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Who is exploring Christian Agnosticism?

I ask that responses not be nean-spirited. If this question does not resonate with you, please just pass to the next post. I am trying to make sense of the universe.

I question the nature and existence of a Supreme Being, but since I was raised in the Christian faith, my ethics and philosophy are rooted in this. I find the nature of Jesus as a "model" person compelling. I understand that Scripture is written to meet many needs, including inspiration and subjugation.

My question is here to meet like-minded people who feel the draw to a servant-community because it makes humanity better. If you are a thoughtful person who questions the motives of religion, but understands the value of community and philosophy, please comment on your journey.

Adam_Gaha 4 Oct 7
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i value community and philosophy but i still don't understand why one would have to be christian to have morals -- and i don't understand why subjugation would be considered a positive thing -- and the idea of a servant-community is a bit frightening. one can put oneself in service of the good of humanity without subjugating oneself to anyone or anything; i do not think subjugation would serve the good of humanity, and it might well harm it, since people do tend to interpret things into ritual to avoid actual thinking. it would become religion in no time, and then it would become subjugation to a god of some sort. i have never been christian a day in my life, and when i realized at age 15 that there were no gods, it never occurred to me that this meant i could do whatever i wanted, since i had never felt that god or religion were my motivations for wanting to be a good person. not being raised christian, i certainly had no perception of jesus as a model of any kind, but since then i have come to realize that if he existed at all, as described, he was a pretty religious jew, and the stuff he is purported to have preached is pretty standard judaism. of course this all got warped by the people who never met him who compiled the new testament. i am not trying to argue with your motivations; i just find the whole concept strange. i hope you don't mind my saying so; i mean no disrespect.

g

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I am a current practitioner of something that might, for all practical purposes, meet that description, but I don't say it that way. Instead of being on a theism/agnosticism polarity, I'd say it's on a literalism/metaphoricalism polarity. So, as nutty as it might sound, it's sort of an atheistic theism. That is to say that God is still there, just as always, but is understood to be a metaphor rather than a literal person.

In this view God is a personification of the totality of reality. The cross represents the horrifying prospect of being separated from ego-identity. Salvation is that eventual liberation from ego-identity. Heaven is the experience of living on the other side of that transformation. Life after death is not life after death of the body, but life after death of ego-identity, etc., etc.

I really suspect this is the original intent of the scripture. When you start studying it it's pretty amazing how much starts making sense that made no damn sense at all when taken literally. It's not hard to understand that a majority might have taken it literally before that prospect was diminished by science, but I think it was always a story about cognitive development, written long before such a clinical description was possible. Advanced cognitive development itself, however, has been possible for thousands of years... for those who could understand the esoteric meanings. This pattern can be seen just as easily in other religions as well. They were all trying to describe human psychology at a time when there was no way to understand it other than by metaphor.

skado Level 9 Oct 7, 2018

@Matias
Thanks. It's something I've pieced together from several existing trains of thought. I've not been able to find any other single source but influences that come to mind are Joseph Campbell, Jean Piaget, Leon Festinger, Chris Hedges, Karen Armstrong, Jordan Peterson, Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dalai Lama, Lao Tzu, Julian Jaynes, E. O. Wilson, Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, Viktor Frankl, and David Steindl-Rast, among others.

@Matias
Thanks. I appreciate your reading list as well. I have bought just about every book I’ve seen you recommend on this site.

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One can certainly cherry pick Christian tropes and symbols in an infinite number of ways.

I do not see humanistic sentiments, good morals and ethics, sound and defensible philosophy etc. to have any dependency on theism generally or on Christianity specifically. I agree with you however that religion has historically delivered on community, belonging and refuge and is skilled in the use of ritual to that end. I think one walks a fine line there however because the very thing that allows a community to coalesce (common beliefs and rituals) can easily become the very thing that allows others to be excluded from that very community, for no better reason than failure to conform. As the beliefs become less dogmatic and exclusive, the community becomes more accepting and inclusive, but also loses some of the impetus to coalesce.

My personal experience has been that liberal Christian and post-Christian groups with loosely-held religious beliefs tend to acquire rigidly held views in other areas (such as politics) and become cliquish and controlling around those rather than around dogma. Meanwhile areligious groups have too little cohesion, and achieving any sort of cooperation becomes an exercise in herding cats.

I have not found an answer to this conundrum. But since my social needs are quite modest, I have to admit that I haven't been very motivated to beat the bushes, either.

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