{"id":2328,"date":"2016-07-06T08:05:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T16:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2016-07-06T08:05:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T16:05:32","slug":"agnostic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2328","title":{"rendered":"Agnostic"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a while I was agnostic, which means that I affirm that I don\u2019t know about God. This was around the ages of 13 \u2013 22, and I was influenced in this by the writings of Robert Ingersoll in the 19th century and Thomas Paine in the late 18th. Not that I wasn\u2019t interested in religion; I was, very! Indeed, it was my major in college at the University of California. Then I thought, \u201cWhat the heck,\u201d and became an atheist, from about 22 to 28, but kept my mind open. The writings of mystics and mediums intrigued me. Gradually I was compelled to realize that we all rest into certain assumptions, and I do\u2014but they\u2019re not common. Nor do I assume they\u2019re ultimately true; it\u2019s just that theses sort of work for me, and even these assumptions continue to be modified and matured.<\/p>\n

\"7-6-16agnostic0002\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This cartoon sort of expresses my feelings. I skate through the waves, so to speak (though I admit to having no ability for or interest in surfing per se<\/em>). I\u2019ve come round to being very much a theist, in the Spinozan sense, and beyond, to include a mind that includes hundreds of billions of galaxies across scores of billions of light years—and that\u2019s only in our 3-D realms\u2026 and more. But I expect no one to agree with me, and if any do, not with exactly the same tenor. Spirituality isn\u2019t supposed to be dogmatic; for me it\u2019s just a metaphor of one puny-human-mind (me) trying to open a bit to it all.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a while I was agnostic, which means that I affirm that I don\u2019t know about God. This was around the ages of 13 \u2013 22, and I was influenced in this by the writings of Robert Ingersoll in the 19th century and Thomas Paine in the late 18th. Not that I wasn\u2019t interested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}