Atheist vs Agnostic

Because not all of those who disbelieve in God stick religiously to their life's guiding principles of logic and reason.Agnostics know that they will likely never have enough information to raise their confidence in either conclusion to a high enough level to accept one or the other. IMO this is the most reasonable of the three positions.Weak Atheists know this as well, but for whatever reason: gut feeling, personal preference, or disillusionment with religion due to past experience, have decided to settle on the conclusion that there is no God until other evidence can change their mind.Strong Atheists believe there is no God and do not even allow for his existence as a possibility. This is irrational since you cannot logically eliminate God as a possibility.

I think a perfectly agnostic person when asked "Does God exist?" would say "I don't know and I cannot say one way or another."Not, "I don't know if God exists just like I don't know if Santa Clause exists." Well, if we were all perfectly logical machines then that's how it would be, but other things factor into our thoughts.The pending existence of God is pretty dang important. I mean if God is the only reason for living and there is an afterlife then the question of his existence is really the most important of life. So for most people I think it is pretty hard to hold a completely neutral ground as an agnostic and say "I don't know and I have no opinion one way or the other." Most agnostics would tend to say, "I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty darn sure God doesn't exist," and then equate God to something absurd because it feels better and is more reassuring to think that you are right rather than to think that you don't know.Some would say that solid evidence for God must be presented to even entertain the idea of God and since no such evidence exists God is a non issue. IMO, since this conatains a judgement that God (whatever that might be) probably doesn't exist this can be called weak atheism expressed in a scientific worldview vocabulary.IMO, there is enough prima facie evidence to make the existence of God a valid question, but then I don't live by a scientific worldview.

Thanks for your reply. 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. 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. No doubt. Most humans need religion. My belief in Christ allows me to be at peace and happy in any situation. 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