I read a book bout 20 years ago. I can’t for the life of me remember what the book was or who wrote it. All I remember is it was about this guy who was obsessed with feet and how he hated God for making them so ugly or something to that effect. That’s not the reason I remember the book, though, somewhere in the last couple of chapters there were a few paragraphs that more or less cemented my stance on my personal beliefs and how I feel about others.

The author wrote about a theoretical scenario where an angel appears before a large number of people and proceeds to do miracles in an effort to convince people that God existed. I believe this involved a dancing sun. The author then said, through one of the novel’s characters that the angel’s actions were irrelevant. Those that already do believe in God will go all nutty about how great he is blah, blah, blah. They’d say that that was solid proof of God’s existence and that only he could do such a thing. Those who didn’t believe will come up with a more scientific explanation. I recall one of the possibilities as being mass hypnotism.

In a nutshell, the author said that it won’t matter what anyone or anything says or does, a person will not change his beliefs. The religious will carry on with the blind obedience and the atheists will go find a logical explanation for what they had experienced.

Reading that caused me to become indifferent to the views of those around me. If they believed in a supernatural being, then, fine, I couldn’t care less. If they didn’t… I couldn’t care less, either, but I’d have more respect for them for using their brains. If the time came for a debate on beliefs, a religious nut case would rely on his faith and all that no matter what I’d say anyway. He’d always fall back to saying “faith” when he has no rational explanations. With an atheist, I’d have no quarrel. Any related arguments I’d have since then would be born not out of the need to relay my point but, instead, to alleviate boredom or just to piss someone off.

So, there it stands. To me it’s pointless to discuss a conflicting view with someone, nothing will be born of it. If discussion does change one’s point of view, then I don’t think he was ever, actually an Atheist or a nut job to begin with. He’d be an Agnostic. He toes the line between the two and only shows his preference for one side or another.

Which further complicates my thinking…

Does Agnosticism really exist or are people seen to be Agnostics only Atheists that are playing it safe and allowing an opening to the other side just in case they are wrong. Will anything actually make them change what they really believe in deep down?

Take the scenario presented above and suppose that the theoretical “God” came forward instead of an angel. Same results for both sides of the spectrum, but what about the Agnostics? I’d think that the Agnostics will still not believe in a supernatural being and still want more proof. There’s always the possibility of unraveling the science behind this event and there will be the possibility of unraveling the science in any event. We may not currently have the knowledge to do that but we can’t foresee what resources will be available in the future.

Are Agnostics just atheists that are leaving an escape route for themselves but generally not believing in a god at all. An Agnostic always has to opportunity to “believe” just before he dies for that chance to enter the “paradise” at the end of the rainbow.

Is there any conceivable way to turn an Agnostic into a religious nut? What exactly, would it take to make an Agnostic believe in a supernatural being? Is it at all possible? Is Agnosticism just a deeply rooted fear caused by one’s lack of faith in his own intellect?

This is way too much for my simple mind to handle, I should leave such thoughts to the intellectuals. Suffice it to say, I now believe Agnosticism does not exist and Agnostics should just man up and admit to something. There is no gray area there’s only the truth that there is no supernatural, all-powerful being and there’s the lies that religion spreads.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.