I argue that all of us are agnostic, because where it comes to any given god concept how much information is enough to decide one exists and others don't, or if numerous gods exist?
This might be true if we are to look at belief in God as purely a cognitive decision about a concept based on available data, the way one might decide there is sufficient evidence to accept the possibility of rain forecast based upon available data. But if we look at belief in God as a religious faith, a matter of what one's heart or intuition senses, than that's a different story.
Belief in that sense if not a cognitive, mental belief based upon an evaluation of the data, but a heart-belief, or faith in something which goes beyond simple decisions based upon data. Something intuited. Something felt. Something sensed.
So technically while the agnostic may lack the faith from the heart that God exists, they are also open, or not closed to the possibility. That is neutral, or open. Atheism on the other hand, is closed if it says it does not have faith any God exists, or that it outright "rejects" faith or belief in God. That's a decision mentally because it makes no sense to their hearts and their rational minds following suit.
Again, this is all based on a better understanding of the nature of what religious faith actually is, as opposed to this sloppy mischaracterization of faith as bad beliefs, or flawed reasoning. I wholeheartedly reject that as just a lazy attack. From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Faith:
Faith (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
2. The affective component of faith
One component of faith is a certain kind of affective psychological state—namely, having a feeling of assurance or trust. Some philosophers hold that faith is to be identified simply with such a state: see, for example, Clegg (1979, 229) who suggests that this may have been Wittgenstein’s understanding. Faith in this sense—as one’s overall ‘default’ affective attitude on life—provides a valuable foundation for flourishing
Emphasis mine. It is more than clear from the complexity of this article that "bad belief" is not all a valid consideration in the topic of faith, of which directly relates to any discussions of theism, agnostic, or atheism. Those are all matters of "religious belief" in the sense of faith.
If a truly objective person were to read through a list of all god concepts in human history, and allowed to investigate them all, would they conclude any of them exist, or likely exists?
Again, this all assumes that belief in God is based upon nothing higher than something like a consumer reports review of statistical data, and not a matter of one's existential longings or senses of the nature of ultimate truth or reality beyond a mundane dispassionate assessment of bits of factoids.
Would there be adequate fact and data for any of them? I don't think so.
And it would be compleltely irrelevant to faith, honestly. If that is the basis for ones trust in the Unknown, than that's might shallow. One better hope that different data doesn't come along that might take away the sole basis for your sense of security. It comes to mind the teaching of Jesus about building one's house on shifting sand.
The nature of faith is such that it does not rely upon "correct beliefs" as its foundation. Faith, a genuine faith can allow for beliefs to change, modify, or be completely wrong. But that is NOT the typical condition of modern "believers". And it is the reason why so many become atheists and find better supported beliefs to place their faith in. "This sand is not as loose as that other sand was."
I have never been presented with adequate evidence that make me think twice about it. Even theists have relied on arguments for God existing rather than evidence, like the Kalam.
I know. I shake my head at them. All they are doing is making it a choice between better logic arguments, which have nothing to do with the heart at all. Honestly, I don't blame atheists since they were taught by these so-called apologists this is is what faith means. I too side with the atheists against such arguments.
That's why I was an atheist. But now I have a different perspective on it, seeing them as simply flip sides of that same coin. I use a different currency now in understanding the nature of these things, which allows for both to be partly right in their own ways, from their vantages points.
There is a lot of misunderstanding of how people come to believe in religious concepts.
Indeed there is. The arguments I hear from atheists about it being essentially uninformed attempts at doing early science are hardly adequate.
Believers seem to think they have made sound conclusions but under questioning can't explain any rational process via evidence.
I agree. Because they are trying to make faith a rational proposition. They are trying to compete with science, because they lack an understanding of what faith is. Or you could just say, they are trying to make it rational because they lack faith. The stronger the beliefs, the more well defended and tighter they are, the weaker the faith. The "True Believer!!" has the weakest faith of all.
They tend to fall back to their final redoubt of faith and experience, and as we know, faith is unreliable, and experiences can be manufactured in the mind.
So you're saying don't trust your experiences? That sounds uncomfortably like the fundamentalists I was exposed to who teach everyone never to trust your own heart, if you have doubts, you should distrust your own experiences and rely on the facts of God's word instead".
What I hear is just a replacement of God's word in this case saying, "never trust your subjective experiences, but trust the science!". It's all the same insecurity and weak faith. I hear
fear. I hear a lack of self-knowledge.
The bottom line is that believers are comfortable in their belief, and don't have much interest in living without it.
I actually would disagree they are really comfortable. They would fight tooth and nail to defend it, because thats all they have. They need their beliefs to be trustworthy, because they rest their faith in the beliefs, not in their hearts finding rest in the
Unknown. The latter is actual faith, as opposed to 'believerism'.
I am one of those folks who was more comfortable thinking for myself and rejecting the social pressure to accept Jesus-as-savior and that a God exists.
As am I. But the more I keep looking at all this, the more integrated the whole thing appears. I push against these nice little "we're right and they're wrong" who has the better data to believe in arguments. That's just rebranding religion in modernist terms with Science as the new Authority to believe in. As an ex-fundamentalist, now turned atheist friend of mine said to me, "I'm so glad I really DO have the truth now!".
From what I remember about this questioning in my youth I took these claims more seriously than anyone else in my family. They all accepted the Christian concepts just as they did Santa Claus. I was the one of 13 grandkids who had doubts and tested the claims. So I am very interested why only me questioned these claims.
Their answers were no longer sufficient for you. Just as they weren't for me either. I like to say I did not lose my faith. I simply outgrew their system of expression for it.
To me it was natural to question the claims, and those around me seemed to naturally go with the flow regardless of what they were told. Both my mom and twin sister were stunned to learn I am an atheist, and they just did not understand how I could not believe in some higher power. When I asked why they believed in some higher power they had not ever questioned it. It's just something they believed, but a thing they never could remember deciding deliberately.
I've come to see God in terms that my rational, critical-thinking mind can hold without violating reason, or denying my sense of the Eternal in everything. I could not grow spiritually if I had to deny reason for the sake of my religious beliefs, or my heart for the sake of my rational mind. It was a matter of finding how to reconcile both faith and reason without doing violence to one or the other.
That took awhile. But it is more than possible to do. It takes a shift in understanding the nature of truth and reality as a whole and how we perceive it as such, and the degree and importance of which we feel to hold onto our views. I see them more as lenses, rather that fixed and static absolutes.
