I read an interesting interview of Meghan O’Gieblyn upon the publication of her book of essays Interior States, in an on-line version of Mockingbird magazine dated Feb 14, 2019. I’m excerpting one question and answer for you because it pertains to the so-called “New Atheists” of a few years ago. I used to get so exercised […]
Read more...Category: Agnosticism
Ways of Being
Suicide and Hope Is it possible that a person who commits suicide was actually a Christian? I think so. The event of taking one’s own life is usually fast and always irrevocable. Yes it’s something they do to themselves, but does that single volitional act always negate the beliefs of a lifetime that went before? It’s […]
Read more...Will to Believe
Let’s look at the objection many agnostics make to belief in God: “If I don’t know, I don’t know. Nor do you. One believes because he wants to believe, that’s all.” Even if this were a completely viable position to take, it wouldn’t support a stance of perpetual agnosticism, as we shall see. Williams James was an […]
Read more...Evasion
Albert Camus famously suggested that suicide is the central question of philosophy. We discussed this in the post Is Life Worth Living? There is no God, Camus believed, so there is no meaning to life. We are to live, according to Camus, acknowledging this fact, but finding a reason to live nonetheless. Is life worth living? Atheists […]
Read more...Is Life Worth Living?
The Mood of the Age Albert Camus (1913-1960) wrote that suicide is the only serious philosophical problem. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that. Camus, Myth of Sisyphus. Camus held that it was absurd to seek meaning in life when […]
Read more...Winter Light — Algot
This is the third post on Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman’s remarkable film from 1963. We’ve so far considered two of the characters, as vehicles for considering significant points of the movie. The first was Jonas Persson, who killed himself after the pastor’s (Tomas’) clumsy ministering. Persson wanted to know that there was a purpose to […]
Read more...Winter Light — Jonas Persson
If you haven’t seen Winter Light, a 1963 Ingmar Bergman film, you should. It’s available on youtube. You can invest an hour and fifteen minutes now, and have a distillation of the views that many have of Christianity today. The primary figure in the movie (“protagonist” doesn’t seem apt) is Tomas, a disaffected and disillusioned clergyman […]
Read more...Zoom Out
In Inside Baseball we looked at the position of agnostics, and the point was made that agnostics are agnostic because they approach the God question from a position they suppose to be neutral, but which isn’t; and further, the degree of certainty they require for the evidence of God (this one question only) is an […]
Read more...Inside Baseball
Christian, can we talk? Lend help, here, if you can. If you follow this site you know that it is not intended to be deeply theological, but rather philosophical about the necessity of there being a God, and not only that but that He reconciles us to Himself through Christ, in just the way the […]
Read more...Running in Place
In Agora, a post on this site about the movie by the same name, we mentioned two bits of dialogue which provide an insight into modern agnosticism. The movie is not set in modern times, of course, but it is certainly written for modern audiences. The protagonist Hypatia mouths words that have no doubt been […]
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