Religion and beliefs

[Abdula]

*shakes head* Agnostic, what a croc.

I guess of the choices there it would be the best fit but I voted Christianity. I can accept someone who has faith, even if I completely disagree with their religion. There is just something admirable about a person who believes in something and lives their life a certain way because of that belief. I can even accept Athiests, not the I just make fun of anyone who believes in anything atheists, or the "I think I'm an atheist" atheists but I definitely have to acknowledge anyone who thinks this pathetic world is all there is to life.

Agnostics on the other hand, well I'll just quote The Great Zapp Brannigan

I hate these filthy neutrals Kif! With enemies you know where they stand but with neutrals? Who knows! It sickens me

Of course, I'm just generalizing.

[XanBcoo]

My mom tried to use that same argument on me when we were talking about Agnostics. Why do you admire so much those who believe (or disbelieve) in something so unshakably for which there is literally no proof? Should those who have doubts about the legitimacy of religion automatically commit themselves to an Atheistic worldview? Or should they just give some "God" the benefit of the doubt and become Christian, despite the problems they have with the doctrine? I think Atheism is a pretty realistic approach to the universe.

My point of view is similar to Ryllharu's. I was brought up Baptist, became interested in Catholicism, but then I was finally put off by the arrogance of a system of beliefs which claimed knowledge of the universe (through pretty unreliable means) as a way to easily explain it. It doesn't seem right to hold the rest of the world up to standards that many people have simply been indoctrinated with. I'm Agnostic because I know we can't prove either side one way or the other, but I remain open-minded.

There is just something admirable about a person who believes in something and lives their life a certain way because of that belief.

On the other hand, there is just something off-putting about a person who believes in something and lives their life another way despite that belief: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html

Also, I think everyone should have a look at these videos from The Atheism Tapes. It was a program created by this British intellectual, Jonathon Miller, containing interviews with a number of theologians, intellectuals, and philosophers. These videos are the interviews in their entirety and are extremely interesting. Miller is an Atheist, so they tend to lean towards that worldview, but I think they are worth watching anyway. Each one is pretty golden: http://video.google.com/videosearch?...%20tapes&emb=0

Edit: Hah, there's a quote from the Denys Turner interview which makes the same point Ryllharu was trying to get across:

I find the likes of a card-carrying Atheist like Richard Dawkins to be really just an inverted image of a certain kind of rather narrowed-down theism. There's a fundamentalism about Dawkins' atheism which matches, as in the reversing of a mirror image, that which he's rejected.

[Psyke]

I thought of myself as a free thinker, for lack of a better term perhaps. After doing some research online, I find that I fall under the Agnostic category as well. Have to admit I didn't know what it meant intially though.

[Ryllharu]

Edit: Hah, there's a quote from the Denys Turner interview which makes the same point Ryllharu was trying to get across:
"I find the likes of a card-carrying Atheist like Richard Dawkins to be really just an inverted image of a certain kind of rather narrowed-down theism. There's a fundamentalism about Dawkins' atheism which matches, as in the reversing of a mirror image, that which he's rejected." - Turner

Someone forwarded me this message sometime in 2005 (I kept good notes, so I know the years at least), which was after I had slowly switched to agnoticism. It is much along the same point that you quoted.

"The opposite of the religous fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
-Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

This is not true for many atheists, hence Hoffer's use of "fanatical," but I have found a large number of self-proclaimed atheists to be just as fervently insistent that there isn't a God as much as certain sects of Christianity are that there is one. Just like the Turner quote, a mirror image of each other, each desperately attempting to convert the other and those who lie in the middle.

My version of Agnosticism is the kind that finds it inherently impossible to prove or disprove which deities there are. There may be one, there may be thousands. It isn't that I don't want to choose one or the other, I just don't bother because there's no way I can prove it.

Wikipedia informs me that I am a follower of Agnostic Theism or Spiritual Agnosticism. Didn't know there was a name for it...

It really isn't that much different from one of the core beliefs of Catholicism in that God Himself is unknowable, and if we were to be able to directly communicate with him, our minds would never be able to comprehend it (and possibly die). Thus, Saints and Angels exist to act as go-betweens for God and humanity. I am aware that I am either exaggerating or playing the concept up (due to ignorance rather than intention), but the concept is at least similar.