Agnosticism

[Meshuga]

What are agnostics "agnostic" about? I am sure each individual who claim to be agnostic will have different answers to the question but is the person's agnosticism about the idea of god(s) offered by the person's religious upbringing? Is the agnosticism about a specific god idea, about some god ideas, or about all concepts of god(s)?

Believers have their specific concepts of god(s) that they subscribe to while rejecting others. Atheists show their lack of belief for every different idea of god(s) that different believers present. But what makes one agnostic? What does he/she have to be agnostic about in order to be considered agnostic? If you, who are reading this post, say you are agnostic then what makes you agnostic?

People who consider themselves to be agnostics, please chime in. But, of course, others are welcome to participate as well. :-)

[DangerDave921]

1. fence-sitting weenies! LOL

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. My interpretation is that agnostics are willing to say there might

be a god or gods, but actual knowledge of that god or those gods is impossible so there might as well not be any to begin with - knowledge of god is impossible to attain in the pro or con.

That's where I was for many years, until I developed a harder atheism as I see no evidence for the existence of any gods.

[varkam]

3. I'd say that I'm agnostic about the existence of any sort of supernatural entity.

It could be, but I don't think that any such thing exists. Notice, though, that I think there is a difference between belief and knowledge. I don't believe in any sort of god, but I freely admit that I could be wrong. IOW, I don't know one way or the other.

[Growler]

8. this is pretty much what I think too... n/t

[trotsky]

4. And are they agnostic about ALL gods, or only certain ones?

Does the agnostic believe that Zeus and Yahweh have an equal chance of existing? Krishna? David Koresh?

[Warpy]

5. My mother was an Irish Catholic agnostic who believed in

reincarnation. Wrap your head around that one.

She said that whether or not there was a god was totally outside our ability to know for certain.

I turned out atheist because I never saw anything to suggest a meddlesome deity and if a deity wasn't meddlesome, what good was it?

[izquierdista]

6. Everyone is agnostic

The word is a-gnostic, "without knowledge", and usually the knowledge being referred to is what happens to you after you die. Everyone is agnostic about this topic as no real person has died and come back to create a travel brochure of the journey beyond the river Styx. Every culture has their tales, usually made up by old people to sound comforting to the young, but not one of the tales can be shown to be based upon knowledge or fact, as opposed to fanciful imagination.

[caledesi]

7. Well said! NT

[Riktor]

24. True, but off-topic...

The question was "why do you agnostics consider yourselves to be agnostics".

Sure, while even the most ardent PsychoChristian fundie putz probably doesn't have the slightest idea whether or not God exists, he certainly believes God exists... or at least he says he does (in which case, in the absence of a reliable lie-detecting method, we just have to take his word for it). As another poster accurately pointed out, knowledge does not belief make.

The fundie, as unknowing as he is, will never, ever self-apply the term "agnostic".

[beam me up scottie]

9. I'm an agnostic atheist.

I don't know if any gods exist but I just can't believe in "an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."

~Gene Roddenberry

[heidler1]

10. When I was in the 5th grade my teacher said, "Some people believe that we evolved from animals".

My thought was, "Finally something that makes sense." However, I remembering that the Bible says that blasphemy of the Holy Ghost was never forgiven, I played it safe for years. I gradually got braver as I thought, "Why would a God create souls just so he would have faithful worshipers? Is this God so dependent on what mere humans think about him/her that he'd put this all together to satisfy a personal need? When you couple this with God's all knowing ability, surely God would see that it was circular thinking. It's to much like a man building a lot of computers and then hating the ones that don't work the way he wanted."

By applying the same notion that there must be a God because the design is too complex to have just happened like ID promotes. I submit that what just happened is infinitely more probable where in the accidental environment was suitable for our evolution.

[qb]

11. I identify as an atheist, but technically I guess I'm agnostic

since I cannot claim to know for sure. I am skeptical of any supernatural claims. The scientific method has served me well so far.

[Silent3]

12. Using the words precisely, one can be both agnostic and atheist...

...and that's what I consider myself to be.

In more common usage, there are some people (a lot perhaps) who seem to think of agnosticism as a "middle ground" between atheism and belief. I get the impression that these people aren't agnostic about any particular deity, just about a vague idea of divinity which might more or less fit in with a lot of religions, any sort of all-powerful, all-knowing creator figure.

Many agnostics probably hold opinions as strong as most atheists do about would the likelihood of, say, Thor or Zeus existing, but are a bit softer in their doubts of more vaguely defined gods, or the gods closest to those believed in within their own cultures.

Occasionally (not to mention names) you run across what one might call a "fundamentalist agnostic" (to abuse the term "fundamentalist" in the same manner said "fundamentalist agnostics" do) who seem to think that both strong doubt and strong belief are identically extreme positions, who are very insistent, it would appear, that everyone should recognize roughly the same degree of doubt they themselves do.

[ulysses]

13. what I mean by it

(at least this week) is that I can't know whether or not what we call "God" exists, or what form it takes if it does exist. That said, the traditional Judeo-Christian idea seems pretty unlikely, and not something on which I feel at all compelled to wager, a la Pascal.

[JerseygirlCT]

14. My husband, who will admit to that name if he has to attach any

name to himself wrt beliefs, would say simply that it means he doesn't know. And to him, most of the time, he doesn't give it much thought either way.

He can't say for sure there's no God. He's not in the least convinced there is. And doesn't care, either way.

He's very much a "do what's right here and now" guy, and highly ethical. (I think some of that reform Judaism snuck in under his radar!)

[rexcat]

15. I am a strong atheist with a touch of agnostism...

I am willing to examine all claims with the caveat that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. To date I have not been shown any extraordinary proof or any proof what so ever, therefore I will continue to accept the null hypothesis as far as the existence of a god. Just because it is written down by some bronze age man does not constitute proof in any way.

[Silent3]

19. "I am a strong atheist with a touch of agnostism...

...and a refreshing twist of lime!"

There. I fixed that for you. :)

[Az]

16. I am a militant agnostic

That is I don't know and neither do you.

I do consider myself an agnostic. But as I see it the word is really quite useless. It doesn't really answer the question most people are asking. If someone asks you if you believe in god or not and you explain that you are an agnostic... well you skated the question. Ok... lets do some details.

Gnosis. Its an ancient Greek word meaning knowledge. A gnostic was someone that claimed to have special knowledge about something (in this case gods).

The prefix 'a'. This is an important little prefix to know in discussing matters of belief. Particularly due to this conversation. 'a' means 'not' or 'without'.

Thomas Huxley coined the word agnostic to represent his position that the matter of god's existence could not truly be known. He was a militant agnostic as well. He didn't know and he didn't think anyone else did for that matter.

Trouble is knowing has little to do with believing.

When someone asks you if you believe in gods they are not asking if you have special knowledge of gods. They are asking what you believe. And if you believe there is a god then you are by definition a theist. And if we look at that prefix 'a' again we quickly realize that if you are not a theist then you have to be, by definition, an atheist.

There is nothing about being an atheist or a theist that precludes someone from being an agnostic. They are perfectly compatible words (unlike atheist and theist which are binary in nature, you either have to be one or the other).

The problem comes from the social stigma associated with being an atheist. A lot of people believe that being an atheist means having to insist that there is no gods. That it is a defiant active belief. That we hold meetings where we discuss how to take over the world. etc etc. Of course things get complicated by certain atheists running around insisting that that is what it means to be an atheist.

Bottom line. Agnostics are not really telling you what they believe when they declare themselves agnostic. Saying you don't know does not answer what you believe. You either believe in gods at the moment or you do not. Its pretty simple.

[ZombieHorde]

22. That is I don't know and neither do you.

How do you know?

[Occam Bandage]

17. How should I know?

[Az]

18. Ha!

That is all.... that I know of.

[ZombieHorde]

20. I am an atheist when it comes to gods, but I am an agnostic

when it comes to my toaster spontaneously turning into a badger that tries to sell me a bad used car.

[Silent3]

21. Damn, I hate when that happens. n/t

[Riktor]

23. Probability v. Possibility

Does God exist? I don't know. I've never met Him. I've never spoken to Him. However, there's a lot of other shit that goes on that I can't rightly explain, so it would be foolish of me to rule out the possibility of an Almighty being entirely.

Is it possible God exists? Absolutely.

Is it probable God exists? My sources say no.

That's why I'm Agnostic.

[regularguy]

25. I read a definition of Gnosticism today:

"The quest of God-like knowledge (gnosis) through mystic means". So based on this definition (From Durant's "Caesar and Christ"), "Agnostic" could simply mean "Not a mystic" which is something I aspire to and would recommend.

[Az]

26. The key word defining gnostic

is still knowledge. Even in that definition. Knowledge of a mystic form in this particular case.

[MikeH]

27. I am a former Protestant Christian, now a Deist, and just on the believing side of agnostic

I used to be a Christian. However I found that Christianity, and my supposedly having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, had not been of any help to me personally. That being the case, I felt, and feel, that it was the right and healthy thing for me to part company with the Christian faith (or at least with any explicit outward practice of the faith), and to absolve myself of any duties and obligations specifically imposed by the Christian faith (as opposed to duties and obligations incumbent on any good or moral person).

However I do not consider myself to be an atheist, and strongly feel that there are certain reasons which, even if they are not absolute proof of the reality of any God or Godlike figure, at least make the idea of God, or some intelligence or reality higher than ourselves and the natural universe, to be not entirely ridiculous.

When I was a Christian, one of my favorite writers was the noted apologist C. S. Lewis. I do not accept his arguments any more regarding the person of Jesus Christ or tenets of the Christian faith, but I have always liked, and still like, his argument that our sense of reason, and our moral sense (sense of right and wrong), must be rooted in some intelligence higher and greater than our own, and in some reality higher and greater than ourselves and the natural universe. He particularly makes this argument in the first six chapters of his book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(book)">Miracles.

I would now consider myself to be a Deist. I accept the argument that there just might be a God or higher intelligence than ourselves (or at least I do not consider the idea of there being such to be absurd or ridiculous); however I do not accept any alleged revelation from God, such as the Bible, the Koran, etc.

I understand the attraction to the idea of God having given us some authoritative, dependable revelation from himself/herself, such as the Bible or the Koran. However I think there are many more problems (and serious problems at that) than benefits from actually believing that the Bible (or the Koran) is an authoritative revelation from God. (One obvious problem is that Christians consider the Bible to be the "Word of God", and Muslims consider the Koran to be the revelation from Allah; who is right?)

There are a number of web sites about Deism, which are easy to find.

I consider myself to be just on the believing side of agnostic. For me the arguments for the reality of some intelligence higher and greater than our own make sense; at least I do not find them to be ridiculous. However I consider myself to be agnostic because I accept the fallibility of human reasoning; I accept the possibility that I might be mistaken in thinking that the arguments which seem to favor God, or a higher or greater intelligence than our own, or God, actually do favor God or a higher intelligence. Even though the arguments which seem to favor God or a higher intelligence make sense, it is still a possibility that those arguments might be wrong, and that there might actually be no God or higher intelligence.

[GliderGuider]

28. Epistemology, belief and behaviour

All three can be different for a given individual.

Epistemologically I'm an agnostic. My intellectual position is that the claims made for god-like entities are intrinsically untestable and therefore their validity is unknowable.

My belief, on the other hand, is strong atheism. I see no evidence for gods and plenty of evidence that the universe doesn't require them. I therefore believe that no gods exist.

My behaviour is something else again. I strongly feel that having a sense of the sacred in my life is important to me. For me, the word "sacred" implies that I feel connected to something larger than me that has intrinsic value and deserves to be respected, venerated and held inviolable. For me that "something larger" is the web of life (as expressed in the principles of Deep Ecology) and a pantheistic sense of the entire universe being fundamentally interconnected.

I wrote a bit about the development of my position in this article on my web site.

[Leeny]

29. well said

I consider myself an agnostic because it's not possible to "know" through empirical evidence that there is a god, any god.

I do not consider myself an atheist because I do not "believe" that there is no god.

What I do believe is that there is something that connects us all, that makes us all part of the same whole. I do believe that evil exists but that it is created by man.

When I was about 8, I asked my parents "what are we?" after learning that I had friends who were Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist and Jewish. My mom (an atheist) said that when I was old enough to understand it all and to figure it out for myself, that I could decide what I believed. I have always appreciated that, even more so now. My dad told me that if anyone asked me to tell them that we were protestant with a lower-case p. I didn't get the joke until later.

So, I'm a free-thinking, open-minded agnostic. I do have morals and I can turn the other cheek. And I don't think we have to be Christians to be moral. Give me a friggin' break.

Well, that's my two cents.

[Az]

30. Mirror Neurons

Go google them. Mirror Neurons are recently discovered class of neurons that basically connect us to one another. They fire when we observe someone else performing an action or experiencing something. They cause us to internally experience what we observe them experiencing or doing. This serves two functions. It provides the basis of our ability to learn from each other by copying what we see. And it connects us to one another as social critters by causing us to feel the pain or joy of others that we are connected to.

[Leeny]

32. Wow

I'm guessing that they're stronger and more effective earlier in life and if those qualities of empathy and compassion, and understanding are nurtured. That would explain why George Bush doesn't give a shit about the rest of us. Ooops, that would be another discussion group.
:eyes:

[Az]

33. The degree of connection we feel towards others

determines how significantly we internalize their condition. In other words how much we trust and know people determines whether we feel for them. Those who are alienated or incapable of connecting to others can isolate themselves and even internally justify harming others due to their disconnect. People like George Bush (possible sociopath) simply don't connect to other people so they don't feel anything when they are hurting.

[stuntcat]

31. I used to be one :)

Til I realized if there was anything good out there "it" would have wiped out humans before we started a mass-extinction and raped a whole beautiful planet.