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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Rose]

What happens after death is impossible to know. Anybody that tries to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

[Arx]

There's a very real possibility that I could be wrong.

Simplest way to explain my reasoning is this:

Either A: holy book x is the only one out of millions that holds the true word of god.

or B: There is no holy book that actually contains the word of god, all are written by humans.

B seems more likely.

That's fair.

[Yoink]

From what I recall way back when I actually looked into the meanings of such terms, I am technically classed as a "gnostic atheist".
Which is something that is typically referred to as "agnostic" in everyday conversation, confusingly enough. Of course I could be misremembering.

Not sure why I decided to post in here just now after so long... I suppose it's since I am currently reading a certain religious text for the first time out of idle curiosity and this thread happened to pop up on the front page of GD. Also, I am hungry. My actions often become somewhat irrational when I am effected by either hunger or exhaustion, especially if I am browsing the internet in such a state.   


Edit: wait, no, according to my googlings just now the meanings of the term are entirely different from the ones I found in the past.
This is rather aggravating. Why does every site seem to have a different definition for both "gnostic/agnostic" and "theist/atheist"?
Half of the websites in questions are dodgy little forums and such, too. Ugh, Wikipedia, why can't you help me out here? I gave you three dollars just the other day. Jerk.

Can anyone here explain the terms I mentioned above? I thought I had them figured out but apparently not.   


Edit2: Good grief, according to a chart I found on one of the aforementioned forums, a "gnostic atheist" is pretty much the opposite of what I am, and probably the type of belief I find most distasteful of all. Ummm. I'm glad I've never thrown around such terms outside of Bay12, despite having done what I thought was reliable research. o_o;   

There is no god. = gnostic atheist
I don't believe in god. = agnostic atheist

There is a god. = gnostic theist
I believe in god. = agnostic theist

Is the above accurate? It seems I am an agnostic theist after all. Although it seems a very clumsy and specific term, really... I think I kinda just prefer the "agnostic" part, with just a moderate leaning towards the "theistic". I don't really know. Any, all or no religions could be correct. It is unknowable to me and until I either die or have some weird Truth revealed to me (whilst not under the influence of psychedelics) it doesn't seem like that will change, so there is little sense in stressing over it.

[Arx]

That is more-or-less the accepted term. Trying to classify people that don't follow an explicit religion can get... acrimonious, though, for various reasons.

It's also complicated by the fact that Gnosticism was its own religious movement shortly after the birth of Christianity (or thereabouts, if I'm recalling right).

Typically, though, gnostic implies certainty and agnostic implies uncertainty.

[Trekkin]

Can anyone here explain the terms I mentioned above? I thought I had them figured out but apparently not.   

Well, part of the problem is that those terms have been used to mean multiple very different things throughout history and people have gotten sloppy with which term they use for what. Gnosticism, for example, can refer to either a general belief that the existence of one or more gods is knowable or a very specific set of beliefs originating in the second century CE. Thus, it is possible to be small-g gnostic and not at all Gnostic -- and that's just one of the many overloaded terms people throw around.

That said, in general the gnostic-agnostic and theist-atheist spectra you describe get less orthogonal at the atheist/agnostic end, since people who believe that the existence of a god is not only unknown but unknowable also tend to disbelieve in the existence of the kind of interventionist god whose existence would be deducible through things like the rigorous testing of the effectiveness of prayer. On the flip side, many religions are strongly gnostic, believing that the existence of a god is not only knowable but known and proven by whatever set of prophets and revelations they may endorse. Then you get into the question of whether anything about a god may be known beyond their existence, and some people use (a)gnosticism to reflect their beliefs about what can be known about the nature of any given god. It is possible to be both a Deist and an apathetic agnostic in this sense, for example: believing that the world is the product of at least one god and also that their purpose in doing so and opinion on the results is incomprehensible to humans. 

With the above in mind, then:
Strong agnostics believe they can't know.
Weak agnostics believe they don't know.
Apathetic agnostics of either stripe believe knowing wouldn't get them anywhere even if they could.
Ignostics believe that the whole question of the knowability of a god depends on having a coherent definition of what a god is, without which the whole business isn't a useful line of inquiry.

Then you have theists and atheists. All atheists don't believe in some aspect of gods generally, but there's variance in whether they simply don't believe (implicit) or actively disbelieve as a result of conscious rejection of belief(explicit). Thus, newborns could be called implicit atheists. Then you have weak and strong atheism. Weak atheists don't believe in any gods, but don't assert that no gods exist. Strong atheists, who are by extension explicit atheists, actively assert that no gods exist. Then there are the apatheists and pragmatic atheists who simply don't believe that the question of the existence of a god is interesting or relevant to their lives. Theists, of course, actively believe in at least one god.

Now, it's also possible to believe in some aspects of a god without others, or to think some are knowable but not others, which is where a lot of the confusion comes in. One can loosely divide beliefs about the existence of a god into three categories:

1. Belief that a god deliberately created the universe (or otherwise began causality)
2. Belief that a god actively influences the universe according to their will
3. Belief that a god has some influence over what (if anything) happens to us after we die.

So you get people who believe in 1 but not 2 and call themselves Deists, or 2 but not 1 and think a god happened upon an existing universe and started manipulating it (this could be considered congruent with the Nasadiya Sukta) and so on and so forth. Then people need a way to describe those beliefs, and so add more terms to an already confusing pile.

[smjjames]

I thought the Gnostics were those who had a different interpretation of Jesus and were the group that the Early Church really cracked down on while consolidating the bible. Which sounds a bit silly since everybody these days has a slightly different interpretation of Jesus.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Or maybe you can't meaningfully break down the way people think about religion into a neat little quadrant graph and these terms are no better than approximate ones.

The early Christians had a myriad of groups who would be condemned for heresy and exterminated over time, most famously Arianism, who's founder was punched in the face by Santa Claus.

[Teneb]

I thought the Gnostics were those who had a different interpretation of Jesus and were the group that the Early Church really cracked down on while consolidating the bible. Which sounds a bit silly since everybody these days has a slightly different interpretation of Jesus.

No. Gnosticism was a non-abrahamic religion that had more than a few similar elements. Simplifying it, Gnosticism states that there is a superior, all-powerful God who divided themself into two, who then divided, and so on and so forth, with every division resulting in weaker spirits. At some point in the chain, one such spirit, the Demiurge, created a world and trapped a bunch of lesser spirits there as mortals - humans - and ruled as the one true god. They, however, had the bad luck of appearing during a time where Christianism was gaining strength... and parallels can be drawn between the abrahamic God and the Demiurge.

Nicaea-era christianity craked down primarily on Arianism (Jesus was not God or his actual son, but was metaphysically adopted) and Nestorianism (There was a human Jesus and a divine Jesus who were not the same Jesus).

[smjjames]

That sounds like any one of various creation myths, most similar I know of is the Nordic creator God, the giant Ymir. Though I don't know of any that effectively shattered into a vast number of shards and the world/universe was born from Ymir rather than a later deity.

Anyhoo, I'd fully expect new religions cropping up when we start doing permanent offworld colonies.

[Teneb]

Anyhoo, I'd fully expect new religions cropping up when we start doing permanent offworld colonies.

No need for that, quite a few new ones appeared in the 20th century, plus a bunch of revived ones. Most are in the neo-pagan group, though there are a few that don't match that category, such as some alien cults (not counting Scientology, who is legally a corporation and all-around Bad Stuff).

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Can't wait for the Space-Pope to declare a crusade for the Moon. Deus Vult heathens.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Afraid not, as the Catholic Church already considers the Moon part of Christendom and thus will not crusade for it. It is under the Bishopric of Orlando/Moon.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ah damn. I thought that was a joke, but according to Papal law it does indeed appear they have some claim on the Moon, though it is unclear who specifically has overlordship of it.

HOWEVER, since it is technically Christian to the church, if it was settled by those of another belief, it could very well have a crusade called upon it, no? Is that not the inception of the Crusades?

[smjjames]

Ah damn. I thought that was a joke, but according to Papal law it does indeed appear they have some claim on the Moon, though it is unclear who specifically has overlordship of it.

HOWEVER, since it is technically Christian to the church, if it was settled by those of another belief, it could very well have a crusade called upon it, no? Is that not the inception of the Crusades?

I think the Crusade thing is only called if it's a holy site. Every single one of those crusades was a disaster anyway.

Still, I wonder what the context behind the declaring the Moon to be under the bishopric of Orlando was. Sounds like something you'd do to pre-empt people being stupid.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's the old rules, as it happens. Back in the day, the RCC put "discovered" regions under the bishopric of the home port until there were enough Catholics there to justify establishing a new bishopric. When the moon landings were imminent they decided to follow that metric, there are no native Catholics on the moon, and Kennedy Space Center is within Orlando's bishopric.