Theos-Talk Archives (April 2006 Message tt00537)

- WHY I AM AGNOSTIC -

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS HAD MISREPRESENTED THE BIBLE TO ME

My personal experience has been that I had formerly attended 
Christian fundamentalist churches for many years, and so I am quite 
well acquainted with Christian fundamentalist doctrines.  However, a
vital inconsistency then occured.  When I actually went and read the
Bible for myself, I began to find that it said things completely
different than what my former Christian fundamentalist teachers were
telling me.

I therefore concluded that my former Christian fundamentalist
teachers were actually misrepresenting the Bible, even though they
claim that it infallibly validates their interpretation of absolute
truth.  When I began asking the leaders questions about various
inconsistencies in their biblical interpretations, I was then deemed
a threat for asking too many questions which may potentially upset
the religious faith of their converts.

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MY AGNOSTIC STANCE TOWARDS A COSMOLOGICAL SUPERGOD

Now just some food for thought.  My stance is agnostic, meaning that
I do not believe that a cosmological supergod (omniscient,
omnipotent, omnipresent) can be known.  Rather, the Old Testament
Jews believed in a pluralized 'Elohim', composed of finite
angels.  The God of the Old Testament is solely represented through
the medium of finite angels and mortal prophets, but there is no
cosmological supergod (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) which
directly appears anywhere in the Old Testament.  It is my personal
experience that fundamentalist Christians have merely misrepresented
the God of the Old Testament in this sense.

Nonetheless, I fully believe that all human beings have the
potential to achieve physical immortality, and that it is inevitable
that the entire human species will overcome death itself at the
completion of one of it's evolutionary cycles.

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THE FINITENESS OF THE MORTAL PSYCHE

I consider myself to be agnostic in the sense that I don't believe
that the mortal psyche in it's current existential finiteness is
capable of cognizing a singular cosmological supergod (omniscient,
omnipotent, omnipresent).  This is because the human psyche itself
must first be omniscient before it can potentially comprehend an
omniscient being.  And our minds certainly are not existentially
omniscient.  It'd be like trying to calculate the size and age of
the universe, and how many square inches or molecules therein
reside.  We can make wild guesses, and even adhere to them as
doctrine, but our best guesses will actually be flagrantly off.

Now can a finite mortal psyche partly know a 'GOD'?  Well I suggest
that even if our mortal psyches were capable of comprehending 1% of
the totality of a 'GOD' (or of the universe itself for that matter),
nonetheless the 99% ignorance which remains within us serves merely
to inevitably distort the little bit that we may claim to know.  (Of
course, even a 1% existential knowability of 'GOD' or the universe
is beyond the current psyche's scope.)  Every god concept that the
mortal psyche has ever ventured to constuct after it's own creative
design, being prayed to and worshipped as self-generated god
concepts commonly are, is and has been invariably flawed to 
propotions beyond our conscious awareness.

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MEGACHURCHES AND ASSUMED IRRELEVANCY OF ANCIENT TEXTS

As much as I value ancient manuscripts in my private readings, I've
nonetheless found that they are pressed to the wayside when entering
the megachurches of the corporate United States.  Ancient just isn't
relevant in a modern day society, unless it be reserved strictly for
private practice.  At least that's been my experience.

My hope with my recent involvement with the Theosophical Society of
Wheaton, Illinois is that I can freely express my metaphysical
belief system among those of differing religious perspectives in
wholistic fashion.  Rather than being shut down for mentioning
ghosts or spirits, as was my experience among the Christian
churches.  My personal interactions with archonic entities are
numerous, but I had lost hope of ever being able to discuss such
things freely among a community face to face.  I will continue to 
examine if this opportunity exists within the Theosophical Society.

Blessings

Vince