Is it possible to be an AGNOSTIC THEIST?

[Contarini]

‘Agnostic theist’, while technically not a misnomer, is still misleading. I generally use ‘undecided theist’ to indicate one who believes in the divine but is unsure which, if any, form of worship is proper.

I don’t think that’s what Abira is talking about. But perhaps I’m taking it too personally, applying it to my own position.

Edwin

 

[Mirdath]

No, it’s not. We believe that we may understand. The goal of faith is to disappear in the Beatific Vision, when faith and hope will be unnecessary and only love will remain.

Ah, true – forgive me, I’d just come from a debate thread

 

[Abira]

I don’t think that’s what Abira is talking about. But perhaps I’m taking it too personally, applying it to my own position.

Edwin

lol I think Edwin and I are somehow on the same page, or at least he’s close to what confused me.

For me I would never follow a religion as if it were something I’d picked out of a hat…which I believe my friend has lol…

he can’t prove anything so he’s just chosen a strand he likes and ran with it.

S

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Sure you can. You can believe without knowing, and therefore you can believe while also thinking it is impossible to know (I do the former but not the latter, by the way).

When I use the term ‘agnostic’, I understand the term to mean, ‘not knowing’ or ‘lacking certainty’.
In this sense, I am happy to use the term to describe myself.
I thus cannot proclaim with absolute certainty, but by the same token neither can I deny.
Our Lord rebuked Thomas for doubting, but only gently.
A thinking person is likely a doubting person.
If such a person can be convinced, then the doubt has a real value.

The agnosticism that is incompatible with Christianity is agnosticism as defined by Huxley–the refusal to believe anything that has not been proven, combined with the proposition that God’s existence cannot be proven.

Now does ‘refusal to believe’ equate with ‘believing it impossible’?
If so, then this is not agnosticism, but a negative form of gnosticism. A cup which is not full, is not necessarily empty.

One cannot, after Vatican I, be an orthodox Catholic and say that God’s existence cannot be proven. But other churches, as far as I know, have no dogmatic stance on the matter.

I think that what is above is a dubiouis claim, (I do no specify by whom), for if it were true, then it denies free will, for if an absolute proof could be made, then doubt would not be possible.

Edwin

Hi Edwin, just my penn’orth.