The Contemporary Agnostic Believer

By Aaron Caldwell

The union of classical agnosticism and traditional Christianity has produced a more contemporary "middle of road Christianity." This book presents numerous facts about history and theology in an easy to understand manner. It also re-introduces us to the badly misunderstood theology of agnosticism and introduces us to Contemporary Agnosticism. Presented are Jesus' teachings after intense historical and scientific analysis.

Contemporary agnostics consider Jesus a great visionary and wandering sage but no more the son of God than any of us. With that in mind, the reader is urged to appreciate various contemporary religious principles, not because they'll go to a mythical hell if they don't, but because of its positive effect on the individual and society.

Christian history and theology are candidly scrutinized providing the reader with a tremendous amount of reference material.

Aaron can be reached at the book's discussion board - http://aaron-caldwell.boards.net

Books by Aaron Caldwell include:

1. The Ultimate Collection of Famous Virgin Births: A Reference Book
2. The Location of Hell is Here on Earth: Arguments For and Reasons Why
3. 100+ Famous Figures with Virgin Births and/or December 25th Birthdays Prior to Jesus Christ: A Reference List
4. The Ultimate Collection of Resurrections and Rebirths
5. The Contemporary Agnostic Believer
6. Resurrections
7. The Absolutely Essential Guide To Agnosticism
8. The Location of Hell is Here on Earth: Arguments For and Reasons Why Special Edition - 3 Books in One.

• Language: English
• Publisher: infoway
• Release date: Jun 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311218445

Book preview

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The Contemporary Agnostic Believer

Copyright (C) 1995 & 2014 by Aaron Caldwell.

Smashwords Edition

Hardcopy ISBN-13: 978-1481022989

Hardcopy ISBN-10: 1481022989

This book was primarily written in 1995 and statistics in the book are based on information available at that time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHRISTIAN HISTORY & DOCTRINE OF THE UNIVERSE

The New Testament & Its History

Classical Christian Doctrines about God and the Universe

Popular Religious Virgin Births Prior to & During Jesus' Lifetime

CLASSICAL AGNOSTICISM (History & Definition of)

CONTEMPORARY AGNOSTIC PRINCIPLES

ANTHROPOMORPHISM & THE FEAR OF GOD

LITTLE KNOWN BIBLICAL DEMANDS

That It's Important to Respect the Slave Owner

Women are to be Submissive

Foods You're Not Allowed to Eat

Forbidding Marriage to Another Race or Religion

How Bad Lending or Borrowing Money With Interest Is

Having Sex During A Woman's Menstrual Period

PARABLES FROM THE HISTORICAL JESUS

PRAYER & THE AGNOSTIC BELIEVER

Brief History of the Black Death (Worst Ever Plague)

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Popular Religious Resurrections Prior to & During Jesus' Lifetime

Afterlife From the Standpoint of Science

JESUS & THE APOCALYPSE

Brief Summaries of Famous Apocalyptic Groups

The Slaughter of the Cathars of Lanbuedoc

USURY

OTHER NOTABLE PEOPLE RELATED TO AGNOSTICISM

APPENDIX 1:  The Inquisitions

APPENDIX 2:  Persecution of Witches

APPENDIX 3:  Major World Religions

GLOSSARY

PROLOGUE

When asked to define agnosticism, many mistakenly associate it with atheism.  This is a total misconception.  As this book will point out, the founders of agnosticism steadfastly believed in God.

We live in a new age of Christianity.  Old religious barriers have crumbled, leaving in their wake a higher degree of religious tolerance.  Christian fundamentalists get much publicity in this day and age but unlike their ancestors for the previous 1,500 years, they’re usually unable to imprison and/or execute people who believe in religious doctrines unlike their own.

Heresy, blasphemy and apostasy (becoming a Christian then changing your mind) were charges for which MILLIONS were punished.  American believers of religious tolerance can patriotically hold their heads up high knowing our Constitution likely got the ball rolling.  Imagine the shock of the world hearing of a western country which actually guaranteed religious freedom.  Unheard of.  Ridiculous.

While the original, or classical agnostics, dared to suggest the Bible was open to interpretation, they didn't have the advantage of discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library (a collection of ancient western religious texts concerning Jesus.)  However, recently, scientists and many Biblical scholars, became more willing to take an objective view of Christian history, helping us to better understand what is unproven legend and substantiated claim.  For instance, did you know that the legend of the great flood originated with the ancient Sumerians (3250 - 1720 B. C.)  It was part of their important Epic of Gilgamesh, written around 2000 B. C. in which a few people survived in a watertight ark.  They finally landed on a mountain and gave thanks to their gods for sparing their lives.  The universal flood story was passed on for centuries in the Near Eastern region where the Sumerians and later the Hebrews lived.

A more objective analysis of Christian history also explained why Jesus' birthday is celebrated on December 25th.  Through the third century A.D. another imported religion was more popular in Rome than Christianity.  It was Mithraism, Christianity's sister religion, (see appendix 3, Major World Religions.)  The birthday of Mithraism's main God, the sun God Mithra, was for years before the birth of Christ, celebrated on the 25th of December.  During that week, Rome held great festivals honoring the arrival of the winter solstice.  This celebration was known as Saturnalia.  Saturn, at the time, was the Roman God of agriculture.  When the days started getting longer instead of shorter (which occurs at the winter solstice,) legend has it that ancient farmers were so relieved, they celebrated heartily.  Often, slaves in Rome were temporarily released to have a good time.  Presents were exchanged and there was a lot of drinking.

Early Christians probably didn't t know when Jesus' birthday was.  They may have felt when something works, don't fix it and began also celebrating Jesus' birthday on the 25th of December.

Much dealing with Christianity has changed in the last 1900 years, but much hasn't.  On one extreme, Christianity continues to have the fundamentalist or classical perspective, on the other extreme, atheism.  Believers in the classical Christian perspective assert that Christian truth was revealed to the masses via a revelation from God through Jesus Christ.  It was, and is, communicated to man via scripture and the authority of the church.  As the contemporary agnostic will readily admit that mankind didn't create itself, the obvious then is that something else must have.  For lack of a more specific term, that something else can be called God.  While the contemporary agnostic (also known as the agnostic believer) and most classical agnostics believe in the existence of God, both assert that mankind knows little if anything of what God really is and wants.  The original agnostics demanded (as contemporary agnostics do) proof before believing in religious assertions.  This demand for proof limited the number of prevailing religious doctrines they could accept.  This was an obvious threat to theism (people who believe in everything or almost everything their culture's holy scripture claim.)  The church responded by purposely associating agnosticism with atheism, taking the attitude of  if you're not with us you're against us.

No matter what the theist may say, agnostic believers (AB for short) are not atheists.  Throughout history, the prevailing religious forces have regularly changed the definition of atheism in an attempt to create a new definition.  Their definition would read, "someone who doesn't believe in our definition of what God is and wants."  The fact is, the AB sees a great deal of evidence pointing to the existence of God and certainly no proof that God doesn't exist.  The Romans executed well over 100,000 Christians on charges directly related to atheism.  (The 20 million Soviets killed and the 6 million Jews killed during the WW II time period dwarfs that 100,000 figure but remember during the early Christian's day there were a great deal fewer people on the planet.)  Most people think the Romans killed so many Christians because the Christians didn't worship the Roman gods and the Romans considered that blasphemy against the Roman state.  While that in itself is true, the persecution instead was due to the mistaken Roman belief that if all people in the Roman Empire didn't worship and acknowledge the Roman gods, the Roman gods would bring Rome misfortune.  This is why Christian persecutions often increased during times of trouble in the empire.  Put another way, though the Romans considered Christians atheists, what they feared most was the wrath of their gods for allowing these atheists in their midst.

No matter how many falsehoods the theist has spread about agnosticism, it has survived quite well over the decades and is a theology to be reckoned with.  An international poll of most western countries taken in the early 90's, asked people their religion.  17% wrote agnostic.  How many millions of acknowledged agnostics are there in the US alone?  No one knows for sure.  In addition, how many more Americans lean towards agnosticism and don't realize it?  Millions more probably.

This book has been written to give a better understanding of both the agnostic and contemporary agnostic theologies.  The theistic religion most discussed is Christianity.  This is not because Christianity is better than other religions but because (1) agnosticism was developed in response to orthodox Christianity,  (2) the theology of agnosticism is most prevalent in Christian dominated cultures and (3) because Jesus was not only a great teacher but the religious visionary western civilization is most familiar with.

Reference information on Christianity will be provided to help us better understand how and why contemporary agnosticism and its grandfather, agnosticism, developed.  We'll gain a better understanding of contemporary agnostic principles by discussing this theology's position on key religious doctrines such as the fear of God, the apocalypse, life after death and prayer.  To aid in this process, the reader is encouraged to take advantage of the glossary and several appendixes in the back.

This publication will use the power of knowledge and history to explore theology.  Facts generally are presented from the standpoint of science and history rather than from the standpoint of faith.  This book won't spend a great deal of time with drawn out essays.  Instead, one point will be clarified concisely so the reader can move on to another.  In this publication, the Jesus of faith, that for so many centuries was unquestioned, will give way to the more likely Jesus of history.  We'll utilize a perspective of Jesus that has been intensely scrutinized by scientific and historically oriented research methods.  In doing so, we hope to provide a better understanding of what this wondrous sage and visionary had to offer mankind.

This more scrutinized perspective of the life and teachings of Jesus began emerging in 1906 when Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer (also known as a great doctor and humanitarian) wrote Quest Of The Historical Jesus.  Research on the subject of a historically more accurate Jesus has dramatically increased in the last 30 years.  As well as being called the Jesus of history, this perspective is also referred to as the historically more accurate Jesus, and the historical Jesus.  More than 100 biblical scholars, researchers and professor participated in this scientific research.  Almost all of these scholars have P. h Ds. or the theological equivalent.  What they found was a better understanding of the founding prophet of Christianity and what this man of great wisdom said.

We look forward to offering a refreshing approach to the religion which today is the most practiced in the world.

1.  CHRISTIAN HISTORY AND DOCTRINE OF THE UNIVERSE

To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose. -- Florence Nightingale

People often approach the history of Christianity as they do driving.  They learn it once then assume they always know it.  There's much about this religion which people either never knew or have forgotten.  With that in mind, let's briefly recap the chronicle of Jesus, the early Christians and the Bible.

In 63 B.C., Roman General Pompey conquered Palestine.

After this bloody conquest, frustrated Hebrew priests began prophesying that a great spiritual leader would arise to liberate the battle weary Jewish people.  Many declared themselves to be the messiah and began prophesying at markets and on street corners.   Many false Christs sprang up.  Some developed a following, most did not.

Jesus started his ministry after visiting, and being baptized by, the popular John the Baptist.  John prophesied that Jesus was the messiah.

Jesus' ministry was successful, primarily on the strength of his reputation for doing miracles.

Against