Monday 28 March 2011

Agnosticism

I think it's about time to address the old taboo topic of religion again...

As you may already know, I consider myself an agnostic, but what does this mean?

For many people it means that they are undecided on the issue of religion, for others it means that they believe in a god but don't know who or what that god is.

For me, I prefer the literal meaning of the word. Gnossis is greek for knowing and the prefix "a" means "without".
 So I am without knowing. Which is absolutely true.

I think sometimes the term "agnostic" is used as a derogatory term to describe to people who don't wish to be embroiled in the epic war of Christianity vs atheism. Fair enough, the are not far from the truth. But that does not detract from the true philosophy behind it, which is "we don't know".

It is a solid belief system because it is based on the premise that it is impossible to prove or disprove god, therefore the existence of god cannot be known. Whereas religion proves the existence of god through fallacious methods and atheism happily rebuts said fallacious arguments by pointing out the holes of their logic (which is usually ignored by the theists as they return to their old arguments).

As strong as the atheist position is, they never actually disprove the existence of god in their arguments. They cannot. It's like disproving the existence of a chocolate teapot floating somewhere in space. It cannot be done.
What they can do is disprove the major religions, because they have holy books filled with all sorts of statements that can be disproved.

But that is not the same as disproving god. For all we know the Flying Spaghetti Monster is out there, controlling our destinies with his divine noodly appendage.

3 comments:

  1. good points, followed and agreed wholeheartedly

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  2. I hold the same view even though my papers say I'm christian. :)

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  3. Part of my personality disorder won't let me even allow for a moment a belief in a higher power. I'm stuck with statistics and probability when I want something to happen.

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