An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative.
Interpretation
An agnostic position accepts uncertainty about the existence of a deity, while atheism firmly denies it.
This quote by Jaroslav Pelikan distinguishes between agnosticism and atheism. An agnostic maintains an open stance towards the existence of a god or gods, acknowledging the limits of human knowledge on this subject, while an atheist has reached a conclusion that no deities exist. This elaboration highlights the nuances in beliefs regarding divinity and the nature of religious inquiry.
In practice
In a discussion about faith during a philosophy class.
Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.
Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries... It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.
Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.
Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect.
Each of us is a unique strand in the intricate web of life and here to make a contribution.
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.
We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?
What happens is consciousness operates in mysterious ways. One of those ways is that the old paradigm suddenly starts to die.
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