I agree that these terms ultimately refer to a "position" related to the question of the existence of God/gods. Theism an atheism are the yes/no position, while agnosticism is the "undetermined/undeterminable" position. There is no non-positioned "default" once the question has been conceived and asked.
We are in agreement.
But human nature asks the question of us all. And has asked it since the dawn of time. So there is no human that can claim that default.
While it appears that way, let me shed some more light on my thinking here. There is a part of us, which is clearly manifest in infancy and through early childhood before induction into the world of conceptual realities, which is shared by all sentient life (including in our own adult lives beyond conceptual thought), which is just simply present in the world as a state of simple "being". It is quite aware of Reality, even if not held as a conscious, self-reflective thought. It is simple aware. It makes no judgement, but rather simple observation without attachments.
It is when it triggers some significance to us, it represents something, then we go down the path of breaking it apart into thought streams, "What was that?", and "What does it mean?" (As William James explained). Now we are in the world of questions. And it's here that we references our mental structures, these frameworks of reality that have been constructed for us through language and culture. But an infant or an immature child, either does not have these frameworks built up sufficiently with mental objects like "God", or they are simply in that wide-opened state of oceanic bliss. There are no mental frameworks there, or what are there as so fundamental that it is irrelevant. And so the default state, is state of
openness, a state of non-judgement.
Now, I mentioned earlier in adult life there is a state beyond conceptual thought. It is also a state before, and even underlying all conceptual thought itself. It is that state of "no-thought", I believe you are well familiar with. In that state or condition of mind, what one sees, is what one sees. It is simply what it is, unclouded by our thoughts and ideas about it. Thoughts and ideas, if they come, are seen as simply ornaments, decorations our minds calls something for the sake of words in order for us to hide it away somewhere for later recall to the thinking mind. Instead, it is just pure awareness, like than infant child staring in wonder at the undefined world it is awakening to. It's just with the presence and awareness of the adult mind, aware of itself and its own mind as a thing of nature, and not what tells us nature or Reality is.
This is that state where questions of God or No-God are silent, non-questions. They are moot. Irrelevant, noise that has only a valid place in the world of questions of adult minds dividing the world into parts. I believe no animal but us does this. The rest already all know the question is Yes to both, without asking the question to begin with.
What I think you are describing is faith. Faith takes up where knowledge leaves off.
No, I'm not talking about that. I don't mean we stop playing the game because we take a leap of faith about it, even into a comfortable "indecision". I mentioned the Witnessing state, which is beyond faith too. It is that state of non-judging, non-attached Awareness. It's where the game suddenly is actually recognized as a game of sorts, an artificial playing field upon which we as humans construct and move the objects of our reality around on, engaging in debates and fights about who is on which colored square. All the while, with their eyes fixed on the board, they don't see themselves as players nor the entire world they are living within playing the game of their realities with each other.
This is knowledge, but of a different order. It's not a knowledge "about", but rather Knowing itself.
We can choose to believe something based on our desire for it to be true BECAUSE we desire it to be true and because we don't know that it's not. And then see how that works our for us when we act on it as being true. If it produces positive results, we have no knowable reason not to continue believing it.
Well of course. Yes, our relative realities are in fact quite functional and of value for us.
In this, the theist and the atheist leave the agnostic behind. I think we all begin as "agnostics", and then either stay there, or choose, through either faith, or blind pretense, to move past it into theism or theism.
I have to agree with you. Functionally, atheism is what I would call an important step of faith. I mean that quite sincerely and respectfully. I know they hate the word faith, but when you understand that is it making a conscious decision about the nature of what Ultimate reality is to them, the "big question" of existence, that is a move of faith. It matters not one iota if it has anything to do with deities and supernaturalism. It is about ultimate truth, and that is what faith pulls us to come to some relationship with in ourselves, however we choose to put it in a framework which either includes or excludes God.
This is the step that the atheists want desperately not to acknowledge. Because they do not want to see themselves as acting on faith, or blind pretense. Yet these are the only way to get to their position.
And that is unfortunate. I often engage in these discussions because I think someone needs to say it. It's not at all meant as an insult or a put down, but actually as a tool of understand to talk about the real things that need to be talked about, which is not whether Noah's Boaty-McBoatface thingy was real or not. I see atheism as a vitally important aspect of the evolution of human faith. It's not an aberration, but actually developmentally important to the whole of our bring faith into life, through its "casting off the things of childhood."
I love how Aurbindo put this. I'll share it here since it fits and you might enjoy his insight:
"It is necessary, therefore, that advancing Knowledge should base herself on a clear, pure and disciplined intellect. It is necessary, too, that she should correct her errors sometimes by a return to the restraint of sensible fact, the concrete realities of the physical world. The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullness – to its heights we can always search– when we keep our feet firmly on the physical. “Earth is His footing,” says the Upanishad whenever it images the Self that manifests in the universe. And it is certainly the fact the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya.
In emerging, therefore, out of the materialistic period of human Knowledge we must be careful that we do not rashly condemn what we are leaving or throw away even one tittle of its gains, before we can summon perceptions and powers that are well grasped and secure, to occupy their place. Rather we shall observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism has done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge. In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration."
I just love that. Such insight and depth.
Yes, but the counter-argument is that it's impotent for exactly that reason. And because of that impotence, it remains forever undetermined. Whereas to choose theism or atheism, based on faith or pretense, will at least render it active, and thereby produce some sort of result.
You make a good point I'll accept as true. To be in an "in-between" place is a good thing in order to sort out what you think or feel about something, but to remain there beyond its usefulness can lead to ultimate not engaging in the big questions, which doesn't always bring the greatest rewards. Being safe can lead to non-engagement, or a retreat from life.
Results that can be used to determine it's value, at least, even if not it's truthfulness.
Yes, fortunately for we humans, we are capable of holding to more then one idea at a time, and doing so even when they significantly contradict each other. So I agree that the optimum methodology for we humans would be to remain honestly agnostic, while daring to choose to believe in the truth that we WANT to be true, regarding the nature and existence of God/gods. And then to act on that belief. Then review the results as we continue to adapt our beliefs to make them more positively effecting in our lives, until and if actual knowledge that can determine the truth becomes available.
Again, I'll agree here. Ultimately however, as the weather balloon ascends into the sky and we look down at the players on their game boards with each other, and we Witness it as it all is, then your neither atheist, theist, or agnostic. There is no question. All the rest, are words.
