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Atheism vs. Agnosticism
07.18.04 (9:49 am)   [edit]
I grew up in a somewhat religious family. I was deeply immersed in a Christian context. At times in my childhood I attended church regularly, and even up into adolescence I had a firm belief in Christianity.

Then, over the years, I lost that faith and never regretted it. I became a free-thinking individual. I became skeptical and capable of conceiving my own doubts about religion, and eventually reached the point where I was much more confident disbelieving than believing.

However, at the same time, I also developed a strong sense of rebelliousness, which has stayed with me to this day. It wasn't enough for me to quietly turn my entire outlook on life upside-down. I was still deeply immersed in this religious context, and I wanted people to see my individuality. I wanted people to see that I was so different from them that I could not even agree with the most fundamental tenets of their lives.

The notion of atheism struck me, at the time, as the most rebellious thing a person could be. For a Christian, the cold shock of claiming "There is no god" is quite brisk and was, for me, quite refreshing. Part of me felt it would be wonderful to just shout it in the faces of those that prayed before every meal, read the Bible every day, and refuse to do their own thinking. I wanted to shake up their beliefs and make them think.

Fortunately I was always shy enough to never do these things. Over time the shock of the notion of atheism lost most of its edge for me. Soon I could hardly even remember what it was like to believe in any god.

Eventually it occurred to me that atheism is simply a mirror of theism. Theism is the bald assertion that god or gods exist. Atheism is the bald assertion that no gods exist. Zero, one, or many: they are all still irrational assertions.

The word "atheist" no longer really applied to me. I do not wish to make a statement as to the quantity of deities. I do not wish to use the language of the theists. It is this language which binds the thoughts of atheists. I am much more rebellious and inventive than that.

To me, the notion of a deity is similar to many sorts of thought experiments. Some creationists justify their belief in a universe age on the order of thousands of years by simply understanding that the world could have just as well blinked into existence 5 seconds ago, with all the materials that give us memories before that time and evidence of existence before that time. The notion of the universe blinking into existence as-is is an unprovable and undisprovable notion. Similarly, the notion of any god is an unprovable and undisprovable notion.

I would like to step outside this vicious framework. I have no desire to waste my time attempting to prove or disprove the unprovable or undisprovable. Furthermore, I am too rebellious to even want to use the language of such systems. What if you are in a solipsist universe? What if all of reality is simply what you are dreaming that you are perceiving? Well, it's impossible to disprove. It's impossible to prove. To me, that makes it a rather meaningless concept. It may be a fun toy to think about, but would I ever structure my life around believing or disbelieving such a notion?

This, I believe, illustrates the core difference between atheism and agnosticism. Theists construct this notion of god or gods and accept that this notion applies to their reality. Atheists accept this notion, but not that it applies. Agnostics reject the notion altogether.

Because I'm a little too honest, I no longer describe myself as atheist. Part of me still strongly desires to be an atheist, to be able to shock the religious and be in their faces. To say I am agnostic feels like such a weaker statement than to say I am atheist. To some people it means that I have no place in arguments between theists and atheists. But at least I understand now that it is, indeed, a much stronger, more rebellious statement. An atheist is different from the majority only by resisting the application, but an agnostic rejects the framework altogether.