Good Thursday Morning and Happy Birthday!!!
1. Question – What is an agnostic and how would you
go about questioning his questions about God?
2. Thought – Agnostic -a person that holds the view
that the ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably
unknowable; one who is not committed to believing either
the existence or the non-existence of God or a god; a
person unwilling to commit an opinion about something.
“Well, Don, there are two kinds of agnostics,”
I explained. “There’s the
ordinary agnostic who says he
doesn’t know anything for sure, and then
there’s the ornery agnostic who says he
can’t know anything for sure.”
Don was sure about his. He said, “I’m the
ornery kind. You can’t know anything for
sure.”
Recognizing the self-defeating nature of his claim, I
unleashed the Road Runner tactic by asking him,
“Don, if you say you can’t know anything for
sure, then how do you know that for sure?”
Looking puzzled, he said, “What do you mean?”
Explaining it another way, I said, “How do you
know for sure that you can’t
know anything for sure?”
I could see the lightbulb coming on but decided to add one
more point: “Besides, Don, you can’t be a
skeptic about everything because that would mean
you’d have to doubt skepticism; but the more you
doubt skepticism the more sure you become.”
He relented. “Okay, I guess I really
can know something for sure. I must be an
ordinary agnostic.”
Now we were really getting somewhere. With just a few
questions, Don had moved from atheism through
ornery agnosticism to
ordinary agnosticism.
I continued, “Since you admit now that you
can know, why don’t you know that
God exists?”
Shrugging his shoulders he said, “Because nobody has
shown me any evidence, I guess.”
This is the best person to talk to: someone who is willing
to take an honest look at the evidence. Being willing is
essential. Evidence cannot convince the unwilling. (I
Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist by Norman
L. Geisler and Frank Turek)
“All energy comes from God.” (DMBR)
