{"id":8098,"date":"2024-02-03T10:07:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T04:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/03\/we-are-all-agnostic\/"},"modified":"2024-02-03T10:07:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T04:37:00","slug":"we-are-all-agnostic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/03\/we-are-all-agnostic\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are All Agnostic"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

When it comes to God, we are all agnostic. And I think I mean that quite literally.<\/p>\n

The word comes from the Greek agnosis<\/em> [\u03b1-\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2] which simply means \u201cnot knowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there a God? Is there no God? We simply don\u2019t know<\/a>, if by \u201cknow,\u201d we mean, \u201care certain about the scientific facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am not sure why this is a
\nscandalous thing to say. It seems quite biblical to me. In fact, the famous
\npassage on faith in Hebrews 11 seems to say that faith can only
\nexist for those who are agnostic<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow faith is confidence in what we
\nhope for and assurance about what we do not see<\/em><\/strong>. 2\u00a0<\/sup>This
\nis what the ancients were commended for. 3\u00a0<\/sup>By faith we
\nunderstand that the universe was formed at God\u2019s command, so that
\nwhat is seen was not made out of what was visible<\/em><\/strong> . . . 8\u00a0<\/sup>By
\nfaith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his
\ninheritance,obeyed and went, even though he did not know<\/em><\/strong>
\nwhere he was going . . . 13\u00a0<\/sup>All these people were still living
\nby faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised<\/em><\/strong>
\n. . .\u201d<\/p>\n

If we believe that our Christianity consists in what we know <\/i><\/b>then you will not be able to accept what I am saying here. But if our Christianity consists of how we live<\/em><\/strong>, then what I say may be more palatable. <\/p>\n

What makes one an agnostic, a
\nChristian, or an atheist, is not whether or not we \u201cknow,\u201d it is what we do
\nwith our \u201cnot knowing.\u201d <\/p>\n

Or, as I have become accustomed to saying, our faith is not in our \u201ccertainty<\/a>\u201d but in our \u201cconfidence,\u201d and the difference between those two terms is trust<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, then, for me, those who claim
\nagnosticism are perhaps the most honest but the least courageous of all. They
\nacknowledge something important about the human condition but also something
\nlargely uninteresting. \u201cI am agnostic. I don\u2019t know if there is a God or not.\u201d
\nOkay. Welcome to being human. What else ya got?<\/p>\n

Of course, what they generally mean<\/em> is, \u201cand so I will choose to stay as detached as possible from the whole conversation. I will hedge my bets.\u201d And I find that to be an uninteresting mode of living. The atheist and Christian then are like the woman who knows that she cannot know for sure<\/em> if she will get hit by a car today, but goes out to live her life anyway. The agnostic is like the man who knows that he cannot know for sure<\/em> if he will get hit by a car today, so he stays home. <\/p>\n

The atheist and Christian may calculate the odds differently, but they still go out.<\/h2>\n

And in this way, the Christian and
\nthe atheist are more alike than different. We are all agnostic. But it is only
\nthe Christian and the atheist who are willing to take a risk. They both
\ncourageously make an existential stand when no conclusions are available. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the Christian is the most
\nimaginative and courageous of them all (as Hebrews 11 attests). Or, perhaps we
\nare the most delusional and stupid. There\u2019s typically a fine line between
\nthose. The Christian thrusts her agnosticism onto God, not knowing, but
\nbelieving, not understanding, but trusting. Instead of living by the rules of
\nothers, out-rationalizing the rationalists, out-sciencing the scientists, the
\nChristian ought to celebrate her ability to create, to out-imagine those
\nwithout imagination. And this is not because we have more knowledge, it is
\nbecause we have more trust.<\/p>\n

I understand this may not be the Christianity that most Americans are used to.<\/p>\n

In fact, everything I have said might sound downright anti-Christian. And maybe it is. I just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to God, we are all agnostic. And I think I mean that quite literally. The word comes from the Greek agnosis [\u03b1-\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2] which simply means \u201cnot knowing.\u201d Is there a God? Is there no God? We simply don\u2019t know, if by \u201cknow,\u201d we mean, \u201care certain about the scientific facts.\u201d I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}