If we were to now ask the question, "Does god exist", whose notion of god do you suppose would be closest to the truth:
- The Theist who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that exists?
- The Atheist who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that does not exist?
- The Agnostic who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that he is uncertain exists?
- The young child who has as yet no idea of god and consequently cannot even understand the question?
I believe the child's notion of God is closest to the truth. This is my opinion because the mind of a young child has not been "conditioned" to respond one way or the other and is closest to God already.
ReplyDeleteMathew 19:14
We are NOT told to take children to Christ. We ARE told not to lead them away. The choice should be left up to them.
This is the rational for today's ever-growing common rejection of Christ. Children are "conditioned to be good" and told to believe in "god" rather than letting them see God at work through other lives rather than seeing the utter hypocracy of Earth's religions.
Neeley v NameMedia Inc, et al, (5:09-cv-05151)(11-2558)
PDF APPELLANT BRIEF
PDF APPELLEE BRIEF OF NameMedia Inc
PDF APPELLEE BRIEF OF Google Inc
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How will the judges invent a way to allow unregulated USC 47 153 ¶(52) wire communications to continue?
The ruling has been pending for MONTHS!
Actually, I think if you examine how "incomprehensible" is used, the label "incomprehensible" is not really a quality of God's character but rather a tool to cope with reality.
ReplyDeleteNo pastor builds sermons around sections of the Bible only to conclude with "... and we have utterly no idea what God was thinking here." The bulk of what is taught from the pulpit is about how we can understand God; His justice, His mercy, His great love for us all, etc.
It is only when the inconvenient truths of life pop up that God suddenly is incomprehensible. An innocent child comes down with leukemia, or dies from SIDS, and then we don't know about God so clearly. Then we cannot be sure of His plans, we can just know that what He has planned will ultimately work out better than anything we could have ever dreamed.
At least that's the way it appears to me. :-)
I'd say that the Agnostic is the person willing to concede, not only that she has no certainty that God does or does not exist, but no certainty of what god might be, however she might entertain some concept or image thereof.
ReplyDeleteI recently heard (actually) read someone saying something about atheism that has stuck in my mind. It's kind of odd that we need to give a label to 'Atheism' to name a non-belief in God (as depicted in the bible). There are so many things one might not believe. I don't believe in Zeuss (am I an a-Zeussian)? I don't believe the entire universe revolves around a teacup (am I an A-teacupian)? There are really an infinite number of possible beliefs - none of which I can disprove, but none of which has particularly compelling evidence in its favor either.
ReplyDeleteIf God does exist, I'd go with Curtis, and say that an open minded (non-conditioned) idea of God is probably least likely to be wrong. It reminds me of the Meister Eckhart quote "God, rid me of God" (i.e., rid me of the images of God so that I can know him better and avoid a self-other relation to Him).
As usual I'm the kid who doesn't understand the question or the agnostic who doesn't know the answer.
ReplyDeleteThe child, of course...modeling perfect incomprehension.
ReplyDeleteProcess of elimination (using “he” in its generic form), the Theist is out first because of his obvious confirmation bias, he has pre-decided that he is right and will justify himself without considering evidence. The child has some hope, because he is not yet biased, but still needs to sort out his distinctions of fantasy and reality. Any discussion of natural knowledge is making assumptions about how god works and the question requires that god is incomprehensible, sorry. The atheist, if he is thinking rationally, is not biased by preconceived notions, but he is not taking the hypothesis seriously. He would answer “does god exist” with “no” and have no notion of an existing god. The Agnostic is both open to the idea of an existing god and willing to consider any and all evidence even though it is only anecdotal and conjectural at this point.
ReplyDeleteWhen I get the question if I believe in God my answer will be:which God are you talking about,because even when you are a christian your God will be different from person to person.Try to ask three people who saw a robbery how the robber looked like,and you are likely to get three different answers.Try to ask about God and you will get millions of different answers.So ,I think mankind made God and not the other way round.
ReplyDeleteI'd start with whichever one of them has a twinkle in their eye.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the child would have the closest thing to the truth.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd still want to take them all out to dinner to talk about it. :)