Free Flight, Free Speech

Consider that my state of belief or disbelief is not in stasis, but in a state of flux of not knowing enough and not trusting my own past judgement. I see this as being honest with oneself.

I think, the point is not only to be honest with yourself but also to be honest about one's belief system. Since it's belief, science is mostly out of discussion so I tend to anchor my opinions on the behavior of those representing a belief system by some very simple parameters. However, since ideologies do mostly the same things as religions do, the difference is all too often a little blurred and thus I use both terms with a /.

- if the followers feel the urge to mission by force, bullying and insult and add perpetually derogative terms to followers of any other belief system, it is definitively a religion/ideology.

- if the followers seriously think, they are the only ones who understood life correctly and claim all others have to be wrong because the believe in other things (without even knowing those things), it's religion/ideology.

- if the followers think, they are "better" than others or "chosen" or other forms of delusions of grandeur simply based on the fact to be a follower, it's religion/ideology.

- if the belief system includes the concept or explicitly the no-concept of any form of immortal being, it is religion

- if the belief system uses instead of the concept of immortal beings a concept of self-defined, unproven or in some cases, a hundred times debunked "absolute truths" it is ideology.

- Since religion and ideology both have a tendency to define and dictate a hundred percent of all aspects of human life, they can be overlapping or contradicting but in all cases in which both are involved, there is an impact on both. This impact can be easiyl proven in diagnostic terms by noticeable time delay in responses to questions into this tension field.

- however, be it religion or ideology, if it includes the idea to kill, maim and hurt followers of other belief systems, it is definitively a too dangerous thing for mere humans to follow it.

Just my opinion. My personal belief system lacks actually the urge to mission anyone based on beliefs (not withstanding the usual intellectual or scientific dispute, you all know, I am prone to that), so lets just skip that point for now.

And now ... coffee, some toast with eggs, some nausea pills ... and then helicopter flying!

If it's helicopter, it'll be scrambled eggs

Yup, those were actually scrambled eggs!

Err, i have seen gnosis used a lot as knowing the belief. So i think someone that interchanges agnostic and atheist is not very wrong.

As one of the worst non-believers i can not help you further Lester. If i understood Jwocky right, i am with him. I feel no urge whatsoever to promote my simple thoughts to an eternal truth.

Kind regards, Vincent

There is a difference between "gnostic" and "agnostic". "gnosis" is the idea that everybody can experience God without the negotiation of official priests, whatever this God experience may be. But the political implication in late 2nd and the following centuries was clear, an Ecclesia Catholica, with her claim to be the only church for everybody and the policy to make that sure by confession and the restriction who can take a confession (only an official priest of the Catholic church) could for sure not endorse any variant of belief that navigated around her official priests.
Opposite to that, agnostics are people who don't care about God. They may think, God or Allah or the Flying Green Spaghetti monster exist, but they simply don't care about any of them. Therefore the term "A-gnostic" which means exactly "not gnostic" denying any experience of God or any similar entity whatsoever.
So, an agnostic will not tell you about his beliefs because he beliefs, all belief is worthless in the first place. A gnostic will not tell you about his beliefs beyond the basic idea that everybody can experience God for himself because he beliefs the experience of God is a very personal thing and not necessarily the same for every individual.

jwocky wrote:Opposite to that, agnostics are people who don't care about God. They may think, God or Allah or the Flying Green Spaghetti monster exist, but they simply don't care about any of them. Therefore the term "A-gnostic" which means exactly "not gnostic" denying any experience of God or any similar entity whatsoever.

"Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims – especially metaphysical and religious claims such as whether God, the divine or the supernatural exist – are unknown and perhaps unknowable."

"Others have redefined this concept, making it compatible with forming a belief, and only incompatible with absolute certainty. "

It pertains to knowledge, not "care about".

I apologize in advance if quoting a wikipedia entry is considered impolite verbally aggressive zealotry. I'd have thought it'd literally be literally aggressive rather than verbally, but then again war is peace and not believing is believing, so I doubt anything matters, like, at all.