About IMAO



Giving money to Frank J. makes you happy!


Buy funniest book ever!





IMAO Podcasts
IMAO Merchandise and Newsletter

Cool shirts, mugs, stickers, and what-not!

About IMAO
Then conquer we must, for our cause is just, 
And this be our motto--'In God is our trust.' 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.


If you want to send something by snail mail, e-mail with subject "P.O. Box" to get mail information for Frank J. and SarahK.

About Frank J.

Bloggers:
Frank J.
Harvey
RightWingDuck
Cadet Happy
spacemonkey
Laurence Simon
SarahK

Popular Categories
Fred Thompson Facts
John Edwards Fabulous Facts
lolterizt
IMAO Condensed
Know Thy Enemy
Editorials
Frank the Artist
In My World
Other Content
Ode to Violence
Brief Histories
IMAO Audio Bits


Read the Essay
Own the Shirt
Peace Gallery
Search IMAO
Google
Web www.imao.us
Testimonials
"All quotes attributed to me on IMAO are made up... including this one."
-Glenn Reynolds

"Unfunny treasonous ronin!"
-Lou Tulio*

"You, sir, are a natural born killer."
-E. Harrington

"You'll never get my job! Never!!!"
-Jonah Goldberg

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And He did despair, for in His omniscience, He did know that His creations had but three-fifths of the splendor of that which would be IMAO."
-No One of Consequence

"A blogger with a sense of humor."
-Some Woman on MSNBC
Blogroll
Ace of Spades HQ
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Blackfive
Captain's Quarters
Classical Values
Conservative Grapevine
The Corner
The Daily Gut (with Jim Treacher!)
Dave in Texas
Eject! Eject! Eject!
Electric Venom
Hot Air
Puppy Blender
La Shawn Barber's Corner
Michelle Malkin
Pereiraville
Protein Wisdom
Rachel Lucas
Right Wing News
Scrappleface
Serenity's Journal
Townhall Blog

IMAO Blogroll
Bad Example
Cadet Happy
The Flying Space Monkey Chronicles
mountaineer musings
Right Wing Duck
SarahK & Cadet Happy snark TV
This Blog Is Full of Crap

Fred Thompson Links
Fred File
Blogs for Fred
Fred Thompson Facts
Awards



 

December 12, 2005
Religious Perspective
Posted by spacemonkey at 04:58 PM | View blog reactions | Comments (11)

Can an agnostic truly and definitively know, without a shadow of a doubt that they indeed are actually an agnostic?

If not, would that make them instead a skeptic?

I'm not so sure.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Email This | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | StumbleUpon Toolbar Stumble It!
11 Responses To "Religious Perspective"

First, yes, because "they" are physical. Every agnostic I have ever asked do they believe in "Love", they say yes. So there really are no agnostics (religiously speaking). Only atheist who don't like the title.

#1 - Posted by: Ron Rockstar on December 12, 2005 07:26 PM

uhh, who cares?

#2 - Posted by: Dan on December 12, 2005 07:32 PM

An agnostic is just a chicken-shit atheist.
Faith is not C.S.I. It’s Faith.

“Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even though for the moment you do not see.”
Bill Wilson, letter, 1950.

“We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another we had been living by faith and little else.

Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life. But we believed in life of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Or course we couldn't. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that. At least, so the chemist said.

Hence, we saw that reason isn't everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, thought it emanate from our best minds. What about people who proved that man could never fly? Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't true.”
Chapter 4, We Agnostics, from the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous

#3 - Posted by: burrhog on December 12, 2005 07:50 PM

An agnostic says he doesn't know if God exists or not, but he does understand the concept of God as being a supernatural entity.

If you'll now let me create a little concept of my own. I'll call it the wallybird. The wallybird is smaller than a hummingbird but larger than a fly. It is all black with very fine feathers. Nobody has ever seen a wallybird, including myself, but there is a lot of poop in this world that I cannont identify the source of. It could have come from the wallybird. If you can imagine the concept of a wallybird, read on.

Here's the analogy between God and the wallybird:
An atheist would say that the wallybird does not exist. There is insufficient positive evidence.
An agnostic would would say with certainty that he did not know whether it existed or not. He lacks the knowledge to decide.
A believer would say that it certainly exists and point at some piece of crap as evidence. The evidence proving its existance is sufficient.

Evidence of God and the wallybird are different as are the concepts of God and the wallybird, but the level of belief in either is the same.

#4 - Posted by: jwall on December 12, 2005 08:06 PM

An agnostic is forced also to deal with creation. He is forced to decide whether or not, out of nothing, gases and solids just decided to create themselves for no reason. Reason is what scientist like to use to say that there is not a God. Well what reason would nothing decide to become something. The rational mind would say that something had to create the material that "Big Banged".
Why would nothing decide to be something, and how would nothing accomplish that? There would not even be a vaccuum in space as that is something as well. How does an agnostic deal with that? How does an atheist deal with that? Believers have no trouble seeing the obvious. That is why all cultures, through out time have had faith. It only makes sense to those who have eyes and can see. And those who have ears and can hear.

#5 - Posted by: Ron Rockstar on December 12, 2005 08:48 PM

Nice analogy, jwall. The problem with agnostism is that this particular wallybird doesn't just crap, it also has the power of life and death for eternity (if it exists at all). Admitting you don't know, and not trying to find out, is okay if you're talking about bird watching. It's not so smart if you're talking about eternal destinies.

As C.S. Lewis said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."

#6 - Posted by: DavidV on December 12, 2005 10:13 PM

As an Agnostic, I say yes. Whether or not God exists is unknowable, and therefore, irrelevant.

#7 - Posted by: Exile on December 13, 2005 08:07 AM

Monkey, why do I get the impression that nobody got the joke?

Hmmm. I'm not sure.

#8 - Posted by: Undercover Hippie on December 13, 2005 08:26 AM

Joke? Joke? What joke? I just wasn't sure if there was a joke or not.

Exile: Actually, proving the existence of God is the easy part. As Antony Flew concluded after a lifetime as a leading atheist apologist, it's hard to hold an intellectually honest position denying the existence of a diety.

Among other things, the law of causality requires a creator. Without an initial uncaused cause (a diety), existence becomes an infinite regression of causes, something that is logically impossible. The tougher part is demonstrating that this necessary deity is the Christian God.

#9 - Posted by: DavidV on December 13, 2005 09:22 AM

I'm agnostic but before religion is dragged into my belief system or not, please be aware of the church I am a member of. "We don't know and we don't care." :-) I liked the joke, though, and thought I'd compliment Spacemonkey on it.

#10 - Posted by: Blenster on December 13, 2005 12:02 PM

Didn't Erwin Schrodinger maintain that we couldn't know for sure until we opened the door and looked? And the cat was dead at that point, I think.

#11 - Posted by: Silicon Valley Jim on December 13, 2005 02:52 PM
Post a comment




Remember me?

(You may use HTML tags for style)

 

Buy IMAO T-Shirts


IMAO T-Shirts

The IMAO T-Shirt Babe
(winning picture) YOU BUY NEW SHIRTS NOW!!!
Yay! Books!





Capitalism
Archives
By Category
24
American Idol
Aqua-Adventures
Barackalypse Now
Best of IMAO 2002
Best of IMAO 2006
Bite-Sized Wisdom
Editorials
Election 2008
Filthy Lies
Frank Answers
Frank Discussions
Frank on Guns
Frank Reads the Bible
Frank the Artist
Fred Thompson Facts
Friday Cat-Blogging
Fun Trivia
Hellbender
Hellbender Take Two
Hillary Clinton Terrible Truths
Humor
I Hate Frank
If I Were President
ignis fatuous
IMAO Condensed
IMAO Exclusives
IMAO for the Non-Deaf
IMAO Reviews
IMAO Think Tank
In My World
In My World - Fan Fiction
John Edwards Fabulous Facts
Know Thy Enemy
lolterizt
Michael Moore
Mitt Romney Ads
News Round-Up
Newsish Fakery
No, McCain't
Our Military
Permalink Contest
Precision Guided Humor Assignments
Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul
Ronin Profiles
Ronin Thought of the Day
SarahK's TV stuff
Scary Evil Monkey
Simpsons Trivia
Songs & Poems
State of the Frank Report
Superego
Totally True Tidbits
WEsistance Is Facile
Why Me Laugh?
Yvonne's Ashes
By Month
December 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
March 1933