Christianity for the Next 1000 Years
In the beginning, God created skies and earth.
Welcome back. Yesterday, I overheard fellow teachers discussing so and so as being an atheist and another so and so being an agnostic. Everyone pretty much knows I'm ordained. Because of that I did not expect anyone to ask me what I thought about the subject.
The truth is there are different ways to believe about God. Most of them have to do with God's relationship to Being.
Animist: gods or spirits exist within Being
Pantheist: Being is God
Panentheist: Being exists within in God
Polytheist: many gods within Being
Deist: god made Being then moved on
Theist: Being was created by a god
Agnostic: does not know if there is a god
Atheist: knows there is not a god
That's about it. If I've forgotten anything let me know.
Atheists and theists are kinfolk in the sense that they are both absolutely know they are right. They really do not need proof or evidence since they already know the truth. Both can be arrogant. Both can be dogmatic.
If I had to choose whether atheists or theists had the better evidence and arguments, I'd have to go with the atheists since they are not required by logic to prove that God does not exist.
No one goes around proving that gods, unicorns, abducting aliens, zombies, goblins, angels, vampires, demons, and Vanderbilt football national championships do not exist. The burden of proof is always thrust upon the person who makes a fantastic claim.
Indeed, fantastic claims require fantastic evidence. If I declare the earth moves in a world where everyone believes the earth is flat and immovable, then my evidence better step up to the challenge.
Prophets and seers are lousy evidence. In fact, in our world today, few people accept the word of an authority as proof.
Let's say in an imaginary world a prophet wrote in scripture that the earth moves. If he did that, if that were in the Bible, then that prophet made a lucky, insightful guess.
That it was written by prophet who is sanctioned by God, according to the scriptures, and in a world that accepts prophetic writings as conclusive proof, does not make the prophet's claim true--especially in a world that requires scientific evidence.
Theists have lousy arguments that do not justify their smugness, so it is tempting to believe that their smugness is a smoke screen.
Atheists seem to have the arguments and evidence on their side, but their claims of certitude are not persuasive for many reasons.
To be an atheist implies omniscience if an atheist truly believes he or she knows there is not a god. I do not ever see myself having that much certitude about anything.
I am a blend. I am agnostic in that I most certainly am not certain that God or gods are real or illusions. I suspect they all are illusions in some way. However, I am a person of faith. Although I do not know for certain that God is or is not, I do love God, and in that sense I do believe in God.
The more I love God, the more comfortable I am with not knowing.
Instead, I prefer to be humble. It is okay to admit that we do not know as we love one another. Doctrine is highly overrated and has caused much grief in the world.
So I operate as an agnostic panentheist with deist tendencies. I believe we live, move, and have our being in God. I believe we are made in God's image because we have consciousness, and we have the ability to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. We do not need God to tell us where to go to college or whom to marry. The thoughts that pop into our heads are not God's thoughts, but we are connected to God as we live.
We have everything we need to reveal God in our lives to this world. We must be about that business.
Blessings...
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