I am an observer to the atheist/theist debate. From that and discussions with my parents many years ago when I was growing up, I don't see why there can't be a middle 'undecided' option. I don't see why it has to be one or the other.
In discussions with Mom or Dad when I was questioning life, the discussion would often go something like this.
Me: So do you believe in God?
Them: No, but I suppose it's possible.
Me: So you think there is no God?
Them: I suppose that's possible too.
These conversations were rare, because it simply wasn't a topic that was ever discussed unless some inquiring teenager brought it up. So is this officially agnosticism? Or is it just indifference to religion. Certainly to me it's neither atheism nor theism.
Thoughts?
Yes. You are describing Agnosticism.
Be aware that by posting your OP, and by my posting the following, there will come a mighty flood of nitpickers and religious grammar-nazis who will howl and rage about the difference between atheism and agnosticism, and they will heap up terms like “strong agnostic” or “weak atheist/theist”, and all sorts of mumbo garbage.
Forget all that.
- Theists have faith, an assertion, an attestation that some divine being exists....sans verifiable proof.
- Atheists assert/attest that since we have seen no verifiable proof, an infinite God CANNOT exist.
Period. Full-Stop. We’re done.
I am agnostic, therefore I have no faith that a divine being exists, AND I cannot affirm that our universe is without divine intervention. I am faithless. I am agnostic.
As my sig has always read, “I don’t know.....and neither do you.”
There is no overlap, no Venn diagrams, no weak or strong.
I realize that there are people who fit this description. But I describe myself as agnostic and it doesn't fit me.
I simply see humans as too limited and primitive to make firm truth claims about God, the supernatural, the afterlife, or any such thing. All such claims, from hard atheism to any religion, strike me as irrational. Because, while there is no evidence with much credibility, there's also doubtless more to reality than we can comprehend. That doesn't mean we cannot ever learn more, and understand more. It just means that we don't know now.
Just like we once didn't know that the earth was a tiny speck hurtling through the void of space, or that tiny beings caused infectious illnesses.
To me, agnosticism isn't really about God and all that. It's the recognition of how limited we humans and our understanding is.
Tom
This is a well spoken posting, I added the emphasis on “now”.
As an agnostic, I agree that we don’t know. We MIGHT never know. But billions of years from now, someone, somewhere in the universe MIGHT just stumble (or research) into some verifiable “Here He is everybody! Come on over and meet Him!” kind of singularity.