Agnostic???

Agnostics seem to be few and far between.  There is little written about them in Christian apologetic (defence) literature.  Most of the attention is focussed on the Atheist.  

It is fair to say that Agnostics don't just sit in a static position on the belief versus non belief line.  Many Atheists would qualify as Agnostics and vice versa.  But the principle for me is that we can know many things and there are many we can't know.  At the same time just because someone says there are flying pigs and we can't prove that there aren't, doesn't mean we have to be "agnostic" about that.  Anyone can make up a story.  The proof lies with the one making the proposition.

Gnostic is the ancient Greek word for knowledge and the 'a' usually means against or non.  The term itself poses a question on whether it is possible to know some things.  So Agnostic means it is impossible to know.  Well I'm probably agnostic about being agnostic.  In other words I'm not sure if it is possible or impossible to know.

For me part of being an agnostic is working out how to think.  Of course free thinking is deemed totally unacceptable by cults.  Many religions are cultic in that they require a certain orthodoxy (common acceptance).  Of course this varies from religion to religion and through its different brands.  One of the marks of a 'cult' is a religious system that is exclusive and that demands strict codes of observance and ritual.  Many popular religions are cultic in that they demand certain rituals, observances and behaviours. 

 So how should we think and is there a criteria which we should follow?

Choosing a religion or being of a religious persuasion is much like political affiliation.  Sometimes you are born into it, sometimes the particular economic ideology is of personal benefit to you or the ideology may serve, as you see it, a more global goal. 

Like political choice, religious choice is rarely governed by careful scrutiny.  Some people do have reasons why they choose a particular religious brand, but the Agnostic will want good reasons why they should put their foot in either camp.  The wise political analyst may preference a particular political party when it comes to voting, however, they will balance the good with the bad in each system.

Choosing a particular religious ideology should be a balanced, thoughtful and reasonable decision.  Most religious people give little or no thought to the theological and practical implications of their belief structures.  Jehovah’s Witnesses duck and dive when they are confronted with their own prophetic utterances; Catholics struggle with the history of the Papacy especially at a time when three Popes ruled at the same time.  Muslims disagree about the statements regarding Jihad while Christians have difficulty defending a God who is often anything but loving and merciful.

The Agnostic position is a starting point for any seeker of truth.  It is also a vantage point to observe and evaluate the claims of the religious evangelists.  Every journey, in a sense, begins as an Agnostic.  No one is automatically and immediately religious.  Every person makes decisions and choices about the beliefs they will adopt.  This usually happens very early in life and is determined largely by parental and other societal forces.  However, before these factors come into play there stands the Agnostic with no predetermined ideas with a clean slate ready to be written on.

Unlike the child, the Agnostic mind is not easily convinced.  Each religious proposition is a theory that needs to be tested.  In a modern world these propositions can be tested by the core elements of classic science, reliability and repeatability. 

To give an example of these two core elements consider the command allegedly dictated by the God of the mountain, do not kill.  This God was adopted as the Hebrew God and was named Yahweh.  Subsequent to this command the same God under the mouthpiece of Moses instructs the Hebrews to kill all Canaanites.  The great riddle for me is not so much the command to annihilate the Canaanite peoples but to keep the young virgin girls.  This is one small example of the unreliability of the word of this brand of God.

Repeatability is something which the Pentecostal brands of Christianity have tried to maintain as the norm for the 20^th century and beyond.  Unlike the ceasationist (meaning all miracles stopped after the Bible was complete) brands of Christianity which hold fast to the teaching that the miraculous dimensions experienced, supposedly by the early church, have ceased at the final canon of Scripture.  Pentecostalism tries to force the miraculous into the every day lives of its adherents by way of healing, divine utterances in the form of telling the future as well as special insights or revelations, the ability to speak unknown languages and divine intervention in the every day lives of people.  Few reasonable people would maintain these beliefs unless you are susceptible to believing fantasy.

Beyond these are the amazing similarities of claims made in many other world religions.  Many claim answers to prayers, divine healing and intervention and ecstatic experiences.  Upon review, no religion stands apart from any of the others in spite of each religion’s claim of uniqueness.

The core elements of classic science are the grand claims which should have equally grand evidences.  The claim that a religion or faith can and has turned messed up lives into wonderfully functioning human beings is not unique to religious systems.  Many messed up lives have been turned around by the wonderfully moral religion of Krishnaism or Buddhism.  Programs developed by psychologists and social scientists have helped thousands of drug addicts and alcoholics.  Even witchcraft has helped people to practice a level of moral behaviour previously not possible.

As a theologian, apologist and evangelist I once believed that the big questions of life could be answered.  I since have come to see that for the time being, Christianity nor any other God worshipping religion has the credentials or logical reasons to back up their own claims.  It is all too easy to say that 2000 years ago the claims were substantiated in the life, death, resurrection, ascension and miracles of Jesus from Nazareth.  Similar claims have been made of Mohamed, Krishna and other patriarchal figures.  Like many of the ancient historical documents they are unreliable and highly questionable at best.

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Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.
Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986), “Atheists, Like Fundamentalists, are Dogmatic,” Pieces of Eight, Houghton Mifflin (1985)

"My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."  Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author.