El_Mariachi64

I'm agnostic too, btw.

One of the beauties of becoming, (or is it waking up?) into an agnostic is that no one tells you to become one. Unlike organized religion, there are no buildings where you can go to where there are people telling you all religions are garbage and to be an agnostic (and if there are, their extremely low pro)

To become one, you MUST go through a thought process that leads you to doubt whatever dogma you grew up with. And the more you think about it, the more agnostic or atheist you become. And I assume since its a process of rationality and questioning based on where and who's around you, it has to be different for everybody - and that you know your correct because we all came up with the same conclusion thorough vastly different approaches - you know your correct because you've thought about it and thought about it, until this becomes the only rational conclusion.

So how did you guys become agnostic? I remember very well how I did, but I'll post it after I've read a few responses.

duck

Same here. I grew up in a highly Calvinist environment. Not from my parents, but my Scottish grandparents. I started asking questions that never got answered in Junior High, and things went downhill from there. I have, honestly, toyed with the idea of joining my wife's faith, but there are several sticky issues that I find intolerable with her church.

And all kidding and joking aside, I find the idea of the great unknown to be rather....well, adventuresome.

El_Mariachi64

That's what I'm talking about. Do you remember what specific questions you were asking and what were the dubious answers they were giving you? And when you say it went downhill, in what way? I want to know what was your train of thought that led you to the current conclusion of being agnostic.

-off topic - don't spend too much time answering this question - calvinism huh? wow, that one is a scary one to believe in. Do they still have that Covenant of Works/faith crap that lists who's going to heaven and damning the rest of their flock to hell?

duck

Pretty complex answer needed here. Boy, that was a long time ago.

1. The question kept coming down to: If God is all you say, then why does he allow this? Pretty simple question in the mind of a 13 year old.

You also have to understand this was at the beginning of the charismatic/evangelical upsurge in American in the early 70s.

2. Next question was: If God wrote the bible, then why are all these Books named for men? If the men wrote them, then how in heck did god do that? I found the answer in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Men actually did write the bible and most of it was written or copied off generations after the men lived.

I also started to notice that the other kids that stayed with their church and religions (except the the catholics, for some reason) were getting weirder and weirder in how they acted and how they behaved among themselves....very small, very rural and isolated farming community as it was.... In fact, the only kids I grew up with that went to church every week and acted normal afterwards were the catholics. I looked at the scarecrow of a minister we had and thought, "I've had enough of this place." And just walked away and found the land of free thinking and free will to be a fun and exciting and unfettered place.

Astreja

Well, I started out with a perception reminiscent of this quote from Douglas Adams: With that in mind, I established that the likelihood of me disproving the existence of gods approaches infinite improbability. I don't have the time or the resources or the patience to explore the whole universe to rule out all possible hiding places for deities.

After some more reflection, I recognized that, even if a god does present itself to me for verification, I am not in a particularly good position to say yea or nay to its purported credentials. Within the limitations of my human form, the best I can manage is "Yup, you certainly can do things that appear god-like."

If god-like beings can and do exist, I'm inclined to think that more than one of them can exist. From my point of view, belief in one and only one god is an absurd and unprovable position. And the thought of a cosmos populated by many advanced but non-omnipotent beings is intriguing, hypothetically possible, and not particularly unpleasant.

For these reasons I generally describe myself as an agnostic polytheist, tending towards hard atheism when considering the various gods of monotheistic religions.

El_Mariachi64

Awesome. What "more reflections" are you talking about. What led you to the conclusion, what arguments did you go through in your head to decide for agnosticism?

Well, here's my story.

I started doubting real young.

I never once believed the creationism story, probably since I learned about evolution about the same time. What I did was I rationalized the creationism story. I remember having these discussions with my mom, a real smart lady, and we reasoned that Adam and Eve must have been Neanderthals, or something...we realized that that's what they must have meant.

So right off the bat rejected the whole garden and apple story, as well as plenty of other details. People don't live to be 700, the earth is 4.5 billions of years old (not a mere thousand) etc, etc. But I was still rationalizing that it was about the main idea, since there were things that were obviously wrong.

I was still Christian, but no longer Catholic...without knowing it of course - I was maybe 8. And that's how it was for a longtime, I still did the whole communion and confirmation and confessions thing, until I graduated from high school.

What happened was that the bible claimed to be all true, and yet I knew this was not so. So I realized that the bible had lost all credibility. I realized that if one thing is wrong, wasn't it possible that ALL of it was wrong? And the more I learned about the bible the more I realized I was right. While still a Christian, I realized that it was imperfect men who wrote the bible - not God, and therefore chances were that they got the whole message all wrong. How could they possibly understand God's plans?

And then I rebelled further. I learned the bible was NOT written by the apostles, but rather their followers around 200 CE (200 years after the fact). I learned the bible was put together by the cunning emperor Constantine, who picked and chose from competing gospels what would make it into HIS bible at the Council of Nicaea around 450 CE. That countless of different versions of Christianity were discarded and their followers destroyed. After learning all this, how could I keep believing that any parts of the bible were indeed divine?

So having discarded Christianity, I became a deist, thinking that possibly a God was still out there. So I learned about all the other religions in the world, all claiming to be the true religion. How could man, having all these choices, possibly know which one to choose? And then I realized, that a man's religion is chosen for him. A Muslim is a Muslim 'cuz he grows up around Muslims. If your society worships the sun, chances are that you will worship the sun also. The only reason South and Central America is mostly catholic is 'cuz the Spanish conquest forced that religion on them.

I had a couple of thoughts. 1. If you never got exposed to Christianity (or whatever), how could you be held accountable by God for not being Christian? Would God really damn the millions of people who are not Christian to hell? Since I could not fathom a God that stupid, I figured this - either all religions are right, or all of them are wrong. Either everything has a soul, or nothing has a soul. Either way, if a deity existed, all the religions on Earth did not explain it, because they were all different - so I could not choose any religion at all, because they would all be wrong, or if their all right, then that means that their all the same, and if their all the same, then what is the point of choosing one in the first place? I reasoned this because I realized that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are really the same God. But then I expanded this further to include all faiths.

While having all these thoughts I of course realized the possibility of there being no God. But while thinking all this, I realized, I would never know which way was right. I could not trust anything any religious person. They were all misguided. They claimed there was a God, and I realized, that they did not know that. If they said they did, then they were lying to themselves. But I could not just discard the possibility of a God still being out there. I figured what I reasoned back when I was in elementary school - down to the bare bones - I figured, if there is a God, well, he must be the reason for the Big Bang.

But recently I realized that it makes no logical sense to assume that God was the reason for the Big Bang. Lack of evidence against God is not evidence for there being a God. And the only reasonable answer I came up with is that I just did not know, there was no way I could know, and therefore it was pointless to even try to answer.

So I searched for a term that would describe me, I knew it wasn't Atheist, 'cuz I did not deny God, I just didn't know if he existed anymore. And THEN I found the term agnostic, and I said BINGO, that's EXACTLY what I am. I was so relieved to find people who figured this on their own as well.

So this is where I stand now. While I know its possible that God exists, its highly unlikely - kind of like winning the lottery. So I'm an Agnostic, leaning towards Atheist, but with a twist. I sure do hope that God does exist, 'cuz going to heaven sure must be nice. But if he doesn't, well, that's cool too. Heaven is not a reason for me to live my life as a kind human being. Being alive is reason enough to live.

Astreja

Well, to make a long story short, I recognized that humans are simply not equipped to distinguish between an actual god and something powerful pretending to be a god.

It would be like asking one of my cats to factor and graph a quadratic equation. Even if he managed to draw the parabola exactly right, I'd be amazed if he actually comprehended anything in the process.

Similarly, I don't see myself comprehending the nature of a sufficiently advanced being and don't feel confident in my ability to correctly assess that nature. I might still establish a relationship with it, but I might never know what it really was.

GBG

I don't think i ever decided to be an atheist, I see it as the default setting.
I remember being a child in the scouts and having to go to church on the first Sunday of every month and even then i remember thinking to myself that these people can't really believe what they are telling me. I kinda see it for what i see it as now, a story, No different than when our teacher would read us Dr Seuss, She didn't believe the Grinch was a real creature that actually stole christmas.

It wasn't until i grew up that i realized that yes, These people do actually believe in something as nonsensical as the Grinch, And that this belief makes them do some terrible and completely illogical things. It was about this time that i realised that religion wasn't as harmless as a Dr Seuss book, It was something divisive and controlling and it should be opposed at every opportunity.

__________________

wuzupbling22

My family said we were Methodist. We never went to church. A year ago I decided to try out different religions. I tryed Hellenic Religion, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. But I just didn't understand them. So I decided to become Agnostic.

The An-Jel

In how long or a period?

__________________
"And let there be Light!" said the Blind man.

Life is simple, people make it complicated - Basilisk

Nulli Expugnabilis Hosti - Royal Gibraltar Regiment