AGNOSTICISM THAT SAYS WE CANNOT KNOW
AGNOSTICISM THAT SIMPLY PLEADS IGNORANCE
Christians mock Agnosticism as saying, “I will live as if God doesn’t matter.” Every Agnostic will do that up to a point. Many pray and go to Church and try to keep religious directives. Every Christian cleric must have Agnostic phases and Christians won’t agree that they live as if God doesn’t matter so the mockery is quite insulting and bigoted.
It has been observed that the doctrine of God as spelled out by Christian and Muslim philosophy says that God is nothing like anything we can imagine is a near-agnostic principle (page 140, GOD A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED Keith Ward, OneWorld, Oxford, 2003). It is true that Christians and Muslims say there is a lot about God that cannot be known but as they say they know enough they are not agnostics.
Agnosticism has more supporters than atheism. Most of the people who go to Church are
agnostics and do not realise it! They
may feel there is a God but feeling is not belief. Religion knows how common such mistakes are
and yet it boasts about the number of believers in opinion polls. Sneaky. Their game is to get more believers by making
them biased towards accepting the teaching of the Church for people are
influenced by what they see others doing and they like to have a sense of
belonging and of being one of the gang.
Sometimes, Agnosticism is the view that we cannot know or
have any degree of certainty that God exists or does not.
Agnostics
often say that God is unknowable if he exists and that therefore his existence
cannot be verified. But if they think
God is unknowable then how do they know that he would be unknowable? God can make a creature understand him. He can give a creature literally endless
wisdom just he can make an infinite straight line. It seems that these agnostics are wrong to
say that God is unknowable. Their God is not a God at all if he cannot make us
know him. There are powers greater than
he. So they are in effect atheists after
all!
They may respond that the mystery of God
proves that the only reasonable stance is agnosticism. By this mystery, they mean that the concept of
God seems incoherent to us. It is
certain that the only real concept of God implies belief that God is spirit or
being without parts. This kind of God
has several faculties and they are all one for he is one undivided unit. So his power to think is his power to communicate
and so on. But this makes no sense which
is why God can be described as unknowable for the description makes no sense to
us.
If they say God is unknowable to them that seems fine for they are not denying that people exist who
might know God. But still, if God
existed we would all know him.
Many
agnostics say they do not know if God exists or not and that they do not know
what to believe.
But
when they say they don’t know but do not rule out the possibility that some day
they will know or could know, this stance has an aura of open-mindedness about
it. But atheism is true and the informed
person who is really open-minded will agree with it.
Agnosticism
appeals to people who want to pray when they feel they are in dire straits or a
very tight spot but who do not want to be committed to God. Coincidence and not God is the only thing
that could respond to such exploitive prayers.
If
they are not sure that God exists then they should act and pray as if they are
to be on the safe side. Atheism would
not be the safe side because it could be ignoring a person, a personal God, and
it is wrong to take unnecessary risks that harm or may harm while to ignore a
non-existent God harms nobody. So
agnosticism tends to be idolatrous and immoral in this.
Agnostics may
assert that it is just as likely to their minds that God exists as that he
does not exist. But when they see the seeming
design in the cosmos surely they perceive that it is more likely that God
exists if he is an option (which he is not).
Their agnosticism is not as unprejudiced and good and honest as it they like
it to
appear.
For
God to be God, God would have to be the perfect personal being and not a
spiritual machine. Why? Because a person is first and foremost
self-aware or conscious and so a being that is just a machine is not perfect or
divine. But we haven’t got free will in
the sense that we can do literally any evil therefore it is not possible that
God exists. If we have free will we can
be blamed for the evil in the world and not God. But free will can be conditioned so free will
cannot get God off the hook for he didn’t ensure that better conditioning took
place.
It
is obvious that an all-evil God does not exist.
Evil is insanity and an insane being would not
be God for it is not supreme,
If
God were partly evil and partly good he would give us free will that can escape
conditioning so that he can encourage us to do evil freely and so on. He would perfect himself if he were able to
be good at all. Good works that are done
while he refuses to repent his evil would be really just hypocrisy for he would
be doing good just because it suits him and not
because it is good.
A
God with little power would be evil for wasting his power on making useless
planets and so on.
Agnosticism
says that God could exist but it admits the God theory is not essential. It is really holding on to the two theories,
Theism and Atheism, at the one time for it says that belief in either is not
possible meaning that one is as plausible as the other which is foolish. It cannot say which one is right. If we do not need the God theory it should be
abandoned. Reason counsels us to stick
to what is simple and what is necessary for to deny God
outright allays the fear of hurting him or of his vengeance while theism
maximises the fear and Agnosticism means you have half the fears that theists
have. All needless fear is bad.
Religious people complain that the agnostic says he is proud of not
knowing that God exists. They say that
that is a disgrace because it means he is admitting he is proud of not knowing
the big things – the existence of a God of infinite love and the purpose of his
or her own existence. They are
indicating then that he or she should know meaning he or she has not being
trying very hard to discern the facts.
They are indicating that he is trying to ride two horses at the one time
which cannot be done for you cannot live as if there was a God and if there was
no God.
To this narrow bigotry, I have this to say. First, believers in God could not be expected
to say anything else. Second, we should
all be proud of our opinions for they are our opinions and they say something about
who we are. We should also be proud to
change them and adopt new opinions.
If we can't get convinced that there is a God that is not our fault.
Third, the agnostic could say that it is the believer and the atheist
who are not trying to discern the facts for the fact is that it is impossible
to know if God exists or not. Fourth, if
you live a good life it does not matter if you believe in God or not or are
simply undecided.
The nice thing about Agnosticism is that it is more socially acceptable
than atheism and is quite fashionable.
It does a lot to dispel the hate propaganda of the Church which goes
something like this: “Without God you have nothing”, which suggests that
non-theists are of less value to society than believers. The propaganda makes us look like a burden on society.
Agnostics should care if there is a God. To say you don't care if an all-good saving and loving God exists would be far from commendable.
CONCLUSION
Atheism makes more sense than Agnosticism. Nobody can be fifty fifty on the existence and non-existence of God. You have to believe one more than the other.