Why I am "Agnostic"

I think I may end up going back on some of the things I said I was going to do in my initial post. In that entry, I think I indicated that I was going to talk about agnosticism. More particularly, I had planned on offering up a variety of the numerous definitions that are often assigned to the term. However, I don't think I'm going to do that after all. At least not right now. Instead, I'm just going to go into detail about why I call myself an agnostic, and why I feel it is an appropriate way to identify myself.

The Oxford Dictionary that I keep on my desk says that an agnostic is a person who "believes that the existence of God cannot be proven." I do hold that belief, as do most people. In fact, when I look back, I believe that I have almost always held this belief, even when I was an ardent Christian. Nonetheless, my current beliefs go a little deeper than simply saying that I belief that the existence of a higher power cannot be proven. Though I'm not going to sit here and tell you that my beliefs are extremely complicated, because they aren't. They are only slightly intricate.

A few years ago, I began to harbor doubts regarding the God and the faith (Christianity) that I had believed in ever since I was a kid. This did not happen out of rebellion or anything childish like that. Rather, I had distanced myself from religion, and consequently, I began to look at my faith in a more objective manner. Additionally, I had been discussing religion with the people I knew, many of whom were atheists, agnostics, or other brands of non-Christians. I noticed that the people who were not Christians, particularly those of the atheist and agnostic varieties, had arguments that were much stronger than any of the ones I had ever heard in favor of my Christian faith. My seeds of doubt began to grow into plants of disbelief. Eventually, I was calling myself an agnostic. Shortly thereafter, I secretly called myself an atheist.

I didn't call myself an atheist for very long, though. While I was slowly breaking away from my childhood faith, I heard about Deism, which is the belief that there is a higher power who never or rarely interferes with our world or our lives. I was actually kind of intrigued by this philosophy, because I had occasionally entertained thoughts that the Christian God had become a Deistic kind of god. While I was in my agnostic phase (just before I started calling myself an atheist), I entertained the possibility of there being a god who behaves like the god of Deism. While I was in my atheistic phase, I once again began entertaining thoughts about a Deistic god. Today, I still entertain these thoughts.

To explain it in the briefest terms possible, I would say that I call myself agnostic because I do believe there is a slight possibility that there is a higher intelligence similiar to the one that Deists believe in. Nonetheless, I really don't think I would bet my last dollar on it. Still, I can never be sure, so I don't want to eliminate the possibility.

In lieu of this, however, I do not believe for a second that there is a higher power who answers people's prayers and constantly sticks his nose into the lives of our planet's inhabitants. In fact, ever since I have been on the outside looking in with respect to Christianity and the belief in a personal god (i.e. the god of Christianity), I think it is absurd to think that anyone could ever have a prayer answered. To think that someone could get down on his knees and ask a god for a new pair of shoes, a girlfriend, or for his cousin to be cured of pneumonia and have that prayer answered is ludicrous. Each person on this plant is but one in over six billion people. To think that there is a god who values your problems over other people's problems---many of which are MUCH more serious than a desire for new attire or for a significant other----is simply unthinkable and illogical. At this point, some people might be thinking, "Oh, but God cares about ALL of our problems." If that were true, then God would have done something about all of the famine, disease, and genocide that is going on in the world. Additionally, he would have answered my prayers when I prayed for my cancer-ridden uncle to get better (the fact that my uncle died is not the reason I left my faith, by the way).

All together, I do not believe in a god who interferes with our world or anything else in the universe. Furthermore, I see no reason to believe in a god who directly created the universe. We have explained many phenomena in naturalistic terms---e.g. why the sun "comes up and goes down," how mountains form, how stars form, how planets form. It seems like the more we know about science, the farther deities fade away into obscurity. I often do suspect that there is no higher power at all. But just in case there is some kind of supreme intelligence out there that has little to nothing to do with our universe or planet, I don't want to close the door of possibility completely.