(February 3, 2021 at 12:44 pm)Five Wrote: One thing that is still a bit scary to me as a fairy new atheist, is accepting "I don't know" and leaving myself open to new arguments, new evidence, etc. I think as a Christian, I was lazy about my religion and took a lot of things for granted. I didn't push or dig, or experiment, I just believed because that was what I was told was true. I mean, I had my own experiences and I studied the scriptures and doctrine, but lazy in the sense that I never questioned or followed my doubts. I never fully researched or tested a belief in a God.
So, for about 30 years of my life, I've been operating on this system of accepting "this is the truth about the world and existence" and moving on with my day. In some ways, I'm still trying to get there, to find something solid to accept so that I can move on with my day and not think about it. But that's not the way I want to live. I don't want to feel secure in something and ever get the rug swept out from under me ever again, simply because I was ignorant or wasn't paying close enough attention.
However, even though this is still something I've only explored for about 4 or 5 months, I do find myself occasionally consumed by the pursuit of arguments and questions. Probably 80% of my waking hours are involved with thoughts about the weight of reality and the flaws in Biblical morality, the nature of God(exploring a "if it were true" thought process), the flaws in the history or literal aspects of the Bible, etc. I can feel myself trying to hammer it all down to make sure the world makes definitive sense.
Have you guys also struggled with "I don't know"? Was it ever scary or painful to reach that place? I recognize it's still new for me and the likelihood that healing from religious trauma will eventually happen.
When I first freed myself of the religion that I inherited from my parents, I was still unable, for a time, to completely give up the idea of the "supernatural" and I considered myself to be only an agnostic rather than an atheist. I even suspected for a for a short time that Satan was the true creator of Christianity because that appeared to make more sense than the religion itself and naturally this somewhat frightened me since it meant that there was no escape. However, with a couple month's of contemplation, I realized that belief in the supernatural was also not supported by the evidence and so I was able to move on to declare myself an atheist.
One thing that bothers me though is the fact that many atheists are so devoted to the skepticism that freed them from religion that they are unable to consider seemingly rational ideas without them first being validated by other skeptics that share their devotion. For example, I have found that most atheists refuse to consider the notion that a "parallel" found in Biblical text could be a deliberate allusion that provides a vital clue as to the writer's true intent. There appears to be no reason for this rejection because allusions are recognized by scholars as a literary device in other ancient works, so why would the Bible prove to be an exception? I have found numerous examples where this seems to be a reasonable approach, but I have as yet been unsuccessful in convincing other atheists that any of them are more than a "coincidence" that is easily dismissed. In case you are curious as to specifically what I mean, I will offer this "parallel":
“In the name of the Graces, what an almighty wise man Protagoras must have been! He spoke these things in a parable to the common herd, like you and me, but told the truth, his Truth, in secret to his own disciples.” (Socrates in Plato's Theaetetus)
“When he (Jesus) was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" Mark 4:10‐12
Note that the quote from the Gospel of Mark sounds rather sinister since it implies that Christ did not want outsiders to be "forgiven", but Christians are generally unconcerned about how this sounds because they think that they know exactly what Christ's parables describe, but what if they really don't? Protagoras was a Sophist so a rational person would then ask, why would an author deliberately make a connection between Christ and a Sophist? A seemingly reasonable answer to this question lies in Protagoras' description of his fellow Sophists in Plato's "Protagoras":
“Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practiced it, fearing this odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and prophets, as Orpheus and Musaeus, and some, as I observe, even under the name of gymnastic‐masters, like Iccus of Tarentum, or the more recently celebrated Herodicus, now of Selymbria and formerly of Megara, who is a first‐rate Sophist. Your own Agathocles pretended to be a musician, but was really an eminent Sophist; also Pythocleides the Cean; and there were many others; and all of them, as I was saying, adopted these arts as veils or disguises because they were afraid of the odium which they would incur.”
If the "parallel" is actually intended as an allusion, then the obvious explanation is that it was the author's way of identifying Christ as a Sophist "veil". This then provides insight into the "tradition" of Veronica's Veil which suggests that the "true image" (L. "vera" G. "icon") of Christ is a "veil". (Remember also that in Matthew 16:23 Christ refers to Peter as "Satan" and tells him to get behind him, but only a few verses earlier, Peter was given the "keys of the kingdom".) For some reason this is far too much for the typical atheist to swallow even when it is noted that the Gospel accounts were actually written during a historical period known as the Second Sophistic. If all this can be discerned from a single allusion, imagine what the dozens of other allusions like this could reveal.
