IT'S IRRATIONAL

A lady by the name of Christina left a comment on the Non-believer website this morning, and it was so good that I want to repost it here:

"It's interesting how sad believers feel about our non-belief. Don't feel sad. Nothing has set me more free than arriving at non-belief. The crux of it is that we are all in the same position: limited by our human faculties and understanding and grasping for meaning. As an agnostic, I embrace the grasping and the understanding or lack of understanding as my human faculties, science, and the measurable world leave me. I see this as embracing the realities of my circumstances. I find it more freeing than guessing and making long lists of rules that are guesses based on myths and fictions written in books by numerous people who didn't have access to electron microscopes or satellites or the mapping of the human genome. They did the best they could - as do we all. But basing one's life on their writings, ascribing divinity to those writings, and behaving in the 21st century as if these writings should be taken in any way as literal maps for how we should live -- it's just odd. If we apply the same level of critical thought to our own religion of origin as we do to those of others (72 virgins, sacred cows, Zeus and Mt. Olympus), it's hard for me to understand how you arrive at the conclusion that everyone else's religion is irrational, but ours (Christianity) makes perfect sense. In that way, we're so much alike. We think exactly the same way about every world religion except one."

CLARIFYING AGNOSTIC ATHEISM

An old theist friend I've lost contact with because of this blog berated my choice of "agnostic atheist" as a description of my mindset as being a ridiculous term.  I guess he couldn't fathom the reasons for my choice of terminology, and many others might be confused.

I'm certainly not saying I think the kind of "god" most people claim to believe in could be true.  That fantasy is completely unreal. 

James, the editor of The Painful Truth, commented on a recent comment of mine and stated what I mean in a particulary good way.  Here's what he said:

"Its not if a God exists. Its about the wonder of the development of a human life.

If a god exists, “it” would be nothing that we can fathom. Hence the god of Gerald Flurry and the rest of the minions does not exist. Religion, as in ancient days, tries to explain the unknowable by contributing it to a god.

If there be a “creator” (if you want to call “it” that), it is not seeking the worship of the “created.”
We exist by some external source beyond us, the same force that relates to the link Ralph put up above. What is behind it? Don’t know, and I really don’t care. I am, therefore, I exist.

Religion has nothing to do with creation. Religion is, an invention of men to explain away the unknowable and to ensure that life continues after death.

Religion is about hope and driven by fear. At least in some people. Not all religion is bad. It serves a purpose of cohesion within societies."

I am agnostic because, as James puts it, there is some unknown force that led to existence existing.  I just don't know and can't define what that force is.  We may never completely fathom it.  At the same time, I know all the gods people have invented are impossible figments of people's imaginations.  That makes me anti-theist, therefore, an atheist.

I'm not waffling.  I'm just recognizing the "agnostic" fact that there is something I don't know and likely will never know.  It may be impossible for the existent to explain ultimate existence, but science can never stop its quest and resort to the stultifying certainty of delusional religions.

I hope that makes it a little plainer. 

WHAT IS "AGNOSTIC ATHEISM?"

In my profile, I state that I am an “agnostic atheist.” Some may find that a confusing way of identifying what I believe, so I thought I'd try to explain.

Thomas Paine uses the term “God” in his book but is clearly atheist in his thinking. He did not believe in any of the extant gods or religions of his time (he clearly and unequivocally states that he does not), and neither do I. In that sense, I am, as he was, an atheist.

I also realize, as I'm sure Paine did, that there had to be a beginning of all that we see; a beginning scientists refer to with the vague term, “big bang.”

Until recent times and the advent of quantum theory and mechanics, about the only thing human minds could come up with as a first cause was an anthropomorphized being, or beings, called a god or gods to explain the existence of existence.

Paine never heard of quantum theory or quantum mechanics or quantum anything. I'm sure something like evolution probably never entered his mind. People of his time who realized that the gods people believed in couldn't be real usually turned to Deism – the belief that a real god started everything but then took a hands off policy.

Even Darwin had a hard time accepting the possibility of such a thing as actual evolution for a good long while. He wrestled mightily with what facts and reason told him and what had been drummed into him from the time he was a babe in a cradle.

I just don't know what happened to start it all back there billions of years ago. So, I add “agnostic” to my definition of my basically atheist beliefs, because “agnostic” simply means, “I don't know.”

I am, however, certain that there was not a super-intelligent being in the general pattern of a human being (I'll have more to say about that soon, after the reference books I've ordered arrive) that just magically sprang into existence or existed for all eternity, with an intelligence and powers that would dwarf anything we can imagine; which being then created all that we see here on earth and throughout the cosmos.

If there should now exist what many refer to as “universal consciousness,” it has to be a manifestation of the energy involved in and constituting the “big bang” and the subsequent evolution of the universe and life. It too would have had to evolve. It may be no more an actuality than the gods people have invented.

My mind is open to theories and postulates. It no longer is closed and padlocked by “faith.” As an agnostic, I will question until the day I depart this mortal life.

As far as the “gods” people prate about and get all emotional and hostile about, they do not exist, and those who promote them have nothing but “hearsay” to present in their defense.

Hearsay gets nowhere in a court of law, and it gets nowhere with me.  Not anymore.