Most ordinary people who claim to be agnostic are decent sorts, so you can rule out nihilism, because strictly speaking, it might edge pretty close to sociopathy.
Yet here is where the subscription to existentialism meets an interesting problem. If we embrace a skepticism about what reason is able to know, then it refutes the basis for a certain claim that particular divine directions--like the sacrifice of Isaac--are immoral, and the God which commanded them ought to be denied and rejected. If I cannot know anything with certainty, then I cannot know that my moral contentions, passionate as they may be, have any truth value. Indeed, the difficult passages in the Bible are difficult precisely because nearly all readers are approaching the text in a Judeo-Christian society and worldview, which accepts that God is bound by his nature. It does not seem correct or right that a good God would command the death of an innocent person to satisfy his wrath or justice. Other philosophical systems contend that what God commands is right, because he commands it.
These considerations do not erase the difficulty and the mystery of such passages, but we would do well to consider the wisdom of perhaps exploring these questions from the other direction. That is, let's set aside the consideration of miracles, prophecies, and supernatural beings, and instead consider knowing in itself. What might I be able to know through logic, or demonstration, or by deduction from first principles?
In fact, if one starts from the philosophical position that miracles are impossible, and that God who does them or permits them does not exist, one is highly likely to conclude that miracles are impossible, and God does not exist! But that's not a proof; that is circular. I can imagine or remember a few scenarios where I preferred a circular argument to the truth, but I always challenged myself with, "What are you, chicken?"
Yet here is where the subscription to existentialism meets an interesting problem. If we embrace a skepticism about what reason is able to know, then it refutes the basis for a certain claim that particular divine directions--like the sacrifice of Isaac--are immoral, and the God which commanded them ought to be denied and rejected. If I cannot know anything with certainty, then I cannot know that my moral contentions, passionate as they may be, have any truth value. Indeed, the difficult passages in the Bible are difficult precisely because nearly all readers are approaching the text in a Judeo-Christian society and worldview, which accepts that God is bound by his nature. It does not seem correct or right that a good God would command the death of an innocent person to satisfy his wrath or justice. Other philosophical systems contend that what God commands is right, because he commands it.
These considerations do not erase the difficulty and the mystery of such passages, but we would do well to consider the wisdom of perhaps exploring these questions from the other direction. That is, let's set aside the consideration of miracles, prophecies, and supernatural beings, and instead consider knowing in itself. What might I be able to know through logic, or demonstration, or by deduction from first principles?
In fact, if one starts from the philosophical position that miracles are impossible, and that God who does them or permits them does not exist, one is highly likely to conclude that miracles are impossible, and God does not exist! But that's not a proof; that is circular. I can imagine or remember a few scenarios where I preferred a circular argument to the truth, but I always challenged myself with, "What are you, chicken?"
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