Atheist, Agnostic and Christian...Questions?

Question

Okay, I am wondering why many of the Christians around here (and in the real world) seem to think if you don't believe in their god there is something wrong with you and if you don't believe in any god then you are an atheist and there is definitely something wrong with you, which of course means you need guidance and you need to be told what to believe because without believing in any god you need to be saved.

Now, I am a woman with a university degree, I consider myself well educated and I live a happy life. I am also Agnostic. Yes, that's right. I do not believe that any god can 100% be proved to exist. No, I am NOT atheist. There is a difference between being agnostic and being atheist.

Atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings, God or gods.

Agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

Hence I do not see a reason to ‘believe’ in something which may or may not exist. I do not deny God or gods exist. I simply think that we are mere humans are unable to know them, to prove their existence, and that all we as humans know is what we learn through experience during our lifetime. Yes, that’s right, the only things you know is what you learn from experience. That includes your belief in God. If it wasn’t for the experiences you have had in your life you would not have developed the knowledge and understanding of God and religion that you have and you therefore would not have developed the beliefs you now have.

I have nothing against Christians or people of any faith; people can choose to lead whatever lives they choose to lead and believe in whatever they want, the beliefs of others is insignificant to me and certainly not relevant to me personally. I do not walk around telling Christians their God does not exist and they are stupid for putting so much faith into something which may not exist.

Why do so many Christians feel the need to tell ME though, and others that do not believe in God that we should, and try to push their beliefs onto others? Why do many Christians think there is something they need to fix with you if you are not a follower of their faith? I am not saying all Christians do it, but many do.

Why is it so hard for Christians to accept not everyone wants to believe their beliefs and just let others be? & why is it that if you don’t believe in their God you are labelled as an atheist and this is said as a derogatory term? Why do so many Christians associate simply not believing in God with things like evil, Satanism, and all that garbage? Yes, I know your bible says a bunch of things about bot believing in God. But the bible also lists a multitude of other sins, and if you followed them all then virtually everyone would be a sinner. Why are some of the rules enforced while others aren’t?

Okay I’m ranting. I’d like to see some of your thoughts. If you have useless things to say that are pointless and do not contribute anything of value, please keep it to yourself, after all your God tells you to be nice to others and all that.

I'm not an evolutionist in particular either, so that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Why do YOU assume not believing in God = being an evolutionist?

@ Tina - There's only a hell if you believe in it.

How can you say hell is real whether I believe in it or not? Have YOU been there? Do YOU have undisputable evidence and proof that hell exists? Your arguments are groundless and based on nothing but stories and so called beliefs. JUST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE OR REAL. I can say I believe in fairies. Does that make fairies real? I have just as much undisputable proof as you that fairies exist, just like you have jsut as much undisputable proof as me that hell exists; none.

Tina - I don't need to call you a lunatic lady, you give everyone that impression all by yourself. Just look at those thumbs downs. I don't care to argue with you, we obviously are two people with very different beliefs. I don't consider myself 'on the fence' I simply choose to not believe in something which makes no sense to me to believe in. You say don't say you didn't warn me? Don't say atheists/agnostics didn't warn you if when you reach the end of your journey in this life and there is no paradise that is heaven or your precious God waiting for you. Each to their own, why is that so hard for you Christians to comprehend?

Answer 1

People in general are stupid and do stupid things knowing what they are doing is stupid yet keep doing stupid things.

Christians/Catholics on this board (not all but certainly some of the questions at time) ask stupid questions and wonder why they get stupid answers.

I dont understand why certain religions continuously keep trying to conerty people or "force" there point of view upon yours. How many relief workers have to be executed before relief workers figure out "Maybe I should stop trying to convert Islams to Catholicism/Christianity.

Answer 2

I'd say yes. It's all we can be really. I mean who's to say that tomorrow a deity won't come out of the Sun and communicate with us. It's extremely unlikely of course which is why I don't believe it can happen. Calling yourself an agnostic atheist is basically like saying "Well I don't believe in gods, but that doesn't mean that I completely write-out the possibility." It's slightly on par with saying the same about unicorns or space-teapots, but it's the only way of being intellectually honest: you don't know, don't say that you do. The whole concept of agnosticism is misleading to most people it seems, as most seem to think that being agnostic simply means you're sitting on the fence between belief or disbelief in the Judeo-Christian god when in fact it's merely a lack of definite position on any number of subjects. This is why you'd need another word in there to clear it up - ie: you can't just be 'agnostic', but you can be an agnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist.

Answer 3

At least you defined agnostic right. Well done, most people get it wrong and think it means "undecided," or "has no clue."
You can be an agnostic and an Atheist at the same time though. You can believe that God can never be proven to exist or not exist, and also believe that there most likely is no God.
Regardless, Christians need to save people from Hell, so do Muslims. That's part of their deal. Yeah, they believe we're defective human beings for not believing, yeah they believe a lot of contrived nonsense about us not having any morals without God, but that's what religion is. The claim that beyond all else, you are right about something unknowable. I can't fault them for their convictions, I can only laugh at their ignorance from my own subjective 'religious' "I am right, you're idiots" Atheist paradigm.

Answer 4

From a scientific and hence mathematical perspective...It is EXTREMELY improbable (not impossible) that a God does exist. For example, if God were to verifiably exist we would say that is an absolute certainty which = 1. If God verifiably does not exist we would say that is an absolute certainty which =1. It is also EXTREMELY improbable (not impossible) that all the events that would have to have taken place for the universe and our solar system to be as it is would have occurred simultaneously. It is most important to know why you believe what you believe. I am a christian but my sister is agnostic. We see both sides of the arguement. I choose to believe because I think divine intervention is more likely than random chaos leading to perfect harmony. She believes vice versa.
Also, you made a great statement in your response to someone else...Your opionions have no indisputable evidence either..Just because you beleive there is no way of knowing God exists doesn't mean there is no way of knowing. Science is far from being complete.

Answer 5

You DO have the right to believe whatever you want.

I'm sorry that some of my fellow Christians can become a little...hmm...overzealous. Many of us simply can't IMAGINE a person not believing in God, and especially in OUR God. Many of those same people can't imagine a person saying "no" to Jesus. When my fellow Christians DO try to convert you (or anyone else), they mean well. They think that eventually, it'll "save your soul."

I look at it a little differently. I believe that if a person, ANY person, is seeking after God, they'll find Him. Or, more accurately, He'll find them. I'm just here to answer questions if I can. It isn't my duty to "save" everyone. But many of my fellow Christians believe that it's a poor reflection on them if they haven't been able to convert anyone.

Because I haven't always been a Christian (up until a year ago, I was anything BUT a Christian), I know that it can take years for a person to decide to follow Christ. It took me twenty-five, almost twenty-six, years to reach that point. So I understand you, and others like you.

I wish you the best of luck, and I hope this helped you understand a little bit better.

Answer 6

There is no god, never was, never will be.

The idea of a supreme being was created in man's imagination because of his fear of the dark and the unknown.

Religion was created by man to control other men.

Christian evangelists make tons of money off the gullible.

Muslim imams develop political power from their gullible people.

All religions need to spread their influence because each one believes that it is the only true religion.

The whole world is going to hell. There will be a world wide war that will kill most or all humans, and all this discussion will be moot. Only non-believers and rational believers, united, can bring the world the sanity it needs to avoid total destruction.

Answer 7

Actually, you probably are atheist.

Agnostic or non-agnostic is a question of the limitations of knowledge, whereas athiest / theist is a question of the existence of a specific being. To put this in technical terms, agnostic is a question of epistemology, whereas (a)theism is a question of metaphysics. They're two different things.

Let me try to explain this more clearly.

Theism is defined as someone who can say the following:
"I DO believe that a God DOES exist."
Atheism is the opposite of that, but there are two ways to negate the statement.
1) I DO NOT believe that a God DOES exist.
2) I DO believe that a God DOES NOT exist.

Both are atheism, and are usually referred to as implicit/explicit or weak/strong or disbelief/denial. There are lots of ways people talk about these distinctions.

Atheism and theism are two halves of a sphere. You are either one or the other. Agnosticism is not a middle ground. If I were to ask "Do you believe that God exists?", the only theistic answer is "Yes." Anything else, such as
- I don't know.
- I don't care.
- What's a God?
- Maybe.
- No.
- Definitely No.

All of these are atheistic answers, because they do not satisfy the requirement of theism. For example, if I ask you if you believe that the Chinese Gate Gods exist, and you respond "Wtf are those?"... that's an atheistic response.

By contrast, agnosticism is a question of knowledge (epistemology). "Does God exist?" is metaphysics. "How do we know?" is epistemology. You can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist, but not just agnostic, because saying "Humans can't know if god exists" doesn't actually answer the question of whether YOU believe god exists or not.

Clear as mud? :-p

Email me if none of this made sense, and I'll try again...

Answer 8

As a Christian, I don't think there is anything wrong with you. I do however believe that the only purpose of humans on Earth is to glorify God through everything that we do. As an agnostic, my only question for you is, why do you think you exist? do you think that your body was made by mistake, by some random act of evolution, and that you have no purpose on this Earth but to live for a while and then die? I believe in a God that loves me and wants to have a personal relationship with me, who offers me hope of a beautiful life after i leave this world, even if I'm wrong, is that really such a bad thing to believe? I live a wonderful life with a beautiful wife and have hope of an everlasting life in heaven after i die. I don't think that by not believing in Christianity that your an atheist, I think you might get that impression from Christians who think they're helping you by trying to scare you with the idea of Hell, the truth is I do believe in Hell and Heaven and I believe the only way to get to Heaven is to believe in God and accept the fact that Jesus came to Earth to die for our sins. I don't really consider myself religious, I just believe what the Bible says. The only reason that Christians are so serious about what they believe is because they care about other people and they want them to experience the joy and fulfillment they get from a personal relationship with Christ. Honestly, it gives your life a REAL purpose.

Answer 9

I am a man who is a college drop out (at the moment) because I was smarter than my professors and I didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars to be 'educated' by people who knew less than me. I do not know 100% about many things but that does not deter me from accepting things. I do not know 100% that Alexander the Great existed, I just have read history books and hope they are right.

Answer 10

wow... thats a long question, I finally made it to the end! ^_^

Christians feel the need to convert people because they feel anyone who doesn't think like they do will be tortured in hell. Being nice, caring humans they see their converting as a way to help people. They think we're just being ignorant and taught lies when we differ with this opinion.

The people have good intent, but are unable to get that we dont want it.

They have a sence of urgency to it too. To them any non-believer who dies is in hell forever, and forever is a very long time. They only have until your death to save you from this hardship.