Sunday, July 07, 2002

letter #3

Disclaimer
Nothing that is written in this write-up is intended to insult the readers for their religious or personal beliefs or otherwise hurt the reader’s feelings. I attempt to back up all of my statements with factual information; however, the subject matter of this debate is something that really is impossible to prove. I hope that you read this with an open mind, regardless of what your current beliefs are.
End Disclaimer

Let me begin with my religious background, because that is an important way to make you understand where I am coming from. I grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. For those of you on the west coast (or Australia, etc…), people in Massachusetts are very closed-mouthed about their religious beliefs. Everything here has always been more academically based and I grew up focusing on academics and concrete things instead of spiritually related things. In general, we have fewer schools which are religiously based. I went to Shrewsbury High School, which is a public school where they do not bring anything spiritual into the curriculum. I was never exposed to discussions about religious beliefs until I came to Chapman, and it came as quite a shock because of a number of reasons. But I’ll get to that after.

We have a few churches in my town: Saint Mary’s, Saint Anne’s, a Lutheran Church, First Congregational Church, some other churches which I fail to remember the name of, and a church which doesn’t meet in a building but actually meets in a clearing around a big cross stuck in the ground. I don’t know what’s up with that but whatever. There are also hundreds of churches (very beautiful, I might add) in the city next to us, Worcester. From what I can tell, my town is primarily of the Catholic faith.

I am not Catholic. I grew up believing in “God” because I was taught to believe. I was never given any other choice but to believe until I became old enough to think for myself and met other people who had opposing view points. Apparently it was my mother who wanted me to be brought to church, because I recently found out that my father has very much the same beliefs as I do (he never intruded when I was younger so it is interesting how my views are the same and I only find these out now). I became confirmed in the First Congregational Church, which I grew up believing was Protestant, but it turns out that the actual name of our denomination is Congregational or United Church of Christ. I was confirmed in ninth grade, which was far before I even began to question organized religion and Christianity.

When I first took communion at the end of our year-long course at my church, I didn’t really think about what I was doing when I took that grape juice and that bread. When I said the “Lord’s Prayer” or sang hymns during the service I never thought about what I was saying. For me, being confirmed in the ninth grade was at the wrong time, because I was too young. I was more worried about fitting in at my high school and hoping that boys would like me and that I would get good enough grades to go to a good college someday. I didn’t really pay attention that being confirmed is a contract for life. This really doesn’t worry me very much now, because there are practical reasons for being confirmed, such as the ability to be married in the church and things of that nature that I might care about later. But it does bother me that I was confirmed so young, before I really knew what my beliefs were. My beliefs are still evolving today, and I really don’t know if I would make the choice to become confirmed in the church or in my particular church if the question was posed to me at this moment.

I can say that I do believe that there is SOMETHING out there. Not necessarily a “God” in the sense of the Judeo-Christian belief system, but there is something spiritual. I believe this because I have VERY weird experiences all of the time (ones that I would rather not discuss here because that will open up a whole slew of topics). These started when I was about seven years old and they have been getting more noticeable as I have gotten older. As for the values set up by the Bible and the Christian belief system, I agree with them wholeheartedly. Do I believe that the ten commandments were written on slabs of stone by Moses as God spoke to him? Not particularly, but the ten commandments are a good set of morals to live by. But so are the writings of Confucius. I find Christianity to be a very moral religion. I grew up under that belief system, and I think it made me a good person. However, I do not think that it is necessary to follow a religion (or a book) to have these beliefs. I know many people who were not brought up in a religious family who have wonderful morals. As for the Bible (of the Christian belief system)….yes it exists, nobody can deny that. I believe that much of the stuff in the bible could’ve happened, but one reason that I do not like Christianity is the fact that the religion is very much grounded on a book, like so many other organized religions.

Basically, I am an agnostic. An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. Since nobody can take “God” and pick Him (or Her? Or It?) up and prove to me that “God” exists, I am not going to believe either way. Until I have hard evidence that “God” exists, I refuse to take a firm ground in believing (having “faith”, however you want to put it).

Many people wonder why I am so passive about religious topics, and it is because I have very different views from most people at Chapman. My friends at home have no interest in talking about religion, and when I came to Chapman, it was a shock to find so many young people who are passionate about Jesus and God and getting their religious beliefs out in the open. In my town, if you talk as openly as people at my college do about Jesus, you are dubbed a “Jesus-freak” and kind of laughed at because here we just don’t talk about those things. They’re considered as personal as which candidate you voted for in the election.

For me it is interesting to listen to people talk about their Christian roots, but it is very uncomfortable for me to talk about my religious beliefs because some people just are unable to understand where I am coming from. I grew up in a very different background than most people at my school. I also find it nearly impossible to explain to people my beliefs without them pushing theirs on me. I hate it when others try to push their beliefs on me without backing them up. And since there really is no way that I can see to back up either of our beliefs, it is silly to argue about.

But here goes…

Statement #1

There is no God (of the Judeo-Christian belief system).

Definitions

God: A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions

Judeo-Christian: Being historically related to both Judaism and Christianity

Judaism: the monotheistic religion of the Jews, tracing its origins to Abraham and having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Talmud

Talmud: the collection of ancient Rabbnic writings consisting of the Mishnah and the Gemara

Christianity: the Christian religion, founded on the life and teachings of Jesus

Christian: professing belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on his teachings, showing a loving concern for others, humane

My Initial Thoughts/Questions

Prove that there IS a God. Both proving that there is not a God or that there is a God is impossible.

Why are you grouping the Jewish people with the Christian people? Based on the definition of Judeo-Christian, and the definitions of the two separate religions, it is better to say that they are just that….two separate religions. I am going to research whether or not a “Christian” God exists, rather than a Judeo-Christian God, since the definition of Judeo-Christian brings into question a lot of other topics.

If there is just one unified God under the Christian belief system, why are there so many other religions in the world and why are there so many separate Christian denominations? Wouldn’t this “supreme spiritual being” want all of his creations to believe in the same things? And how do the Christians know that they are the one true religion?

Statement #2

Christianity is false.

My Initial Thoughts

Wait, you want me to prove that ALL of Christianity is false? Well that’s just impossible because any religion that has this much grounding in the World is going to be partly true….there’s no way that ALL of Christianity is false.

Research and Facts

The first thing I did was to try and prove to myself that there IS a God under the Christian belief system. I went out and read a bunch of articles on the internet which were trying to prove to me that there was a God. I found that none of them were successful in proving to me with hard evidence and facts that there is a God; however, they succeeded in proving to me that there could be the existence of a God, which actually taught me nothing new, because that was my belief beforehand.

One of the articles told me to sit and ask God to give me a sign that He exists. I did. I sat for about an hour…and I did not get a sign. But I didn’t give up trying to make myself believe…so here’s a bit of my thoughts about the articles.

http://www.doesgodexist.org/Phamplets/Mansproof.html
“A Practical Man’s Proof of God-Does God Exist?” The author did an excellent job of explaining why an atheist was wrong to say that we have always existed but not why I should believe that the Christian God does exist. Yes, there is practical evidence that our earth began somewhere, but the author of the article failed to prove to me that it was GOD (and the Christian God in particular) who created it. The article was a sad attempt at using scientific evidence to prove the existence of God. It stated factual information, but the factual information had nothing to do with whether or not the Christian God is the one true God. The only point that the article succeeded in making to me was exactly what I believed beforehand-that something has to exist because we all started somewhere. Okay, so atheism is out of the question. I knew that already.

http://www.pccorner.com/ato/ato_ch12.htm
This story kept my attention for a bit, because it did come close to proving that God exists. But it lost me:
“OK," Bill agreed, "but if God is the cause of the universe, don't we then need something else to make God? After all, God would be an effect which requires a cause."
"Yes. But God is different from the universe in one very significant way. Whereas the universe is not eternal, God is. Something somewhere has to be eternal, and cause-and-effect requires that something to be a someone--a personal God. Since God is eternal, we don't need to ask about His cause. How could anything eternal have a cause? By the way, the God describe in the Bible is that kind of God."

The preceeding argument simply assumes that God does exist. If they are arguing that something must have started the world, it May have been God, but if it was, who says that He is eternal? Where is the proof of Him being eternal? For all we know He could’ve been created by something/someone else and that someone else could’ve been created by something/someone else and we could be living under a God who is living under a God who is living under a God….and it could go around in a circle. Maybe something somewhere is eternal, and maybe something is not-everything could go around in a circle much like the food chain. There is no way to prove that God is eternal, or that anything is eternal because we ourselves are not eternal, and will not be around to see if something is actually in truth “eternal.”

As far as I’m concerned at this point, God is a theory-something which has never been proven false, but is not necessarily true.

After I read those articles, I went out and looked at the different religions in the world. I found a top-twenty list of different religions in the world. Christianity is unarguably the largest religion in the world, it is followed by (in order of population in the world according to www.adherents.com): Islam (Muslim), Hinduism, Secular/Non Religious/Agnostic, Buddhism, Chinese traditional religion, primal-indigenous, African Traditional & Diasporic, Sikhism, Juche, Spiritism, Judaism, Baha’I, Jainism, Shinto, Cao Dai, Tenrikyo, Neo-Paganism, Unitarian-Universalism, and Scientology. I looked up the general definition of each of these religions because of my lack of knowledge on most of them. Each religion differs in their beliefs. Some believe in reincarnation after death, others believe in more than one God, a few follow the works/lives of a prophet(sounding similar to Christianity but with a different prophet). There are all kinds of different beliefs out there. This is where two topics are going to overlap.

Just the fact that there are hundreds of different subcategories (denominations) inside Christianity makes it a little bit difficult for me to believe in it as the one true religion. How can something that is supposed to be the one true religion have so many different sides? I’ll just list a few major ones and their differing beliefs:

Baptist: I read the Baptist Faith and Message which can be found here: http://www.utm.edu/martinarea/fbc/bfm/2.html. From what I read, Baptists believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (triune God) I quote: “There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. . . God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” Well what about the other people who do not believe in Jesus Christ? Shouldn’t God still be considered their “Father” if God created the universe? Iffy.

Catholic: I went poking around on a Catholic Youth Center website and found some interesting things which I already knew a little about, but found out some more. Catholics also believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit like the Baptists. Catholic religion centers around the New Testament of the Bible, and if there is ever a question on something, the New Testament is consulted. Priests have the ability to pardon certain kinds of sin in the Catholic church. Other kinds of sins (which violate moral law-a “rule of conduct set up by competent authority”) such as abortion are punished by excommunication (which prevents the offender from taking part in certain sacraments-sacred activities- and from ever becoming into office as a priest etc…) It just doesn’t seem right to me that a person can be excommunicated from their religion.

United Church of Christ/Congregationalist: http://www.ucc.org/aboutus/whatis.htm. The major difference between the UCC and Catholic religions is that the ministers are not considered as figures of authority but rather as spiritual guides. Although the UCC is considered to be one unified body of churches, each individual church is allowed to set down its own beliefs, and share the beliefs with others. There are only two sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s supper) in this church as opposed to the seven in the Catholic church. So inside of this denomination there is even more separation in beliefs. The collective idea between these churches is to spread faith in Jesus but to also confirm the individualism of the person.

Jehovah’s Witness: Okay. They call God by a different name than the previously listed religions and are known as being somewhat irritating to some people due to their uninvited visits to homes. I went to this site to read about them a little: http://www.watchtower.org/library/jt/index.htm. Apparently they call God, “Jehovah” because they believe that it is a special name, because God can be referring to many other different Gods. Similarly to previously mentioned denominations, the goal of Jehovah’s Witnesses is to spread the “good news” of Jesus. They believe that all religious beliefs should be subjected to a test of agreement with the Scriptures of the Bible. They take everything in the Bible literally unless something is obviously meant as a symbolic type of thing.

Lutheran: http://www.lutheran.net/faith.php. Lutheranism is a sub-denomination of Protestantism. Things are getting so complicated! Lutherans believe that the ultimate authority is the Word of God, as found in the bible, and that Christ is the key to understanding the Bible and salvation. Salvation is not earned or bought in the Lutheran religion like it is in the Catholic, but it is a gift of God, based on faith. The Lutheran faith, like UCC has only two sacraments, because they were the only two supposedly instituted by Christ. When the Lutheran’s take communion, they believe that the bread (which everyone is allowed to have as opposed to the Catholics where only the priests are allowed it) is actually the Lord and not that it is a symbol of the Lord. The UCC generally believes that the wine and bread is a symbol of the Lord and not the actual Lord.

Church of Latter day Saints (Mormon): http://www.mormon.org/learn/0,8672,1598-1,00.html. This church also believes in the trinity (God as Father, Jesus Christ as Son, and the Holy Ghost). They believe that men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s “transgression.” They also believe that men (not women) can become figures of authority for the church. The LDS believes in teaching from the Bible and also from The Book of Mormon, which is a separate book that they say has old writings from prophets. They also have a number of other beliefs which are complicated and I’m getting sick of reading about them so I’m done.

Anyways, those are only a few of the different denominations, and a tiny snippet of what they agree upon and what they do not agree upon. The general agreement throughout the denominations is an acceptance of Jesus Christ and belief in his crucifixion and resurrection and teachings. They all believe that love (for everything) should be the basis of life. And they all believe in some part of the Bible.

I’m going to steal from Grant a little bit now….

There are three (not two-the world is not black and white, and there can be middle grounds) ways to see this:
1. Christianity is true.
2. Christianity is false.
3. Some parts of Christianity are true, and some are false.

If Christianity is true, then ALL parts of Christianity should be true. As shown above, there are agreements between the many denominations (characterized by a belief in Jesus Christ and the Bible); however, there are differences in what each denomination believes. If Christianity was the one true religion, there would not be so many discrepancies between different denominations and sub denominations. Why do Lutherans believe that the communion wine and bread is physically God while the United Church of Christ believes that communion is a symbol of God, while Catholics believe that only figures of authority are allowed to have/give communion, while some Christians do not believe in having communion at all? Why do most denominations believe that one has to be baptized in order to be a Christian? If the Christian God is the one true God, wouldn’t ALL people in the world be accepted as Christians without baptism/christening? If we are all God’s children as Christianity claims, why would we have to go through a baptism/christening to be considered for salvation? What one denomination says is true, another may say is false, or incorrect. It is impossible for ALL of Christianity to be true.

If Christianity is false, then ALL parts of Christianity should be false. However, there is significant historical and scientific evidence that Jesus Christ existed and that many events in the Bible did happen. There is no way that ALL of Christianity is false. So that statement is incorrect.

Thus, some parts of Christianity are true, and some parts are probably false, although we have no way of proving which parts are false. So we cannot say with conviction that Christianity is false, because it is not completely false, and we cannot say with conviction that Christianity is true, because not all parts of Christianity are true, although some parts may be.

Statement #3

The Bible is false.

My Initial Thoughts

No contest here. I know that parts of the Bible have been proven to be true (no use researching that because it will take too long), so that statement is incorrect. Maybe a better way to ask that question would have been to state a certain part of the Bible to argue as false, but I cannot argue the whole Bible as false…similarly to the argument about Christianity. So I will say that there are probably parts of the Bible that are false, although I do not know.


Closing Thoughts

Christianity is neither false nor true from what I have seen. I have no problem with any Christian (or other religious believer, unless they try to shove religious sap down my throat), because it seems to be a respectful belief system and if it comforts them in this world of unknown (which is what I personally believe religion to be), well, then that is good for them.

God. Well, I can neither confirm His (or Her, or Its) existence. To those who have the faith, well they are lucky. I have not found this yet, if I ever will in this lifetime
To each his own. I have my own personal beliefs (formed from my own experiences) about what happens after death and about the way I should live my life. As for how we got here on Earth, I don’t think it matters too much because we’re here and we can’t deny that, so I don’t worry about it too much.

All I can really say is that I try to live my life to its fullest because there really is no way to know for sure what happens after death.

A philosopher/poet whom I have found very inspirational in my life lately is Kahlil Gibran. He was very much like me because he did not have deep roots in religion, but was a very spiritual person. I have found comfort in many of his writings (instead of an organized religion) and I always try and remember that “These minutes are more precious to us than the crowns of kings and more sublime than the thrones of angels.”

--------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------

my response which is miraculously not as long as letter #3

Anything said here is not a personal attack…just so everyone knows.
______________________________________________
First off I will explain what I meant by saying “Judeo-Christian.” I did not mean Judaism and Christianity as they are today, meshed together. Judeo-Christian is a term meaning “historically related to both Judaism and Christianity.” This is because Jesus was Jewish and Christians follow Him. Therefore, those who do prescribe Christianity and Jesus are prescribing to the Judeo-Christian belief system. So no, I did not expect you to cover Judaism too.
______________________________________________
Now on to the first question. I asked for proof that there is not a God. So, in return, you asked me to prove that there IS a God. What I would then say is, “Hey, I asked you first.” But don’t worry, I will answer you. You can’t. At least not in the traditional sense of proving. No, I cannot give you physical evidence of the actual being of God. But can you give me physical evidence of your mind? How about your thoughts? How about your emotions? Well, if we are to follow the same logic, saying that since you can’t prove God’s existence physically, you can’t know if He is real or not, then you also will have to agree with me if I say that you have no mind, thoughts, or emotions. Now is when you say, “But I DO have emotions…it is obvious because I laugh and cry.” But wait, that is not physical evidence of your emotions, those are results of your emotions. It’s the same as trying to prove that wind exists. You can’t physically prove it beyond its effects. You see trees move. Your hat flies off your head. Etc. In the same way, God can be proven. Certain aspects of our universe have no other explanation, therefore leaving no other option but God, therefore proving His existence.

You then said “If there is just one unified God under the Christian belief system, why are there so many other religions in the world and why are there so many separate Christian denominations? Wouldn’t this “supreme spiritual being” want all of his creations to believe in the same things? And how do the Christians know that they are the one true religion?”

Why are there so many religions? Because man has free will. He can choose to believe in whatever he wants to. Therefore, it is inevitable that many religions will pop up. And why there are so many denominations, I will cover later.

Yes, or course this supreme spiritual being, otherwise known as God, wants everyone to know the truth. But, once more, man has free will. So God will not force everyone to believe in the truth.

And how do Christians know they are the one true religion? Well, it comes down to reason, logic, and faith. Now don’t start to scoff because I brought up the “f” word. Faith is a very valid topic. When you sit in a chair, do you hold your breath and hope that the chair holds you and doesn’t break? No, because you have faith. Every time you take a step do you hold your breath hoping that gravity doesn’t give out sending you hurtling into space? No, because you have faith. And much like you see the effects of wind in trees, I see the effects of God in my life and the world around me. For more on faith go to Kevin’s site.
_________________________________________
For the second main question, no, I did not want you to prove all of Christianity false. I realize this is impossible. What I meant was for you to prove any of it wrong. Because if you can prove any of the main points wrong, then it is all wrong.

You then said that you did research, and none of the articles gave you hard evidence. I redirect you to my previous shpeal. Give me hard evidence of your mind, and I will then accept your argument about no hard evidence for God.

You said that another article told you about God’s eternalness. You asked how we know that God is eternal, and how do we know that some other being didn’t create Him, and some other being create that being, and so on and so on. Well, you would have to get to the top of the chain somewhere, would you not? And would not that being have to be eternal? If that being was at the very top, it has to be eternal. So, if we are assuming that there is some kind of being out there that did some kind of creating, it is pure logic that tells us it has to be eternal. It is true that if everything goes around in a big circle, the circle of life (not stolen from the Lion King, it’s an actual belief system) that there would not have to be a creator. Nothing would have to be eternal. But then you are faced with the question of where the circle started. Yes, it is a circle, a never-ending loop, but there had to be a creation of this circle. Was it evolution? Or a creator, who would just so happen to be eternal. And if it was evolution, please do tell because I will write about that too, and how evolution is just as much of a faith based belief system as Christianity is. If not more so.
____________________________________
Now to talk about the denominations. I will answer the questions you had about each one:

Baptist
You asked “what about the people who don’t believe in Jesus.” If you look at the major beliefs of Christianity, you will find that those who do not believe in Jesus are not Christians. That is a major tenet of the Christian faith. And you said that God should still be considered those people’s “fathers.” Well, He is. I’m not sure where you found that Baptists believe that God is not the father of those who don’t believe in Jesus. He is definitely their father, but that does not mean that they are Christians automatically.

Catholicism
Your main discrepancy here was that people can be excommunicated from the church. You will find that this is only in Catholicism, and is not even practiced widely. It was a major tenet of Catholicism hundreds of years ago, but excommunication is not commonly practiced today. And if you look at the beliefs of Christianity, you will find that there is nothing that can reverse the process once you become a Christian. You can’t be excommunicated from Christianity.

You didn’t seem to have too many discrepancies with the UCC, so I won’t go into it.

Jehova’s Witness
Well, they aren’t Christian’s, and are not even considered one of the denominations of Christianity, so I’m not sure why this is in here.

Lutheran
You brought up the Lutheran’s beliefs about communion. But I think you are confused. The Catholics are the ones who say that the bread and wine become the body of Christ. Though that is also not nearly as widely taught today. And anyone in Catholicism can take communion, not just the priests.

Mormonism
Once more, this is not a denomination of Christianity, so I’m not sure why it is in here.

I see what you mean about middle ground, and about the third choice. There is a reason I did not include that third choice. Because it doesn’t matter. That was not meant to sound harsh, but here is my reasoning: If Christianity is true, then it is the only way. But if it is only partly true then it is garbage, other than being some nice words to live by. If it is only partly true, there is no point in following it. And that goes for it being partly false. If it is partly false, it is pointless. A belief system that says it is the only way has to be completely true.

And now your questions about denominations.

You said that there would not be so many discrepancies between denominations if Christianity were the one true religion. I don’t follow your reasoning. You see, truth is truth. Grass, when healthy, is green. Correct? Well what if there was a group of people who would not budge on the belief that grass is indeed purple? Does that change the truth just because someone has a different belief? In other words, it doesn’t matter if one denomination has a different belief, it doesn’t take away from the truth.

And I’m not sure where you got your information about most denominations believing that you have to be baptized to be saved. Baptists are the only ones who say that, and normally do not any more. Baptism is not part of the salvation process. Baptism is a public showing of the changes you have made in your life. That is all.

You asked why all people wouldn’t be considered Christians if God were the one true God. Simple, free will. God gave us free will to choose Him or not. How well would it work if everyone were considered a Christian? Would you want that title? Would someone who practices witchcraft want that title? If someone does not want to be a Christian, he or she has that choice.

You then asked why someone would have to go through a baptism or christening. The only thing you have to do is make a change in your heart. You have to lay your life aside and be willing to follow God. It is a decision, not an action like baptism.

What one denomination says is true, another may say is false, or incorrect. It is impossible for ALL of Christianity to be true.” Once more I am not following your reasoning. It may be impossible for ALL Christians to be correct, (which it is since there are subtle points that are not necessary to salvation and many have varying opinions), but just because of disagreements between denominations does not by any means mean that all of Christianity can’t be true.

You say that some parts of Christianity are true, and some parts of probably false, although we can’t know which parts are false. I fail to see how we could not see which parts are false. That is like saying parts of a mathematical equation are false, but it isn’t possible to tell which parts are false. It is literally impossible to say that parts are false unless you know at least one part that is false. Then you added, “not all parts of Christianity are true,” so I would ask you to point out which parts those are.
____________________________________
I did not mean that you needed to prove the entire Bible false. That is, like you said, impossible. I meant to prove ANY part of it false. Which is, from what can be shown, equally impossible. If you can prove to me one piece of the Bible that is false, I will denounce God and Christianity here on this spot. Since you said that parts are probably false, then I ask, once more, for you to point those out.
_____________________________________
The main tenet of what you have said is that it is impossible to know whether or not there is a God. You called yourself an agnostic, and are therefore probably familiar with Emmanuel Kant’s works. Here is the problem: Agnosticism says that there is no way to have any knowledge about reality (in other words, truth). You can’t figure it out with reason or logic. Which is what you have said in this letter. The problem is that this is a self-refuting belief. The statement that you can’t know the real truth about reality is indeed a truth about reality. Geisler stated, “The fundamental flaw in Kant’s hard agnostic position is his claim to have knowledge of what he declares to be unknowable. In other words, if it were true that reality cannot be known, no one, including Kant, would know it. Kant’s hard agnosticism boils down to the claim: ‘I know that reality is unknowable.’” Agnosticism is saying that one knows enough about reality to know that one cannot know anything about reality. So for you to claim that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not is actually self-refuting.
_____________________________________
Once more, this was not meant to be an attack. This was a rebuttal to arguments, like in a debate. Please, ask questions. I would love to answer if I can.

No comments:

generated by sloganizer.net