Agnosticism

What is Agnosticism? Is it another name for Atheism?

Not so many people know about what Agnosticism is. Some people around me believe that Agnosticism is a same thing with Atheism, or if they think those things are different, they cannot say where exactly the difference is, or they say that Agnosticism is more dangerous than Atheism. The last statement may be true, depends on your behalf. So I think it is kinda important to write a post about Agnosticism, the definition (etymology and terminology), and what the experts say about Agnosticism.

This is an English translation of my older post about Agnostic I wrote in Bahasa Indonesia.

Definition

Etymology: The root of Agnostic term is from two Greek words, a means "none" and gnostikos means "people who have knowledge about something". Agnostos means "unknown".

Terminology:

1. It is a believe that we don't have sufficient knowledge about God, so it is impossible for us to prove wether God exists or not.

2. Sometimes it use to call any activity that postpone the decision about some kind of knowledge such soul, spirits, and extra-terrestrial creatures.

3. A believe that human cannot understand and doesn't have any ability to understand about God and the fundamental of religion and philosophy.

4. A teaching that generally or partially, denies the possibility of human to know about universe.

Atheism and Agnosticism

By Richard Dawkins, an Atheist, the Agnostic is a wishy washy attitude, because the Agnostic doesn't choose explicitly, specially about some fundamental question such God's existence: exists or not. he says explicitly that being an Agnostic is being a coward, just look for the safest way to avoid from debate about God's existence.

Bertrand Russel, who called him self as an Agnostic, says that being an Agnostic proves that someone is humble. He realizes that either arguments that proves the Existence of God or disproves the Existence of God are not enough to be demonstrated. But there is still a possibility for human to prove wether God exists or not. Human's technology and knowledge are still improve, but for now, we cannot decide anything.

Atheism

So, one of my friend in twitland gave a tweet lecture about what Atheism is. I read his tweets, a little bit curious about what will he say about Atheism. First, I didn't expect that I wil find any mistake in his definition about Atheism because I thought, he is smart enough to not say about thing he doesn't know clearly. But no, I was wrong.

He said that the Atheist is the people who don't obey or do the worship. Oh, really? He said, yes, it is his definition about the Atheist. I think, this definition isn't incorrect but it is misleading!

Because of the definition, he strongly said that there is many Atheist in Indonesia, specially Jakarta. Because there is many people said that they are Muslim but in the fact, they don't do the worship or many rules of Islam.

WTF, I said. His definition reduced the spirit about the thought of Atheism. Atheist, isn't an ignorant. People choose to be an Atheist just like you who have faith in God choose to believe Him. It's not as simple as if you don't obey the rules of a religion you said you are in, you are an Atheist.

I don't know what kind of book he read. But I think he hasn't read any legitimate books about Atheism. So, here I give you a link to my slideshare.net where you can download a small but very enlightening book about what Atheism is (click here). Happy reading, and always make sure you know exactly what you say to others so you won't mislead them :)