living creatures and planet) , but some badly need to be ''updated''. Both the Roman-Catholic and Reformed Protestant outlook on homosexuality, gender roles and social justice (often limited to christian groups, but less to ''non-christian'') has made me leave the church all together a few years ago, but I am still tied to some values that are considered ''Christian''. So, in a certain way, I consider myself a ''cultural christian'', which I mix with political values (soft left socialism & liberalism) and zen buddhism (which has more to due with creating a calm approach towards the unrestful aspects of life).

 

Thanks for your post @Christiaan -- very interesting.

Richard Dawkins also identifies himself as a Cultural Christian (I sound like his biggest fan now, but I'm genuinely not).

It's funny because I can understand how someone could believe in God(s), but I've never really understood how someone could believe in the Bible, or that Christianity teaches morality. I just don't see that goodness in the Bible -- to me, it's very amoral in a lot of places, with a lot of murder, rape and general mistreatment at the hands of the Bible's version of God.

Perhaps this is because people don't tend to read the Bible independently, but hear it preached in a church where some of the nicer messages are cherry picked?

I do very much like Jesus, for instance. I can see how he might be used to teach about morality.