Thanks for your reply.
When I say that I "don't know" I am saying that I can't tell the difference between a genuine religious experience and something my mind is just making up. Some people, such as yourself, put faith in these experiences. They believe that they can tell the difference. This is perhaps the biggest difference that I see between theists and agnostics.
I've actually never had a "religious experience". I have become emotional on occasion when I contemplate the depth of the meaning of my beliefs, but I cannot be sure that I've ever had anything happen to me that I would call supernatural.
I have simply read the gospels and believe them whereas an agnostic has decided that this is not enough reason to believe.
I gave up on an afterlife a long time ago, so the "pending existence" really isn't that important.
It is not an issue with you BECAUSE you disbelieve in an afterlife. However, if you were genuinely completely neutral as an agnostic and equally doubtful of both then it might tend to push you out of neutral towards either belief so that you could believe that you were going to have the good afterlife or towards nonbelief so that you could believe that you would not experience anything.
But not knowing... that is what is scary. Heck its scary enough for me to not know what I'm going to do out of college... much less if I didn't think I knew what would happen after I died.
I often hear people proclaim that after their religious conversion they felt "a weight lifted off their shoulders" or "an inner peace that I had never felt before". It would seem to me that religion has soothed the savage breast for quite some time within human societies.
No doubt. Most humans need religion. My belief in Christ allows me to be at peace and happy in any situation.
I have entertained the idea of God, but without evidence that would rule out my own mind playing tricks it is impossible for me to trust my mind. This is a philosophy, not a science.
So what do you classify yourself again? I would classify you a weak atheist because you reject the idea of God, but that could change if you had a real reason to believe.
I seriously doubt there are very many truly neutral agnostics out there except for perhaps those who have just recently been caused to doubt their previous position.
This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 03-03-2005 19:52 AM