Cop Out/Coward?

[TABA]

6 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

He was only a heretic because he was honest with everyone, including the pastor, that he didn’t pretend to know whether or not god really exists. This is the man that my father held in high regard and decided to be an agnostic theist because of. 
 

The Dr.’s reason for this agnostic heresy is that he was well read. He understood  that there’s contradiction and problems with scripture. Historical inconsistency. And man made finger prints throughout the Bible. 
 

But he stayed in church and believed that under it all there must be a god up there anyways. The assumption that there must be a designer, despite all of these flaws with the Bible and His religion. 

 

I’ve come across a few “agnostic” Christians like this, including in debates with atheists, although some of them may shy away from the “agnostic” label.   Their position might be summarized as “I know there are serious unanswered questions, I know there are moral dilemmas, but at the end of the day I choose to believe because it makes my life better”.  That’s a position I can respect and coincidentally these people tend to be respectful of atheists too: those of us who wrestled with the same questions and came to a different conclusion.  One example of this is Justin Brierly, host of the podcast “Unbelievable?”.  He routinely hosts atheists on his show and he treats them with respect and even friendship.  It’s actually the kind of respectful dialog that first exposed me to credible arguments against Christianity and theism, and led me down the path from unquestioning theism to agnostic theism, and ultimately to agnostic atheism.