Being an agnostic is not easy.
Religious people believe that you are so lost you can’t even declare yourself
an atheist. Atheists believe that agnostics are people who have realized that
God doesn't exist, but haven’t reached its logical conclusion. I have been both
an atheist and a believer, but in this essay I will explain why I have changed
my mind and demonstrate why agnosticism is not only a valid position, but a
valuable one as well.
Labels carry too much preconceptions, so instead of letting
others define my position, I will do it myself. My definition of an agnostic is
the following: he who is inclined to disbelieve in deities or any other
supernatural existence, but does not deny that their existence is a
possibility.
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| The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. |
An agnostic is open minded and a free thinker. An agnostic
acts just like an independent voter considering who will receive his vote by
weighing each candidate objectively, without any favoritism for a party and by
recognizing that each side has its strengths and weaknesses. Whether in
politics or in religion, independent thinking is very admirable.
Both atheists and theists agree that there are many, many
things in the universe and even in our body that are still beyond our
knowledge. If you have never seen, heard
or felt something and someone enquires to you about that something, the obvious
position to take is to humbly accept one’s ignorance about the matter. Well then,
shouldn’t an agnostic search for the answers? Yes, I have and I still am
searching, but I believe that some things are beyond our understanding, at
least for now.
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| Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace |
I am not a believer in God for the following reasons. I have
no direct proof from my experience that can confirm the existence of a deity.
And I don’t rely on indirect accounts for this matter because they do not seem reliable.
Why believe in a Christian image of God and not a Hindu one? Why throw away the
gods of Ancient Greece, the spirits of early tribes or the alien worshipping
religions? I am convinced that they believe their accounts are true, but they
can’t all be right. It seems more logical to consider that the variety of
supernatural entities corresponds to how different cultures respond
psychologically to phenomena they can’t explain.
What about inferring God’s existence? It is typical of theists to ask non-believers
who created the universe if not God. They argue that the universe had to come
from somewhere, that it can’t exist out of nowhere. Well, the same argument
applies to God. Where did he come from? It makes just as much sense to say that
the universe, or the multiverse*, has always existed without any origin, as it
does to say that God had no origin.
So far both
explanations seem to be equally possible, but as we will see, they really aren’t.
First, Occam’s razor tells us that when two explanations equally explain something,
we should choose the simplest. The simplest explanation is that the universe
has always existed, because believing in a God requires believing that there is
a metaphysical being that is beyond our senses which adds an unnecessary and
extra level of complexity to the explanation of why the universe exists.
Secondly, the existence of the traditional God, an omnipotent and
omnibenevolent being, cannot be logically inferred. My argument was brilliantly
summarized by Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
If God is omnipotent and perfect then he has no reason or
need to create us. Even if he did create us, why did he make us imperfect? How
can something imperfect come from something perfect? To those who say that we
are imperfect, because God gave us freedom I ask the following: given that our
freedom is limited, and we are not omnipotent, why would he give us the choice
of doing evil instead of leaving it beyond
our possibilities, as he has done with so many other choices? Some people say that God lets evil exist so
that we can learn, so that we love him more, so that we can appreciate goodness
or to let us earn a place in heaven. An
omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would be capable of making free humans, who
learn, love him, who appreciate goodness and earn his rewards without the
suffering and pain that exists in the world.
Then my believing friends would answer that we can’t know
God’s reasons for making the world the way it is. How is it that believers can
give this unknown metaphysical being so many qualities and with so much
certainty, but non-believers cannot point out that these qualities are
contradictory? The following scenario would make more sense: imagine if a
friend told you that “X” person is physically immortal no matter what. “X” dies
the next day. Now your friend still try to defend the contradiction between his
words and reality by saying that “we don’t really understand death”.
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| Epicurus |
Now here is why I am not an atheist
either. Atheists have failed to give a good explanation of why life exists. How
is it that from an inorganic universe, a group of molecules started reproducing
and trying to survive? Even though atheist biologists will deny it, there is a
zero probability that something inert became alive because it interacted with
other inert forces and substances, no matter how much time and randomness you
factor into the equation. It is silly to theorize that life just randomly
appeared out of a bunch of molecules.
Besides, atheists do not have a good
explanation for consciousness and the mind either. They claim that our
existence is confined to our body and our brain, but that doesn’t explain why
we seem to exist beyond that. How is it that a bunch of neurons have gained
awareness of themselves? How is it that a small part of the universe (the atoms
that make up our bodies) has become conscious of its own existence?
Finally, even if scientific and natural
explanations are found to the previous questions, who are we to deny with
certainty all supernatural entities because we haven’t experienced them? It is
one thing to say that it is probable, even practical to believe that there are
no supernatural beings or forces, but to say that it is certainly true is a
mistake. It’s just as absurd as saying that there definitely weren’t, aren’t
and never will be any aliens just because we have yet to prove their existence.
Although it is reasonable for now to go through daily activities assuming that
one won’t encounter an alien, that presumption can’t be generalized to billions
of years and billions of galaxies. For all we know, we might be tiny cells that
make up a huge alien. Again, the most probable explanation should be chosen,
until there is reason to believe otherwise.
Agnosticism is a stage in my
development and that of humanity. Until we have more information and more
answers, it is a stage in which I choose to believe what is most likely, which
is the inexistence of deities, at least until given reason to believe
otherwise. Perhaps the next stages will be reached in a few years or they might
not even exist. If I stay at this stage for the rest of my life, I will remain
curious about the universe but I see no reason to be upset or to believe that I
am somehow stuck in my development. Agnosticism gives me the best of both
worlds. It gives me the rationality, the practicality, the realism, the
objectivity and the down-to-earth mentality of atheists as well as their usual
drive to enjoy life to the most, in case there is nothing else after death. On
the other hand, agnosticism also gives me the capacity to be spiritual without
a religion, the opportunity to take risks with a leap of faith that something
or someone out there might be guiding and helping me, the hope that there is a
meaning to my existence, to humanity and to pain and pleasure, and the chance to
entertain the possibility of an existence beyond the body and of life after
death.
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| "Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant." -Jorge Luis Borges |
For all these reasons, agnosticism
not only is a valid position, but I believe it is the one that provides the
best answers, the right attitudes and the greatest emotional, intellectual and
spiritual satisfaction. It puts together the best of each of the alternatives
and throws out the worst. And that is why I am proud to be an Agnostic.
*Multiverse:
is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including the historical universe we consistently
experience) that together comprise everything that exists and can exist
