I think the general consensus is that this reading was very confusing and entirely too long. Someone pointed out that, although he presents only six reasons, each reason was broken down into multiple sub-parts, and that by the time I got into the meat of the sub-part I had completely forgotten what I was reading about. Regardless, Agnosticism is an interesting concept, I myself at one point considered myself an Agnostic – until I took more philosophy classes. However, in my opinion, Agnosticism is kind of a cop out; suspending judgement about whether or not God exists looks, too me, like the easy way out.
Daily 50 – Epistemic Humility, etc.
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While I agree, I also think making claims about knowing for sure that God exists, and what the true nature of God is (each religion has their own version, though the Abrahamic religions are essentially the same), but being satisfied with an absolute answer rather than being willing to admit that we don’t actually know seems like a cop-out too. For example, what I like about the practice of science is the acknowledgement that any theory could be wrong, it’s just a place-holder until we’re given reason to think otherwise. That is, gravity is just a theory and although we have good reason to believe it, we still aren’t absolutely sure that it’s the case. I like the notion of uncertainty because it requires a willingness to accept that the answer you have now might not always be the case, whereas religion tends to be unreasonably rigid in many respects.
I completely agree with you. I explained it as tangents, but I think that’s the word I was really looking for. He was breaking everything down into subparts that by the time he was done, I had completely forgotten what the thesis of the paper was even about. I thought that the length of this paper was extremely exaggerated and really had no reason to be sprawled out in so many unnecessary places. And I think in reality, we all question the existence of an all powerful, all good, righteous being. It’s a human concept to question everything around us.
I don’t think his reasonings were tangents, just necessary pieces to the giant puzzle. Religion is complex, so these “sub points” are necessary. Just apparently confusing to us new-comers to the issue. I don’t think Agnosticism is really a “cop out,” it just identifies that we don’t have empirical evidence for many things and therefore having a firm belief without this evidence is illogical.
I too once believed that I could potentially be Agnostic — until I looked further into it and found out information like in this reading. It seems to me that agnosticism is just too far out there with undetermined information within itself. It’s not a problem for me if there are things to be skeptical about within a religion, but it actually seems as if that’s the basis of agnosticism. I guess where I’m going with this is that it wouldn’t be a good fit for me because I need more solid conclusions to then build my own opinions around.