what does agnostic mean to you?

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Expand view Topic review: what does agnostic mean to you?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by Fluminator » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:25 am

It was something about how agnostics are wussy atheists lol.

The talk of the bible is one I could go back and forth on and I think there’s enough evidence it happened for people who believe already, and enough gaps or possibilities it’s very wrong for people who don’t believe it happened.

I think the majority of religious people are religious not because of textual criticism or scientific ontological or cosmological arguments (and all those arguments are easy to break down anyway) but because of personal experiences/gut. Like you say, even complete skeptics sometimes feel somethings guiding. (Even if you don’t believe it’s supernatural)

I have an easier time believing extraordinary events happened historically because I’ve seen things that seemed like miracles in my lifetime and people I trust a lot who also have stories of miracles that make it really hard for me to believe our interactable universe stops at humans. I think it’s much more likely that entities or a higher form of consciousness exist in the universe elsewhere since we understand so little about it.

But you can’t really argue against personal experiences I have so it’s kind of a conversation ender so I don’t bring it up that much.
But I guess what I’m getting at is, are extraordinary events really so hard to believe? Let’s say your an ant living in a forest and you think you know how your area works, and the worst you deal with are birds or anteaters attacking your colony. One day a human finds it and plays around with the ants and it’s possibly the only time a human ever does. From the ants perspective it would be an absolutely extraordinary experience. If you were an ant would you be skeptical if your ant friend told you about it?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:08 am

Fluminator wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:15 pm
flash2015 wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:24 pm
 I don't know why...but the title of the topic makes me think of big pharma ads:

"Ask your doctor if agnosticism is right for you"
I didn't choose the topic title. Mods changed it on me >:(
Also I'll respond soon, I've been distracted with other threads lately.
What was the original title? Something like "Agnostics suck: Change My Mind"?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by RoganJosh » Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:33 pm

Why can it not be endless?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:06 pm

flash2015 wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 3:57 pm
 Perhaps this is a language thing but I am not sure what you are trying to argue.
What the universe in? If we knew this, we would need to question this with the same questions. How did it start? How did it it come up first?... And if it's also surrounded by something, same again. This cannot be endless.
I say Big Bang isn't explaining matter's origin.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by Fluminator » Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:15 pm

flash2015 wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:24 pm
 I don't know why...but the title of the topic makes me think of big pharma ads:

"Ask your doctor if agnosticism is right for you"
I didn't choose the topic title. Mods changed it on me >:(
Also I'll respond soon, I've been distracted with other threads lately.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Fri Jun 21, 2019 3:57 pm

Perhaps this is a language thing but I am not sure what you are trying to argue.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Fri Jun 21, 2019 3:36 pm

Even if there was something there, it has to be questioned in the same way.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Fri Jun 21, 2019 3:10 pm

yavuzovic wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:24 pm
 More like curious.
All the matter we know existed after that.
Next question:
Are physic rules we know effective outside of universe?
Once we prove there is something outside what we understand to be the universe (if anything) and we are able to run some tests there, we will let you know.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:24 pm

More like curious.
All the matter we know existed after that.
Next question:
Are physic rules we know effective outside of universe?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:24 pm

I don't know why...but the title of the topic makes me think of big pharma ads:

"Ask your doctor if agnosticism is right for you"

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by RoganJosh » Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:06 pm

We don't know, yet. Does that scare you?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Fri Jun 21, 2019 1:56 pm

RoganJosh wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 21, 2019 6:54 am
 In lack of observations and/or data, while it's definitely interesting to theorize, the responsible thing to do is not to make bold claims. To flee the question is to make up some BS. Like a God.

And, to repeat, it is not know whether there was a point in time when substance came up first. Science makes no such claims.
Well, what triggered the big bang?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by RoganJosh » Fri Jun 21, 2019 6:54 am

In lack of observations and/or data, while it's definitely interesting to theorize, the responsible thing to do is not to make bold claims. To flee the question is to make up some BS. Like a God.

And, to repeat, it is not know whether there was a point in time when substance came up first. Science makes no such claims.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:56 pm

Jamiet99uk wrote: ↑
Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:12 pm
 The "first cause" or "first creation" argument is bunk. It's nonsense.

If everything had to have a first cause, and thus God must exist, what caused God?

If the answer is "God is special and doesn't require a creator" then I could just reply "the universe is special and doesn't require a creator".
No man no, the God's existence is apart from time and place - this means we can't say God existed before universe. We can only say time was created with universe. I personally am not a philosopher, but this thing was explained in one of the recent books I read. But this message is definitely more nonsense - even if we assume God doesn't exist, you just flee from answering how the substance came up first.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:13 pm

Fluminator wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 19, 2019 5:45 pm
flash2015 wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 19, 2019 3:50 am
<snip>
I'm only recently looking into the dating the gospels (like after you brought it up) but it's more interesting than I thought.
I don't currently think the Bible is inerrant but I've always thought it was decently reliable. It looks like everyone is agreement that Mark was the first written based on Luke and Matthew using it as one of their sources (which makes sense since it's the most concise).
Luke and Matthew were written after, and Luke and Acts are basically a part 1/part 2 story. Acts is all about Luke allegedly recording what Paul had done up to a point, and it ends abruptly with his temporary imprisonment in Rome which was under Nero. It seems logical that would be around when it was written because if it was after, you would think his release, further ministry, or martyrdom would be mentioned.

The arguments it was written after the temple destruction (as you pointed out) was the distancing between the writers and the Jews which some scholars interpret as anti-semitism and anti-semitism was a big thing in the destruction of the temple. I don't know, I just feel like it's a lot more of a weak reason then just believing it was written to around where Luke ended the story abruptly.
The other argument that Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem (so it must have been written after the destruction in happened) isn't that convincing to me either because his statements seem like he's referencing and mirroring the description of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, not the Roman one. And the destruction and rebuilding of Israel was a common recurring archetype in Jewish/Christian mythos.

So you believe the disciples believed Jesus was divine. Do you believe the apostles and witnesses believe they physically saw Jesus after he was dead? Or was that a later addition added by Matthew and Luke and John etc. and they didn't actually claim that?

Again the discrepancies in the gospels don't bug me. That just makes me believe they were 4 largely independent sources and makes me trust that it's decently accurate.
Like Mark recording two different times Jesus allegedly fed people is a shrug to me. Some I haven't heard of before so will have to look later. I know the beloved disciple is John though, so it's not a new disciple made up. (John was very humble) And the gospel John containing different aspects of Jesus's life makes sense sine the last 3 accounts were largely the same, and the writer was probably interested in things not already mentioned.
On the Temple thing, I have read many people's arguments about it. I had understood that it is generally accepted that Jesus is "allegedly" making a prophecy about the current Temple's destruction, not the previous one. I have seen arguments saying that the Temple's destruction was never mentioned in the Gospels...but then go on to say what a miracle it was that Jesus prophesied the Temple's destruction. Or people claim that others are "biased" against Christianity because they won't start with the assumption that Jesus was divine. But that isn't how all this works. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof and that proof just doesn't exist (circular reasoning is not proof). In fact there is very little, if any, existence of the historical Jesus outside of documents written by believers.

Yes, Acts does not explicitly go into detail about all the things that happened in Rome, but it does have Paul prophesying his own torture and death (Acts 20). What is more likely to be true - Paul is able to see into the future OR this was written after all the bad stuff happened? Extraordinary claims thing again.

In the ancient world people exaggerated or falsified stories all the time, often these stories could appear very quickly (like the stories around Marcus Aerelius and the Thundering Legion or Josephus making fables about the fall of the Temple - many, many examples here). Christians and non-Christians alike did this. So whether it was 62AD or 85AD or even 37AD (as I saw one theologian claim for Matthew), there would have been great pressure to show how powerful Jesus was too, especially with all the other competing stories. Again a lot of the miracles around Jesus aren't unique (virgin birth or resurrection). These stories came up many, many times before.

I don't believe that the apostles physically met Jesus after his death. However I do believe they may have had visions and dreams about him. At least to my understanding, in those times it would have been commonly believed that visions/dreams are the way $DEITY's speak to us. And periods of intense meditation and prayer (prayer is essentially just one specific form of meditation) can make you believe you are having a spiritual experience, especially if your object of focus is your $DEITY of choice. I know this personally from discussing experiences with people after doing many multi-day silent meditation courses.

It is well known that people can either be convinced they saw something which never happened (e.g. repressed memories scandals) or convince themselves that they saw something not true (any number of overturned convictions based on eye witness testimony which turned out to be false). To take a more recent example, I don't see any reason why Blaisey-Ford and Kavanaugh don't both sincerely believe they were telling the truth even though we know at least one account was wrong. So even eyewitness accounts can often not be trusted for accuracy. Many exaggerated stories from the ancient world were made by people that actually witnessed the events at hand.

Anyway, this is where I am after much thought over a long period of time. But I understand that everyone wants to find meaning and purpose in their life, even me, and whilst I am no longer a believer in the supernatural, I know when things turn out certain ways I subconsciously think "there must be a reason". If people really want to believe the Gospel is the literal truth or close to it and it provides them meaning in their lives, good luck to them (as long as they don't force that belief on others). It just no longer makes any sense to me.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by Fluminator » Wed Jun 19, 2019 5:45 pm

flash2015 wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 19, 2019 3:50 am
Fluminator wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:11 pm
 <snip>
I think wikipedia may potentially oversimplify. I am not sure it is explicitly biased though. To have any hope of objectivity on this, you can't take too seriously those who base their scholarship on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. This is my understanding of what they are doing.

So how early do you think Matthew was written? Are you suggesting it comes before Mark? At least to my understanding, Matthew was written with a specific agenda. He was trying to prove that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, that believing in Jesus was a continuation of the Old Testament. He was also quite hostile to the Jews, talking about things like "their synagogues"(4:23, 9:35, 10:17, 12:9, 13:54) and adding things like 'All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”' (27:25) in referring to the Jews (probably helping to lead to centuries of anti-semitism by Christians). If I understand correctly, the Jews finally kicked the Christians out of the synagogues around 85AD. Given the agenda and style of Matthew's Gospel it strongly suggests that he wrote his Gospel on or after this event.

All the Gospels refer in some way to the fall of the Second Temple, either directly or through metaphor (e.g. like the fig tree thing in Mark). The simplest explanation for all these references is that all the Gospels were written after the Temple fell...which should date all the Gospels 70AD+.

I don't doubt that the Apostles may have believed that Jesus was the Son Of God. Lots of people have very very spiritual beliefs. I have someone close to me that believes he/she speaks to his/her father through dreams (the father died a very traumatic death). I have been to meditation courses where people claim to have had very spiritual experiences. I am not challenging this.

I am just arguing that the written descriptions of Jesus life (written after almost all apostles were dead) were grossly exaggerated, especially all the miracles. The deeper you go into analyzing this stuff dispassionately, you see there are more and more discrepancies in the Gospels. For example, Mark getting basic geography wrong (if you were speaking to a real eyewitness I doubt you would make such a mistake)...or Mark repeating the same miracle essentially twice (Feeding the 5000 then Feeding The 4000). Or Luke getting dates wrong by a decade (the census of Quirinius and Herod). Or John making up the Beloved Disciple, Lazarus, who was not a real person in any other Gospel. I didn't realize this before but only John mentions that Lazarus was raised from the dead. It would have been such an important event that it makes no sense that it didn't appear in any other Gospel. Having come from the "inside" and also seeing the way the Buddhists created similar magical stories around Buddha and his Arahants, I can't logically reject one set of miracles without rejecting the other set too.
I'm only recently looking into the dating the gospels (like after you brought it up) but it's more interesting than I thought.
I don't currently think the Bible is inerrant but I've always thought it was decently reliable. It looks like everyone is agreement that Mark was the first written based on Luke and Matthew using it as one of their sources (which makes sense since it's the most concise).
Luke and Matthew were written after, and Luke and Acts are basically a part 1/part 2 story. Acts is all about Luke allegedly recording what Paul had done up to a point, and it ends abruptly with his temporary imprisonment in Rome which was under Nero. It seems logical that would be around when it was written because if it was after, you would think his release, further ministry, or martyrdom would be mentioned.

The arguments it was written after the temple destruction (as you pointed out) was the distancing between the writers and the Jews which some scholars interpret as anti-semitism and anti-semitism was a big thing in the destruction of the temple. I don't know, I just feel like it's a lot more of a weak reason then just believing it was written to around where Luke ended the story abruptly.
The other argument that Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem (so it must have been written after the destruction in happened) isn't that convincing to me either because his statements seem like he's referencing and mirroring the description of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, not the Roman one. And the destruction and rebuilding of Israel was a common recurring archetype in Jewish/Christian mythos.

So you believe the disciples believed Jesus was divine. Do you believe the apostles and witnesses believe they physically saw Jesus after he was dead? Or was that a later addition added by Matthew and Luke and John etc. and they didn't actually claim that?

Again the discrepancies in the gospels don't bug me. That just makes me believe they were 4 largely independent sources and makes me trust that it's decently accurate.
Like Mark recording two different times Jesus allegedly fed people is a shrug to me. Some I haven't heard of before so will have to look later. I know the beloved disciple is John though, so it's not a new disciple made up. (John was very humble) And the gospel John containing different aspects of Jesus's life makes sense sine the last 3 accounts were largely the same, and the writer was probably interested in things not already mentioned.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by flash2015 » Wed Jun 19, 2019 3:50 am

Fluminator wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:11 pm
flash2015 wrote: ↑
Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:18 pm
 <snip>
You really don't have to worry about filtering your thoughts on religion, I wouldn't be insulted. I've been in many debates about it online with people much less diplomatic than you lol.

I looked a bit into the dating of the gospels, and it seems like there's a lot of debate and a huge rabbit hole indeed. I find it really funny how biased the wikipedia article is on really subjective scholarship on the texts.
I personally find the arguments for it being written pre-70 AD more compelling than post-85 AD at a quick glance, but I'm not sure how interested you are in talking about this, and I don't think either date would affect our views much at all anyway.

It's not that people dying for their beliefs is proof they're correct. I know there are lots of martyrs for other religions. But it is evidence that they believed they were correct. The disciples gained literally nothing from the lie if they didn't believe it. They all got killed, ostracized, scattered etc. and they didn't gain much in return. If the disciples were pranking people, what was the point?
I think wikipedia may potentially oversimplify. I am not sure it is explicitly biased though. To have any hope of objectivity on this, you can't take too seriously those who base their scholarship on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. This is my understanding of what they are doing.

So how early do you think Matthew was written? Are you suggesting it comes before Mark? At least to my understanding, Matthew was written with a specific agenda. He was trying to prove that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, that believing in Jesus was a continuation of the Old Testament. He was also quite hostile to the Jews, talking about things like "their synagogues"(4:23, 9:35, 10:17, 12:9, 13:54) and adding things like 'All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”' (27:25) in referring to the Jews (probably helping to lead to centuries of anti-semitism by Christians). If I understand correctly, the Jews finally kicked the Christians out of the synagogues around 85AD. Given the agenda and style of Matthew's Gospel it strongly suggests that he wrote his Gospel on or after this event.

All the Gospels refer in some way to the fall of the Second Temple, either directly or through metaphor (e.g. like the fig tree thing in Mark). The simplest explanation for all these references is that all the Gospels were written after the Temple fell...which should date all the Gospels 70AD+.

I don't doubt that the Apostles may have believed that Jesus was the Son Of God. Lots of people have very very spiritual beliefs. I have someone close to me that believes he/she speaks to his/her father through dreams (the father died a very traumatic death). I have been to meditation courses where people claim to have had very spiritual experiences. I am not challenging this.

I am just arguing that the written descriptions of Jesus life (written after almost all apostles were dead) were grossly exaggerated, especially all the miracles. The deeper you go into analyzing this stuff dispassionately, you see there are more and more discrepancies in the Gospels. For example, Mark getting basic geography wrong (if you were speaking to a real eyewitness I doubt you would make such a mistake)...or Mark repeating the same miracle essentially twice (Feeding the 5000 then Feeding The 4000). Or Luke getting dates wrong by a decade (the census of Quirinius and Herod). Or John making up the Beloved Disciple, Lazarus, who was not a real person in any other Gospel. I didn't realize this before but only John mentions that Lazarus was raised from the dead. It would have been such an important event that it makes no sense that it didn't appear in any other Gospel. Having come from the "inside" and also seeing the way the Buddhists created similar magical stories around Buddha and his Arahants, I can't logically reject one set of miracles without rejecting the other set too.

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by Jamiet99uk » Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:12 pm

The "first cause" or "first creation" argument is bunk. It's nonsense.

If everything had to have a first cause, and thus God must exist, what caused God?

If the answer is "God is special and doesn't require a creator" then I could just reply "the universe is special and doesn't require a creator".

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by yavuzovic » Tue Jun 18, 2019 7:00 pm

We may not understand God, but we should be completely understanding the religion's purposes and orders to believe in it. Instead of asking another question, can you tell me how you started believing without understanding it at all? What makes you deserve the heaven/final peace/nirvana/whatever you believe as the prize - you were just born with it and whoooop God rolls the roulette and you rolled the right parents YAAAY you got the heaven because you were born as a believer. How else can you get into it?

Re: what does agnostic mean to you?

by RoganJosh » Mon Jun 17, 2019 9:09 pm

Can you understand God? Good for you! Maybe I should have used the word explain instead. Though, it is not clear to me what you put into these words.

Your question about an explanation for the first creation is rhetorical. Whatever science explains, you will move the marker and ask for an explanation of whatever was before. I mean, it's not even clear that there is such a thing as a first creation.

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