Technically, "agnostic" comes from the Greek "a" meaning basically "not" or "without", and "gnosis", meaning knowledge. So technically an agnostic is someone without knowledge of religion, i.e. pretty much anyone who doesn't expressly follow any religion, but also doesn't go to the opposite end and conclude that religious truths aren't valid. An agnostic just doesn't have any strong beliefs one way or the other.
So, technically, Otohiko is not agnostic, because he says he has his own system of beliefs. They just don't happen to coincide with any "official" religion.
Scintilla wrote:Catholics are a subset of Christians.
Therefore all Catholics are Christians, but not all Christians are Catholics. If you were baptized Catholic, you always were Christian.
That's why you don't have to re-baptize someone when s/he changes Christian denominations; besides, all the sects of Christianity profess faith in one baptism, right?
Correct- for the most part. For a long time, the Catholic Church wouldn't recognize Protestant or Orthodox baptisms. During Vatican II, they officially recognized the other Christian churches as valid and began recognizing their baptisms. Every once in a while though, some denominations or individual churches will make someone become re-baptized, especially in cases of people converting from Catholicism, because not every church recognizes infant baptism as valid since an infant can't make the choice to be baptized independently and doesn't understand the implications of the act.
Back to on-topic-ness...
Otohiko wrote:Chances are, 90-odd percent of them are your average Shinto/Buddhist Japanese. So they definitely have a different take on this religion thing.
That's what I would think too. And the Shinto/Buddhist system in Japan is
incredibly different structurally and practiced very differently than Western religions.
Hurrah for majoring in religious studies and linguistics in college!
