Agnostic Theism

What is agnostic theism?

Agnostic Theism (also known as Spiritual Agnosticism or Agnostic Deism) is the philosophical view that combines the belief of theism, that there is a god (or gods) and agnosticism (the belief that something is unknown and/or unknowable). An agnostic theist is one who believes that knowledge of god(s) is not possible but chooses to believe there is a higher being anyways. An agnostic theist can also be a person who believes in a god(s), but does not understand how it or they work. There are contrasting views of the term, depending on one how one person comprehends and accepts the view verses another.

Agnostic theism accepts that there is a god or gods, but that it cannot be proven either way. They accept that knowledge of a higher being is inaccessible.

Can you be a Christian or a Muslim and still be a agnostic theist?

Yes.

. You can accept their values and their beliefs to an extent. Just because the Holy Bible or the Qur’an exist does not make what they say out to be fact. They could very well be, intentionally or not, fiction. An agnostic theist would take morale beliefs and values taught from the teachings of these works and put them to practice. And they mostly involve just being a good person overall. It is understandable to be skeptical of a religion’s teachings considering the fact that money and politics have always played an important role all throughout the history of mankind. And if you consider that religion could be used as a tool to control people through fear, then that could definitely classify these works as fiction. It is understandable why someone would question these organizations considering what all has been documented about them throughout their histories.

And even if they were created with the bad intention of controlling whole civilizations, that doesn’t mean the existence of a god or gods is not true anymore. They simply just got it wrong. All it takes is faith to believe that there is a god.

And if these works of literature are indeed fiction, giving us a false impression of god, that doesn’t mean that churches or mosques are a bad thing. Besides worshipping a god, churches and mosques are places that perform good deeds for other people, a place to learn good morale values, and a place for people who haven’t lived good lives to regain control of themselves and become better people. And the fact of the matter is, is that the conspiracy idea of back door deals being made may be simply untrue. What was written and documented may be sincere.

Struggling to believe in something without being able to have any knowledge of what you’re believing in?

This is understandable. But humanity has lived and continues to live with things that are unexplainable. Both time and gravity for example are known things that can not be fully explained. Just because they cannot be fully explained and understood does not make them true. Our minds accept that these things exist, without us fully understanding how they work. We just know they exist, even if gravity and time by themselves are not tangible.

So where does one go from here? God can exist, and we can believe in him. Does this mean we can believe whatever we want about God and make up our own rules?

No. Believing in that would mean you have knowledge of God, which means you would just be making up a new religion. Just because you don’t have any knowledge of God or how God works does not mean you have free reign over those two quantities.

Agnostic theism, as well as agnosticism by itself, when viewed from a classical philosophical understanding of knowledge is that knowledge is justified from true belief. From this, we can gather that it is reasonable to say that one may hold a belief, and that belief may be true without it actually being able to be proven. An agnostic theist may carry this belief, even if it flawed, but persists out of one’s personal philosophy.