By definition, an agnostic is, well, agnostic about his belief in God. He doubts, or maybe he just wonders. But he is not a solid believer. Robert Ingersoll stated;
"Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew --
who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no
doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there was
no guess -- no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew
the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one
Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They
knew that in the eternity -- back of that morning, he had done
nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth --
all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in
space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested.
They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all
disease and death."
Why I am an Agnostic 1896
That was, coincidently, my lot also. Perhaps it was yours. Or perhaps I should say, it was almost surely yours if you were reared in the West. I was told, I believed, I made those beliefs part of my soul. When I became disenfranchised, I questioned, I meandered mentally, I lost and regained my faith a half dozen times. Spirituality became a blank slate, most often chalkless, stared at by a student with no teacher of authority to instruct me. I wandered thru the morass of questions and potential answers again and again. Once I began to separate the fear of not knowing, from the emptiness of inability to prove anything at all, the healing began. I began to realize that life was not a puzzle solved by connecting the dots. The dots could not be connected, for there was no solid sinew of provable facts to sew them together in an indisputable fabric called faith. And all the dots could not be found.
Hence my growing Agnostic opinion. Agnosticism, as I define it at least, is not a 'doubting' of God. No. But a serene awareness that God cannot be proven to exist. At least I cannot prove him to be. I certainly cannot prove that God understands or cares. He cannot be shown to have compassion, or to have ever selected anyone as his servant. All we have are the claims of those who say they have either spoken to in some way, or have been convinced that God is real, that he cares, that he will solve the frustrations that have faced mankind for all of mankind's existence. And books. All of them written by man, edited by man, and promoted by man. The writings are shakey, therefore the faith built on them is just as soft. It is not a hard law of reality, but a soft acceptance of words claiming divinity. Such faith is often built, as Ingersoll stated, on the traditions passed on to us by parents, or nation, or culture, more than any individual interpretation of solid evidence. In fact, it is almost never otherwise, is it?
I am not convinced of any need to disprove God. But am totally calm in the realization that I need not do so. For, should I prove the non-God hypothesis, of what am I advanced? Should I prove the opposite, now that would be something of worth perhaps. I am not so inclined, as millions, indeed billions before me and surrounding me now, have advanced theory and invested lifetimes in futile effort to show any shred of evidenciary to that effect. Another life sacrificed on that treadmill seems wasted.
Agnostic opinion is not about confirmation of theological rhetoric. Indeed, I describe it as oxymoron, an epiphany of subtle realization that no such search has to abandoned, as no search is underway. Not to advance that no search was ever begun. It was. It proved nothing of concrete nature. The choice to discontinue any meaningless search was not intellectual, nor totally clear at first. It was intuitive perhaps, though the shades of that term only partially clad the shadow. It was as if I suddenly awoke understanding that I no longer needed to peer into darkness. That my sight was not intermittent, but I was blind, without compass, with no map. To search would be foolhardy. The search was always about me anyway, never about God, for he never let himself be found. It was always about my salvation, never about his glory, no matter how I cloaked the matter.
Agnosticism is not a soft, lazy, answer to the question of a Great Cause either. It is the end of a quest for me, not a tiring of that quest. That quest may be revisted again in this lifetime. Or perhaps that quest has been permanently put to rest. Only time, circumstance, and the billions of firings of neurons will tell.
Why Christianism? Just for sake of culture perhaps. I live in a Christian nation. Most people relate to Christian values, ideas, theology. Most understand the teachings of Jesus. I find them compelling on some levels, adoptable as virtue. Those same compelling virtues are attainable through many teachings and philosophy. Had I found myself at this crossroads and living a peasant in India, I may have called my viewpoint, Agnostic Janism or Agnostic Hinduism. If I had been reared among the simple people of Tibet, I may have referred to it as Bongo Agnosticism. Life-values can be sipped from different perspectives, and be roundly identical in application. Perhaps it could be called Agnostic Virtuism. It carries, I hope, the idea that Agnostic ideology is not deviod of moral opinion or virtuous activity. Or at least my brand is not. Just the opposite indeed.
I join the ranks of many. Others will join this fraternity. Some will leave. I rejoice in the beauty of man to do that, to take his free will and find happiness in whatever way he ranks his understanding of the world and the universe around himself.
Jeff