rcj (02/01/83)
Here are the results of my survey on the definition of the word "agnostic":
Sorry about the length, but the answers were so diverse that a simple
numerical tally would have been impossible, long, meaningless.
(I put the first two here at the top because they are my favorite, the
rest are quite serious in tone.)
The MAD Programmer
alias: Curtis Jackson ...!floyd!burl!rcj
...!sb1!burl!rcj
...!mhuxv!burl!rcj
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atheist: one who belives there is no god(s)
agnostic: one who does not belive there is a god, but who
does not believe there is NOT a god
organist: one who is paid because people belive there is a god who
wants to hear things sunday morning
i myself subscribe to the third belief system. i think religion
is wonderful...as long as i get the check. (hee hee hee)
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I think it was Woody Allen who defined his agnosticism as follows:
"I believe in the existence of a God -- I'm just not sure whether he
believes in me."
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[Re: question of God's existence] >>> Don't know and don't care.
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"All of this matter around me had to come from somewhere. I
don't know where. I don't see any indication that "anyone"
was involved, and don't see anyway to find out, so...
the best I can say is "I don't know"".
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I have no evidence that what my senses tell me is in fact the nature
of reality, and even if I did accept that, it would not lead me to
the conclusion that "someone had created it", any more than the belief
in a God leads gnostics to the conclusion that someone created Him.
....I might add that I don't deny the possibility of knowing God. That
is just a third flavor of arrogance as far as I'm concerned.
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An agnostic is one who believes that the existance of a Creator
is unprovable and hence other motivations must be found for
moral and ethical judgements than fear of retribution from an
Allmighty.
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"I don't beleive in God, but I can't prove (or know) that there
really isn't a God".
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A person who believes that there is an intellegence of greater
capacity and dimension than himself. This intellegence is
non-corporeal and no amount of supplication, meditation, or
"prayer" can cause this intelligence to have a tangible effect
on life anywhere in the universe. There is the faintest
possibility that this intelligence may have "created life"
or otherwise constructed models to examine questions in that
intellegence's domain.
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I always thot' an agnostic was someone who believed
in god, and but that he didn't care.
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It seems to me that an agnostic is best defined by simply looking at
the Greek: "one who does not know". The agnostic simply does not know
whether a god exists but is willing to believe if suitable evidence
(other than scripture) appears.
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I've always used the term to describe someone who believes that the
existence or nonexistence of god is, a priori and a posteriori,
unknowable and unprovable (is that redundant?). This jibes with
the definition I find in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Notice that
this allows for theistic agnostics and atheistic agnostics, i.e.
one can believe that god exists yet also be an agnostic if one
believes that his belief in god cannot be rationally justified (i.e.
one admits that his belief is based purely on faith), or conversely
one can profess not to believe in god and also that one can't prove god's
existence either.
....In loose usage the term "agnostic" has come to mean a person who is
"sitting on the fence", i.e. someone who's too chicken to admit that
he's an atheist since the latter is a dirty word.
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I distinguish between Atheist and Agnostic as follows:
Atheists do not believe in any ghod, divine providence, higher spirirt, etc.
Agnostics either (a) are not sure if the atheists are right, or
(b) think the atheists are wrong but don't know which theists
are right;
Theists believe in one particular spiritual paradigm/pantheon/ghod/religion/
mystical truth.
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One who isn't sure, but is militant about it. I'm not one I guess.
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i usually think of myself as an agnostic, feeling that if anything (or
anyone) created us, that is that entity's business, and it has to get out
of it whatever satisfaction it wants/expects/whatever. i am absolutely
disgusted by the idea of a paranoid creator sitting around destroying us
for being insufficiently grateful and 'loving' and grovelling around.
i feel that my responsibilities in this world are to everyone else in
it, in varying degrees, and that if i discharge those responsibilities
reasonably, the godhead will take care of itself.
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I had always thought that an agnostic was a person that was "all doubting",
as compared to aethist that was "all disbelieving". I consider myself
to be "all doubting."
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An agnostic is one who is not sure; who thinks that there is
insufficient evidence to evaluate the existence of god.
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Agnostic: .... Believes in a
supreme being but is not willing to follow any organized
religion, go to church, pray or what have you.
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agnostic is someone who is undecided as to whether a god does or does not exist.
So far as I'm concerned, the term includes people who believe that they currently
have insufficient evidence as well as those who believe that the question
is intrinsically impossible to settle. As to whether I consider myself an
agnostic: that depends on the definition of god being used. If it is merely some
sort of creator (killed in the lab explosion that we know of as the big bang,
perhaps) then I consider myself to be an agnostic. If the god being discussed
is OOB (omniscient,omnipotent,benevolent) then I'm atheistic.
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.... The word comes from two
Greek words meaning "no knowledge" and refers to someone who (unlike the
atheists, who are certain there is no god) is honest enough to admit that the
answer is unknown on current evidence. (Many agnostics will, if pressed,
express a personal opinion that all of the proffered gods are unlikely.) Since
they generally refuse to propitiate societal prejudices about self-abasement
before a hypothetical deity they are more often mistaken for atheists by the
zealous who mistake a refusal to act on insufficient evidence for active
disbelief.
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.... Agnostic meant
"one who does not know", and this clearly implies you don't believe one
way or the other. Unfortunately, this term has been equally abused to
mean "unsure, but basically believing". It seems that the forces that
be simply don't want nonbelievers to be able to hide behind any word.
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Is defined as one who has the good sense to realize that he/she can
never tell, and the practicality to realize that most of what is
expected by a deity is also necessary for life in a "civilized" world.
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i define (loosly) an agnostic as one who is undecided or uncaring about the
existance of gods, and an atheist as one who believes that there are no gods.