The latest inspiration from Christian radio during my morning commute is this touching story:
The Christian announcer spoke of a meeting he'd had with a teenage boy, possibly a relative, and a conversation they'd had over breakfast. After covering the standard questions, like how he was doing in school, and so on, the announcer asked him where he stood spiritually.
The boy proclaimed that he was an agnostic. The announcer said he inquired about his agnosticism, being honestly curious about it. He asked the lad what he felt happened to us when we died.
The boy then displayed his obviously feeble agnosticism by saying that there must exist two sorts of "poles," like a magnet has, one for the people who were good, the other for people who were evil.
The announcer, I'm sure, felt that he'd slain an agnostic dragon by asking such a simple question of the boy.
I hope he doesn't think that all agnostics are quite as easily deflated as this boy was. Though I have to confess, I really don't understand agnosticism very well.
Sure, I went through a period of doubt during high school, in my transition phase from Christian to atheist. But for me it was just that... a temporary state wherein I was questioning everything about my faith. Once I'd questioned it enough, and found the answers lacking in the extreme, I settled comfortably into atheism.
I've met several people who feel that either stance, theism or atheism, is foolish, and that agnosticism is the only way to be, since there's no proof for either of the other views. I confess I find this to be a pretty weak argument.
Of course there's no proof for the existence of a god. Not a shred of it. As for evidence to the contrary, none is needed. As has been stated time and again all over the place, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. A lot of people claim to have been abducted by aliens. Do we have to prove that they weren't? Of course not. They have to prove they were. That has been the basis of proof for as long as science has been practiced.
Why otherwise rational people suspend this rule for the one and only topic of God's hypothetical existence, I have no idea.
And some agnostics tend to gloat in this middle-ground, just as much as some theists and some atheists are prone to do. But there's no substance to their arguments.
I even once encountered a guy who was so hesitant to explore his doubts that he claimed to be a "Christian agnostic."
Excuse me?
To no surprise of mine, he is now far closer to Christian than agnostic.
Robert Frost once said, "Don't be agnostic - be something."
I couldn't agree more.
