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| Author | Topic: Poll; theist, atheist or agnostic | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Not diabolical, perhaps, but your list arrangement is suggestive. One can interpret it as a kind of Ladder Unto Heaven that corresponds amazingly well with the fundamentalist world view. The list follows the order of those who voted. If you go back starting with the first page and follow along, I listed in order of appearance, not a list of importance.
Fundamentalists, as you know, view everything in black and white with few shades of grey. Theirs is a world of Saved or Unsaved, Us or Them, Covenant People or Gentiles, Elect or Damned. The only ambiguity allowed in the picture is temporary. It comes in the form of someone who is undecided--the 'honest seeker' who is 'confused'. In other words, the Potential Recruit. You say that like its a bad thing....? 
Fundamentalists do not grant that their category 'Saved' corresponds to our category 'Theists', of course. But being a Theist is a prerequisite. The Saved will represent a subset of the set Theists; no one outside that set need apply. Most of the people on the 'theist' list are not in any sense synonymous with Fundamentalists. Most seem to take a more Deist approach than anything else. So, your assumption isn't correct.
When we look at your Ladder--starting at the top, where the cream rises--we see the upper rungs indeed occupied by Theists. It is they who stand nearest to God, first in line to enter heaven when the gates open. The figure at the top of the list looks almost transfigured, ecstatic, as if already gazing on the celestial joys within. I'm the OP. Since I happen to be a theist, I was the first vote. therefore, it starts with theists. Robinrohan is the first vote for atheists, therefore he tops the list. It isn't an order of importance, or alphebetical, saved or unsaved, it was an order of appearance.
In the middle of the list, suspended between realms above and below, we find the Agnostics. Their limbo state places them neither above, with the transfigured ones, nor below, with the wretched souls who have already said in their hearts 'There is no god.' But it is assumed (it already has been, in this thread) that no one wants to remain in this limbo state. These are the 'seekers' who will one day make their decision: In The Camp or Out. Agnostics are placed in the middle somewhat symbolically because they are the middle of the road. It distinguishes from the polar extremes of theism to atheism.
At bottom of the list, in the pit farthest removed from heaven, lie the Atheists and the Unclassifiable--cast down, as it were, across the great chasm. Oh, woe, woe! That wasn't by design. And if it was, it was purely an unconscious manifestation.
All in all, the arrangement fits the fundamentalist picture rather well. Everything right where one would expect to find it. Maybe so, but it wasn't by design. I would have used alphabetical order, myself. “It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Although I appreciate nemesis_juggernaut finally showing a sense of humour about something What are you talking about?  ........................... “It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal
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