Wednesday, April 29, 2009

What Art Thou Not?

In my last post, I featured a number of ways a person could define themselves in relation to a belief in a deity. While I listed a number of different concepts, there is one which I submit defines all of us -- agnosticism. It doesn't matter what any of us choose to call ourselves or label our beliefs. In the end, all beliefs are approximations of that which we cannot know for certain.

For example, a person who believes in one or more Gods does so on faith and faith contains an element of doubt. We can't know that a God exists because we can't use any of our 5 senses to detect it and any contact of a spiritual nature must filter through our emotional self which, by its very nature, distorts what is experienced. All this means is that there is no way to prove or disprove that one or more Gods exist.

Likewise, an atheist cannot disprove that one or more Gods exist.

What we're left with is uncertainty which is what agnosticism represents. Taoism too since, we Taoist, don't claim to know anything for certain anyway!

1 comment:

  1. I think you can disprove any god existing. Or go as far as to say that that god can not be the whole so is therefore not almighty and is fallible.

    #If there was a god, with qualities, or with relation to another thing (as all god's as far as I have seen besides Brahman), then that means it is something in relation to something else - so god and something else are aspects of something greater. So god is not almighty.

    Or if you go with the Brahman idea, or similar, that it is all undivided, then the name god is irrelevant as calling the whole "god" is a pointless accolade to something outside of 'things' so beyond the bounds of name - hence Tao.

    Importantly also is that naming it god also of course delimits it to a thing and then asks for qualities be applied to it, and you return to # above.

    That loop proves numerous times that god is not possible and if it were it would not be quite what anyone says.

    So no god it is. If there is one, it is as fallible as famine, war, death and spinobifida prove.

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