To add a little texture to this thread: An Academic …

Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Wesley Kime.

To add a little texture to this thread: An Academic or Freelance Agnostic is a different question-slinger than a Christian Agnostic, very.

A simple agnostic firing questions at no target, just into the air for the hell of it, like a gunslinger roaring into town Saturday nights; or just to get your attention (“get you to think,” as he puts it, or to dance, in Westerns), or wince at the noise, and bagging no answers and at the end of the day empty-handed, is not unrespectable. His fusillade can be awesome, and, as long as a stray shot doesn’t take out an innocent bystander who failed to duck, entertaining, like fireworks. Some of our best friends are such straight-from-the-hip high caliber agnostics. Somehow they emerge from their cloud of gunsmoke smiling and unscathed. What a relief, on all sides. (I could have likened the Colt-waver to Don Quixote but he’s already taken.)

But a Christian knows his God and knows that he knows. But that knowledge of God, and soon God Himself, and then the slinger himself, become the Agnostic Christian’s target, and those self-inflicted wounds are not uncommonly fatal (not to God, not to worry). The holey Agnostic Christian is not just an oxymoron but terminated. Agnostic Christian, R.I.P.—oh that he would! His ghost seems hellbent on even higher decibel cannonades, and his targets his fellow Christians…with the happy Agnostic gunslinger still standing.

Wall, padnah, ah’m as ee-droit ah slinger as anaboodee in these he-are pahts, and ah find ma ammo (allegories and parables) all over’n the range ‘cept Genesis 1. Loading up another silver bullet, I take aim again:

A Christian Miner is different from a Christian Sapper. A Christian should never, yea he must never, in this life or the next, for eternity, never cease digging deeper into his mine, his God-given mine, harvesting ever more precious gems the deeper he digs. He digs deeper into the mine, not around or at that mine to undermine it, discovering only dung, and caving the whole mine in upon itself, and himself.

Wesley Kime Also Commented

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken: – Yours of November 29, 10:39 pm, this thread: “I think Hawking’s view would be that Adventism is a faith construct trying to justify itself with pseudo science. … [sans any] accord with the observable laws of empirical science. … Many Adventists recognize the obvious … Others see that old ideas of Adventism must be… adapted… to the realities of sound science or it will become anachronistic mythology (like the Greek gods). Others … cherry-picked attacks on evolution, etc. to direct attention away from the subjectivity of creation science” (Where’s “disgruntled,” as in Hiram Edson?)

Forlorn, maybe a tad disgruntled, I’ve been sitting mulling your impersonation of Hawkings analyzing us Adventists. Then, on a roll, you took the microphone to present your 9-9-9 plan for rectifying our kind of cognitive kinkiness.

I can see, I disconsolately sob, that you, our special dear old agnostic friend, are so much more at home and at ease in Hawkings’s mind and bowels, with his kind of premises and vocabulary, his strokes and tropes, than ours (our less progressively premised minds, etc. etc., anyway). Oh, don’t think I don’t see your smitten look when that man is around — I can just feel the electricity, — and your toying way when we are alone! And, sob, we’ve been living together in the same blog for the last two whole years, sob, and we’ve all had such fun together. But, no, don’t leave, you can’t leave! I’ll make your favorite dish (rehash of Gilgamesh garnished with cherry-picked raspberries). Put on your favorite composer (Hendimyth)? Read you your favorite qualm Psalm? Write you a poem? (“Ode to Query”, “Let Me Count The Question Marks”) Oh, please, more question marks, more, more! ));-}>


A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

PREEMINENCE

There was a kindly old agnostic of Gilamesh
Who when asked which takes preeminence,
QUESTION
Or ANSWER,
Answered QUESTION, no question, dear friend Wes.


A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: ET call home.


Recent Comments by Wesley Kime

Dr. Walter Veith and the anti-vaccine arguments of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
Informative and stimulating, but proceeding into more confusion. A veteran of Moderna vaccinations, I trust, hope, they are effective, at least until otherwise. The whole business, being part of End Times, is in the hands of God, not humans expert and as degreed as they may be.


Brilliant and Beautiful, but Wrong
Brilliant, beautiful, and so right! Speaking of your presentation at LLU recently. Great to see you and your family (especially my namesake, Wes. God bless! WK


Complex Organisms are Degenerating – Rapidly
@Bob Helm: Dr. Sanford is very familiar to most of us. He was invited to speak at LLU several years ago and I and a great many were privileged to hear him.


Evolution from Space?
Hats off yet again to Sean for pursuing this topic as a scientist should, no nonsense, and in it’s proper setting — as a revival of one of the ancient ideas recently upgraded as a desperate alternative to the increasingly compelling intelligent design data. I had occasion to review panspermia a few years ago and as is my wont I found it more amusing than scientific. If you would like what was intended to be a satirical response to panspermia and other related curiosities you could check out: http://www.iessaythere.com/black-hole-humor.html
Meantime, Sean’s article is of far more cogent worth.


The Sabbath and the Covenants (Old vs. New)
As he has done on this site many times, Sean in his line-by-line-item response to C. White (not EG or EB) has, to my mind, clearly enunciated the issue and resolution.

When all the hermeneutics, quoting, and arguing and inordinately judgmental riposte are over, it comes down, as I understand it, to two things: 1) Whether the 7th day Sabbath (whether enunciated in the famous 10 commandments or otherwise) is still valid, and 2) Does the grace obtained by the vicarious sacrifice by the shedding of Christ’s blood or other divine process too deep for us to understand in this life, cover every sin automatically and without ado, altogether passively on our part, or is it only on condition that we first totally and deeply accept it? Other details always hassled forever are distractions.

I accept that I must accept it, wholly, actively, even with agony, with my whole being.