I grow tired of agnostic idealists who muster a significance from thin air!
Life can be nasty, brutish and short. But add love and it’s just short. That’s an improvement.
* * * * *
Many folks have shared with Brook about their faith, which is OK, but I hoped he would share what particular policies that “fundamentalists” have/would adopt that are so scary…particularly as he equated such with muslims. Specifics, instead of a drive-by comment, would be nice.
I was going to offer a few “specifics”, but Matt Beck @ 100 beat me to the punch – but going way crazier than anything I would have pointed to. Scary. That’s not quite sharia scary (with its ritual murders and lawful rapes), but it’s scary enough. That is precisely what I’m afraid of. I’m also generally opposed to anyone who insists on teaching things from the Bible when the physical, scientific record points clearly in another direction – evolution, geology, and astronomy come to mind.
* * * * *
Briefly, touching on #75 and Brock #64, faith is a requirement for human existence. We don’t have a choice of believing in something. Either our faith will be focused on a spiritual figure or system, or it will be focused on some other idol, such as money, man’s reason, science, or what have you. Agnostic faith is still a faith, in the cynicism of a finite, observed world with no consideration for the future.
Your use of the word “agnostic” is strange to me, since it literally means “One who is doubtful.” There is no faith inside an agnostic. I guess I’ll just say that faith may be a requirement for your existence (and many other people’s), but it’s no requirement of mine. Atheism would be a faith of a sort, but agnosticism is simply not believing in answers that cannot be verified.
I don’t even “believe” in scientific theories. I rely on them, because they’re the best explanation going, but they could be proven false tomorrow and it would be no skin off my back.
I haven’t read the books suggested, but I have read some highly recommended books on various religions, all very well written and researched, but they all come down to one of two things – the author makes some sort of assumption I find highly suspect, or he makes a leap of faith. Nothing has ever been “shown”. As you say JC, “Absolutely nothing will bypass the need for faith as it relates to the existence of God, His character, and historical records.” And I don’t have it. Or need it, really.
JMH and I seem to share a mutation.
* * * * *
A major practical issue for me is that I don’t see a moral code that is likely to survive across generations without some kind of religious framework.
I have noticed this as well. And it’s not just that a religion has it all written down; the religion is also the enforcement mechanism. I have come by my own moral code through hard work and much consideration, but even if everyone else put in that work – what would hold them to it? Some people do seem to need to have it spelled out and “The fear of God” put into them to keep them well behaved.
