Golden Earring wrote: > Hi Clive! > > It is fair to say that my own life experience (total lack of any > convincing "spiritual" intervention or sensation) has pushed me very > close to your own position, and if I were a betting man I should > certainly wager that there is no God, or at very least none with the > remotest interest in human affairs. I did initially declare myself to be > "strongly agnostic", and the above position is what I meant. > > I think it's all a bit semantic: a gnostic is someone who asserts a > personal spiritual connection with God, and a large group of such people > were branded as heretics by the Catholic Church in mediaeval times and > ruthlessly persecuted to extinction. > > Agnostic is the opposite: someone who has no experience of a God. > > I'm amused by the different stances taken by the 2 French philosophers > Pascal & Voltaire, if you will indulge me for a moment: > > Pascal said that faced with such uncertainty, one should believe in God > because the alternative would condemn you to everlasting damnation if > you turned out to be wrong. > > Voltaire, who lived to a great age & had never embraced religion, found > himself confronted on his death-bed by a priest summoned by Voltaire's > family who was earnestly entreating him to repent of his mortal sins & > receive absolution. The great man fixed the priest with his dying eye & > remarked words to the effect of "Sir, this is no time to be making new > enemies!". Steadfast to the last... > > Anyway, I don't think there is much practical difference in our own > respective stances - I think that I might have made my position somewhat > clearer at the outset. > > Dave :)
Unfortunately, this author is about as bad at definitions of common terms in philosophy as he is at audio. Type "gnostic definition" into google, and this is what you get: gnos·tic adjective 1. relating to knowledge, especially esoteric mystical knowledge. noun 1. an adherent of Gnosticism. Look at just about any formal definition of the word, and you get pretty much the same thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arnyk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64365 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106914
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