Personally, I identify myself as an agnostic atheist. I was raised an Anglican Christian, but somewhere around 3-5 years ago, I started questioning religion and the belief in a god/gods.
This blog post might be a lot for some people to grasp. Even I am having a hard time coming up with the words I'm looking for, so bear with me.
In philosophy class over the summer, we talked about whether there is a god, and what that god is like, so if the god was omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being able to be anywhere at any time), etc. We talked about the image of a god (what he looks like), etc.
In history we talked a bit about the history of christianity, and this actually is what pushed me to being an atheist, because of how ignorant (I think that ignorant is a poor word choice, but I can't think of any other) all sorts of religions, including christianity, were throughout history.
I dislike the role of the churches, priests, the study of the bible, and pretty much anything surrounding religion.
But if I completely disconnect the idea of a god from any religion, it seems more believable.
I think that there is a possibility there is a god. As you can see throughout history, there have been all sorts of religions and beliefs, christianity, judaism, islamic, even greek polytheism... so many that it would take me forever to list. All together, though, there is an idea in there, of a god.
Sociologically and psychologically speaking, I think it is a viable point to state that people in today's day, use god as sort of a "get out" from their realities and a source of hope to look towards. I think people think god is very omnipresent when they say "God will show me the way" "God will present the opportunities to me", etc. I don't believe god is omnipresent.
But as I said, it is a common belief throughout history that there is some powerful creator or creators of the world.
I think if there is a powerful creator of the world, like a god, he/she isn't human-like. I just find it weird for a human to create other humans... well I guess that's what happens naturally, but I meant the creation of humans in "magical" ways, not reproduction. The greeks believed the gods to be actual humans living on mount olympus. Very human like. Others have worshipped human-like figures, that aren't totally human.
I guess I believe in some form of scientific theory as to why creation happened. But still I don't think I'll ever be convinced
But still, is there a god, nevertheless if earth was created "scientifically" (poor word choice again), and god is not omnipresent, is there some moral code given by someone all-knowing or all-powerful we have to look to?
I don't think there is a moral code, I don't think that god or any powerful figure has some form of "how to live" book, tablet or etch-a-sketch out there. I definitely do not think that if there is a god, that they are "all-powerful". I don't believe in people having power over one-another. People typically see god as a "good guy", but personally, I don't think that ANYTHING even a god should have power or control over any other thing. I don't care if you are Obama and a piece of grass, nothing has control over any other thing. I don't think that a "good guy" god could be all-powerful.
So that leaves all-knowing. Is there an all-knowing god? If god exists, is he all-knowing? This is honestly the most possible thing I would be willing to believe. Maybe a god, maybe a human, but I think it could be possible for a person/god to know everything, supernaturally. I think this is the most legitimate characteristic for a god to have, if there is a god.
But still, I don't want to believe in a god/gods, no matter the religion. I don't think there is a powerful figure that rules over all.
So this is why I am agnostic. I don't know if a god exists or not. I kind of hope that a god doesn't exist. I don't pray. But sometimes I think, maybe a god could exist. One time a person I absolutely hate said "I think there are a lot of things in this world we don't know about" which is totally true, new things are discovered all of the time. Maybe a god exists. Maybe he/she is powerful. But at this point, I am not totally convinced.
This same person I hate was talking about how religions have made a lot of mistakes, historically, and I think this is why I always want to jump to the atheistic argument. I hate how the people of a religion have been cruel throughout the ages, I know there are plenty of nice people, and helpful people, but just looking back a few hundred years ago, the missionaries from the UK coming over to Canada, and trying to convert the natives/citizens of "Canada" to christianity/catholicism. They were all skeptical, but when churches are built by people, and they don't want a war, and they want to trade with christians, they are going to convert.
I think a lot of theists in this century are very nice, quite often they are charitable, giving, nice, following the morals of their religion. I know that there are some immoral or amoral theists out there, that purposely spread hate against others, as well. So I really can't generalize a stereotype of all theists, especially since it depends on the religion.
I compare Canada to Greek and Roman times, a lot. To those who don't know too much about history, Canadian society is actually very similar to both Greek and Roman times. In Greece, they believed in polytheism, as stated. Zeus was the main god, the son of Rhea and Cronos, the children of "Chaos" and the "Skies" who were the actual originals. But the first group of children, including Rhea and Cronos were the titans. When they were liberated by Zeus et. al, they became the gods. The Greeks worshipped these gods with temples, events (the olympics were created to honour Zeus), and then as time went on, they slowly stopped worshipping these gods, because they realized how unscientific, unrealistic it was. They believed they were just myths. They stopped worshipping them, and just as an example, the olympics were stopped. Eventually, what most people know about greece, is the times of philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the times of democracy. A lot of rational thought came out hundreds and hundreds of years after they stopped.
Approximately 400 years after the death of Socrates, Jesus was born, to our knowledge, at 3AD. Now, I
I guess to finalize my point, I am still remaining an agnostic atheist. To me, this means that I am basically an atheist, with just a little bit in my mind that "Just maybe a god exists". I have just been thinking about theism a lot lately. I think theism is a really interesting idea, and I think it would be fun to believe in, but I just don't see much credibility to it, as I talked about, previously.
I don't think a god gives hope or opportunity. I think that you give yourself hope, and that if you are a theist, you mistake it as sort of a supernatural/god given gift. I wrote about this in philosophy, the idea that people who believe in god get these ideas in their heads of something good that seems hopeful or unrealistic, and that they think it is from god. The idea of god in their heads, although unreal in my belief, gives them hope. I don't think this is a bad thing. This idea in this paragraph I am trying to work on better. I want to really clarify it as a well-known philosophical/psychological theory, because I have never heard of any other person talk about this before.
I think this is because people are afraid of offending people and criticizing religious dogma.
This brings me to my final point, to connect this all back to my life. In my essay in law, we had to write about assisted suicide. I established myself as "For" assisted suicide, and for one of the points you have to show an opposing viewpoint and then rebut it. I chose to put in the religious perspective. I got 100% on the essay but my teacher wrote "I allowed the religious C.A. but try to remain steadfast in legal dogma" in the comments on my essay. My philosophy teacher also had reminded us of this.
But I really hate this. I hate how people are afraid of offending others. It is just such a natural thing to do. I think that offending people is mean, but it can also be a wakeup call. I don't consider myself blunt, I just know that I have the right to state what I want to state. This can be difficult in school. Although, I did get 100% on my law essay, so even though the topic probably made my teacher uncomfortable, it was relevant, so luckily he was unbiased and gave me the grade.
This blog post might be a lot for some people to grasp. Even I am having a hard time coming up with the words I'm looking for, so bear with me.
In philosophy class over the summer, we talked about whether there is a god, and what that god is like, so if the god was omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being able to be anywhere at any time), etc. We talked about the image of a god (what he looks like), etc.
In history we talked a bit about the history of christianity, and this actually is what pushed me to being an atheist, because of how ignorant (I think that ignorant is a poor word choice, but I can't think of any other) all sorts of religions, including christianity, were throughout history.
I dislike the role of the churches, priests, the study of the bible, and pretty much anything surrounding religion.
But if I completely disconnect the idea of a god from any religion, it seems more believable.
I think that there is a possibility there is a god. As you can see throughout history, there have been all sorts of religions and beliefs, christianity, judaism, islamic, even greek polytheism... so many that it would take me forever to list. All together, though, there is an idea in there, of a god.
Sociologically and psychologically speaking, I think it is a viable point to state that people in today's day, use god as sort of a "get out" from their realities and a source of hope to look towards. I think people think god is very omnipresent when they say "God will show me the way" "God will present the opportunities to me", etc. I don't believe god is omnipresent.
But as I said, it is a common belief throughout history that there is some powerful creator or creators of the world.
I think if there is a powerful creator of the world, like a god, he/she isn't human-like. I just find it weird for a human to create other humans... well I guess that's what happens naturally, but I meant the creation of humans in "magical" ways, not reproduction. The greeks believed the gods to be actual humans living on mount olympus. Very human like. Others have worshipped human-like figures, that aren't totally human.
I guess I believe in some form of scientific theory as to why creation happened. But still I don't think I'll ever be convinced
But still, is there a god, nevertheless if earth was created "scientifically" (poor word choice again), and god is not omnipresent, is there some moral code given by someone all-knowing or all-powerful we have to look to?
I don't think there is a moral code, I don't think that god or any powerful figure has some form of "how to live" book, tablet or etch-a-sketch out there. I definitely do not think that if there is a god, that they are "all-powerful". I don't believe in people having power over one-another. People typically see god as a "good guy", but personally, I don't think that ANYTHING even a god should have power or control over any other thing. I don't care if you are Obama and a piece of grass, nothing has control over any other thing. I don't think that a "good guy" god could be all-powerful.
So that leaves all-knowing. Is there an all-knowing god? If god exists, is he all-knowing? This is honestly the most possible thing I would be willing to believe. Maybe a god, maybe a human, but I think it could be possible for a person/god to know everything, supernaturally. I think this is the most legitimate characteristic for a god to have, if there is a god.
But still, I don't want to believe in a god/gods, no matter the religion. I don't think there is a powerful figure that rules over all.
So this is why I am agnostic. I don't know if a god exists or not. I kind of hope that a god doesn't exist. I don't pray. But sometimes I think, maybe a god could exist. One time a person I absolutely hate said "I think there are a lot of things in this world we don't know about" which is totally true, new things are discovered all of the time. Maybe a god exists. Maybe he/she is powerful. But at this point, I am not totally convinced.
This same person I hate was talking about how religions have made a lot of mistakes, historically, and I think this is why I always want to jump to the atheistic argument. I hate how the people of a religion have been cruel throughout the ages, I know there are plenty of nice people, and helpful people, but just looking back a few hundred years ago, the missionaries from the UK coming over to Canada, and trying to convert the natives/citizens of "Canada" to christianity/catholicism. They were all skeptical, but when churches are built by people, and they don't want a war, and they want to trade with christians, they are going to convert.
I think a lot of theists in this century are very nice, quite often they are charitable, giving, nice, following the morals of their religion. I know that there are some immoral or amoral theists out there, that purposely spread hate against others, as well. So I really can't generalize a stereotype of all theists, especially since it depends on the religion.
I compare Canada to Greek and Roman times, a lot. To those who don't know too much about history, Canadian society is actually very similar to both Greek and Roman times. In Greece, they believed in polytheism, as stated. Zeus was the main god, the son of Rhea and Cronos, the children of "Chaos" and the "Skies" who were the actual originals. But the first group of children, including Rhea and Cronos were the titans. When they were liberated by Zeus et. al, they became the gods. The Greeks worshipped these gods with temples, events (the olympics were created to honour Zeus), and then as time went on, they slowly stopped worshipping these gods, because they realized how unscientific, unrealistic it was. They believed they were just myths. They stopped worshipping them, and just as an example, the olympics were stopped. Eventually, what most people know about greece, is the times of philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the times of democracy. A lot of rational thought came out hundreds and hundreds of years after they stopped.
Approximately 400 years after the death of Socrates, Jesus was born, to our knowledge, at 3AD. Now, I
I guess to finalize my point, I am still remaining an agnostic atheist. To me, this means that I am basically an atheist, with just a little bit in my mind that "Just maybe a god exists". I have just been thinking about theism a lot lately. I think theism is a really interesting idea, and I think it would be fun to believe in, but I just don't see much credibility to it, as I talked about, previously.
I don't think a god gives hope or opportunity. I think that you give yourself hope, and that if you are a theist, you mistake it as sort of a supernatural/god given gift. I wrote about this in philosophy, the idea that people who believe in god get these ideas in their heads of something good that seems hopeful or unrealistic, and that they think it is from god. The idea of god in their heads, although unreal in my belief, gives them hope. I don't think this is a bad thing. This idea in this paragraph I am trying to work on better. I want to really clarify it as a well-known philosophical/psychological theory, because I have never heard of any other person talk about this before.
I think this is because people are afraid of offending people and criticizing religious dogma.
This brings me to my final point, to connect this all back to my life. In my essay in law, we had to write about assisted suicide. I established myself as "For" assisted suicide, and for one of the points you have to show an opposing viewpoint and then rebut it. I chose to put in the religious perspective. I got 100% on the essay but my teacher wrote "I allowed the religious C.A. but try to remain steadfast in legal dogma" in the comments on my essay. My philosophy teacher also had reminded us of this.
But I really hate this. I hate how people are afraid of offending others. It is just such a natural thing to do. I think that offending people is mean, but it can also be a wakeup call. I don't consider myself blunt, I just know that I have the right to state what I want to state. This can be difficult in school. Although, I did get 100% on my law essay, so even though the topic probably made my teacher uncomfortable, it was relevant, so luckily he was unbiased and gave me the grade.
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