Can an agnostic truly and definitively know, without a shadow of a doubt that they indeed are actually an agnostic?
If not, would that make them instead a skeptic?
I’m not so sure.
First, yes, because “they” are physical. Every agnostic I have ever asked do they believe in “Love”, they say yes. So there really are no agnostics (religiously speaking). Only atheist who don’t like the title.
An agnostic is just a chicken-shit atheist.
Faith is not C.S.I. It’s Faith.
“Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even though for the moment you do not see.”
Bill Wilson, letter, 1950.
“We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another we had been living by faith and little else.
Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn’t be life. But we believed in life of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Or course we couldn’t. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that. At least, so the chemist said.
Hence, we saw that reason isn’t everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, thought it emanate from our best minds. What about people who proved that man could never fly? Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn’t true.”
Chapter 4, We Agnostics, from the ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous
An agnostic says he doesn’t know if God exists or not, but he does understand the concept of God as being a supernatural entity.
If you’ll now let me create a little concept of my own. I’ll call it the wallybird. The wallybird is smaller than a hummingbird but larger than a fly. It is all black with very fine feathers. Nobody has ever seen a wallybird, including myself, but there is a lot of poop in this world that I cannont identify the source of. It could have come from the wallybird. If you can imagine the concept of a wallybird, read on.
Here’s the analogy between God and the wallybird:
An atheist would say that the wallybird does not exist. There is insufficient positive evidence.
An agnostic would would say with certainty that he did not know whether it existed or not. He lacks the knowledge to decide.
A believer would say that it certainly exists and point at some piece of crap as evidence. The evidence proving its existance is sufficient.
Evidence of God and the wallybird are different as are the concepts of God and the wallybird, but the level of belief in either is the same.
An agnostic is forced also to deal with creation. He is forced to decide whether or not, out of nothing, gases and solids just decided to create themselves for no reason. Reason is what scientist like to use to say that there is not a God. Well what reason would nothing decide to become something. The rational mind would say that something had to create the material that “Big Banged”.
Why would nothing decide to be something, and how would nothing accomplish that? There would not even be a vaccuum in space as that is something as well. How does an agnostic deal with that? How does an atheist deal with that? Believers have no trouble seeing the obvious. That is why all cultures, through out time have had faith. It only makes sense to those who have eyes and can see. And those who have ears and can hear.
Nice analogy, jwall. The problem with agnostism is that this particular wallybird doesn’t just crap, it also has the power of life and death for eternity (if it exists at all). Admitting you don’t know, and not trying to find out, is okay if you’re talking about bird watching. It’s not so smart if you’re talking about eternal destinies.
As C.S. Lewis said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Joke? Joke? What joke? I just wasn’t sure if there was a joke or not.
Exile: Actually, proving the existence of God is the easy part. As Antony Flew concluded after a lifetime as a leading atheist apologist, it’s hard to hold an intellectually honest position denying the existence of a diety.
Among other things, the law of causality requires a creator. Without an initial uncaused cause (a diety), existence becomes an infinite regression of causes, something that is logically impossible. The tougher part is demonstrating that this necessary deity is the Christian God.
I’m agnostic but before religion is dragged into my belief system or not, please be aware of the church I am a member of. “We don’t know and we don’t care.” 🙂 I liked the joke, though, and thought I’d compliment Spacemonkey on it.
First, yes, because “they” are physical. Every agnostic I have ever asked do they believe in “Love”, they say yes. So there really are no agnostics (religiously speaking). Only atheist who don’t like the title.
uhh, who cares?
An agnostic is just a chicken-shit atheist.
Faith is not C.S.I. It’s Faith.
“Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even though for the moment you do not see.”
Bill Wilson, letter, 1950.
“We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another we had been living by faith and little else.
Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn’t be life. But we believed in life of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Or course we couldn’t. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that. At least, so the chemist said.
Hence, we saw that reason isn’t everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, thought it emanate from our best minds. What about people who proved that man could never fly? Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn’t true.”
Chapter 4, We Agnostics, from the ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous
An agnostic says he doesn’t know if God exists or not, but he does understand the concept of God as being a supernatural entity.
If you’ll now let me create a little concept of my own. I’ll call it the wallybird. The wallybird is smaller than a hummingbird but larger than a fly. It is all black with very fine feathers. Nobody has ever seen a wallybird, including myself, but there is a lot of poop in this world that I cannont identify the source of. It could have come from the wallybird. If you can imagine the concept of a wallybird, read on.
Here’s the analogy between God and the wallybird:
An atheist would say that the wallybird does not exist. There is insufficient positive evidence.
An agnostic would would say with certainty that he did not know whether it existed or not. He lacks the knowledge to decide.
A believer would say that it certainly exists and point at some piece of crap as evidence. The evidence proving its existance is sufficient.
Evidence of God and the wallybird are different as are the concepts of God and the wallybird, but the level of belief in either is the same.
An agnostic is forced also to deal with creation. He is forced to decide whether or not, out of nothing, gases and solids just decided to create themselves for no reason. Reason is what scientist like to use to say that there is not a God. Well what reason would nothing decide to become something. The rational mind would say that something had to create the material that “Big Banged”.
Why would nothing decide to be something, and how would nothing accomplish that? There would not even be a vaccuum in space as that is something as well. How does an agnostic deal with that? How does an atheist deal with that? Believers have no trouble seeing the obvious. That is why all cultures, through out time have had faith. It only makes sense to those who have eyes and can see. And those who have ears and can hear.
Nice analogy, jwall. The problem with agnostism is that this particular wallybird doesn’t just crap, it also has the power of life and death for eternity (if it exists at all). Admitting you don’t know, and not trying to find out, is okay if you’re talking about bird watching. It’s not so smart if you’re talking about eternal destinies.
As C.S. Lewis said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
As an Agnostic, I say yes. Whether or not God exists is unknowable, and therefore, irrelevant.
Monkey, why do I get the impression that nobody got the joke?
Hmmm. I’m not sure.
Joke? Joke? What joke? I just wasn’t sure if there was a joke or not.
Exile: Actually, proving the existence of God is the easy part. As Antony Flew concluded after a lifetime as a leading atheist apologist, it’s hard to hold an intellectually honest position denying the existence of a diety.
Among other things, the law of causality requires a creator. Without an initial uncaused cause (a diety), existence becomes an infinite regression of causes, something that is logically impossible. The tougher part is demonstrating that this necessary deity is the Christian God.
I’m agnostic but before religion is dragged into my belief system or not, please be aware of the church I am a member of. “We don’t know and we don’t care.” 🙂 I liked the joke, though, and thought I’d compliment Spacemonkey on it.
Didn’t Erwin Schrodinger maintain that we couldn’t know for sure until we opened the door and looked? And the cat was dead at that point, I think.