What is Agnostic?
I see agnostic as a “religious” affiliation that is becoming more and more common these days. You’ve probably have seen someone put it on myspace or facebook or even on today.com. To be honest, I really have no idea what agnostic means. I wonder if the people who say they’re agnostic know what it really means.
The people I’ve encountered who say they’re agnostic have told me that they’ve grown up going to church because their parents made them, hated it and ended up not going as soon as they were old enough for their parents not to force them to go anymore. So my first thought is that this agnostic view must be some belief that God isn’t real. I then heard another person who claimed they were agnostic say they couldn’t disprove that God isn’t real.So then I thought, “Ah, ok….maybe they acknowledge that God exists, but choose to reject Him for whatever reason.” You know, that old dilemma…”If God exists, why does He allow so much suffering?” But then I heard that same agnostic later say, “There’s no proof that God does exist.”
Tired of trying to figure out what exactly agnostic means, I decided to finally look it up on the internet and here’s what I came up with:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned… An agnostic doesn’t believe in God but is not considered to be an atheist… Agnostics base their beliefs on evidence.
Is this correct? Would an agnostic please let me know? So basically agnostics figure that they’ll never know for sure, so they can’t take a stand on whether God exists or not. My question is, “What if God does really exist? If God does exist, what will happen to you for not accepting Him?”I mean, to a true agnostic, that’s not a dumb question…because they don’t reject God’s existence because then they would be atheist.I bet an agnostic would probably answer like this to my question:-”What if God doesn’t exist? Then I’ve wasted my life believing in Him”-”If God exists, He wouldn’t send me to hell.”- “I didn’t reject God and I was a morally good person, so He shouldn’t send me to hell.”To me it kinda seems that they want the best of both worlds…to live a life without the responsibility of serving God and the benefit of having a secure spot in heaven just in case God does exist.I don’t get it…I just don’t see the reasoning behind this.
At least an atheist truly ( or at least I think so) doesn’t believe that God is real… To me it’s like a smoker saying, “smoking might give me cancer or lung disease” but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to smoke anyway…In my mind agnostics are atheists but don’t want to admit that…So someone tell me…why be agnostic? Are they afraid of being atheists? Do they believe in God, but just don’t want to follow Him?
The people I’ve encountered who say they’re agnostic have told me that they’ve grown up going to church because their parents made them, hated it and ended up not going as soon as they were old enough for their parents not to force them to go anymore. So my first thought is that this agnostic view must be some belief that God isn’t real. I then heard another person who claimed they were agnostic say they couldn’t disprove that God isn’t real.So then I thought, “Ah, ok….maybe they acknowledge that God exists, but choose to reject Him for whatever reason.” You know, that old dilemma…”If God exists, why does He allow so much suffering?” But then I heard that same agnostic later say, “There’s no proof that God does exist.”
Tired of trying to figure out what exactly agnostic means, I decided to finally look it up on the internet and here’s what I came up with:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned… An agnostic doesn’t believe in God but is not considered to be an atheist… Agnostics base their beliefs on evidence.
Is this correct? Would an agnostic please let me know? So basically agnostics figure that they’ll never know for sure, so they can’t take a stand on whether God exists or not. My question is, “What if God does really exist? If God does exist, what will happen to you for not accepting Him?”I mean, to a true agnostic, that’s not a dumb question…because they don’t reject God’s existence because then they would be atheist.I bet an agnostic would probably answer like this to my question:-”What if God doesn’t exist? Then I’ve wasted my life believing in Him”-”If God exists, He wouldn’t send me to hell.”- “I didn’t reject God and I was a morally good person, so He shouldn’t send me to hell.”To me it kinda seems that they want the best of both worlds…to live a life without the responsibility of serving God and the benefit of having a secure spot in heaven just in case God does exist.I don’t get it…I just don’t see the reasoning behind this.
At least an atheist truly ( or at least I think so) doesn’t believe that God is real… To me it’s like a smoker saying, “smoking might give me cancer or lung disease” but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to smoke anyway…In my mind agnostics are atheists but don’t want to admit that…So someone tell me…why be agnostic? Are they afraid of being atheists? Do they believe in God, but just don’t want to follow Him?
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