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Originally Posted by DizzyDee  What, in your opinion, is the "true" position of an agnostic?
I personally do not think there is one "true" position of agnosticism - it has no dogma, no political position. I for one, certainly describe myself as an agnostic, I do not think it can be proven that God exists or does not exist, but I do think there are probabilities, correlating clues as to whether or not there might be a supernatural being and I believe that probability is low in God's favour. From what I've gained from reading this forum, is that agnostics have many positions, beliefs, and opinions. What I love about being agnostic is I can look at the philosophical view points ranging from theism to deism to athiesm, gather wisdom and enlightenment from traditions as well as science and develop a personal "spirituality" which has nothing to do with a belief in God, but has more to do with the pursuit of knowledge and happiness.
My purpose in starting this thread was to see the diversity of agnostic beliefs in the forum. So I invite those who do not see themselves falling into this scale, to tell me why and how they do see themselves as agnostic. I really like Og`s reply - he seems to believe that theists and atheists fall into very small literalists boxes. I believe both theists and atheists have a diversity of opinions and many of them while claiming belief or disbelief in god can also make use of metaphor - I've met them. And I doubt that I was narrowly claim that only agnostics are "enlightened", although I'm inclined to say that Og seems to have attained enlightenment. I've always enjoyed your posts. |
There is a true position of the agnostic and it is what Huxley meant by the term. He believe that both religion and atheism claim to have a certain knowledge which is not discoverable. His view shares logic with the scientific method: You draw conclusion on testable things. If something is tested and show to be probably true then one can places his/her confidence in that. If something is tested and show to be probably false one should not place any confidence in that assertion. If something cannot be tested, it is a non-issue. The result of this form of thinking as it relates to the god concept is that there is good reason to believe that religious dogma is wrong (e.g. the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god cannot exist), that the general idea of a god is not testable and therefore is a non-issue, and in either case there is no reason to vest any believe in a god. Some atheists claim this is actually a form of what is termed "weak atheism". However, I think it is the other way around: weak atheism is actually agnosticism. And this form of agnosticism does not fall into that scale because an agnostic can be a "strong atheist" to certain ideas and a "weak atheist" to other ideas.