An Agnostic POV

Well, since Joe has done such a nice job of explaining the God of Abraham, I guess I should toss out my very different opinions on God to mix things up a bit. First let me start by saying that I consider myself an Agnostic and not a Christian. For those who are unfamiliar with Agnosticism and Agnostics let me briefly explain what being Agnostic means to me. Being Agnostic means that I believe that the existence of a God/Gods/Creator can be neither proved nor disproved. So, as confusing as it may sound, while I do not actually believe in any one God or Gods, at the same time I do not deny that there may be God or Gods. I feel that both the belief that there is a God and the belief that there isn't a God are both equally likely. But let me be clear, I am not an Atheist. With that said let me continue with how I came to this point and then explain what I think God may be.

Growing up in a Christian home and attending a Christian church, I have pondered the question of "Is there a God?" for essentially my entire life and from about 13-21yrs old I probably would have considered myself an Atheist. (For the record I am now 23) It wasn't until I took an Anthropology class in college called Human Origins that I really began to change my Atheist viewpoints. For as long as I can remember I have considered myself to be a very scientific minded person. If I needed to know how something worked or why something in the natural world was the way it was, I knew that I could depend on science to help point me in the right direction, if not give me a reliable answer. I also understood that the scientific facts that I trusted did not always line up with some Christian religious beliefs, for example the creation story in Genesis versus The Big Bang Theory and Evolution, also the conception of Jesus from a virgin mother versus the science of human reproductive biology, which obviously requires the combination of both male and female gametes in order to conceive a child. Because of those disagreements between Science and Religion I decided that they could not coincide and that one could not be scientific minded and still hold Christian beliefs at the same time. A person either had to be a scientist or a Christian but could not be both, or so I once thought. Well, my Human Origins class inadvertently led to believe otherwise. The class focused mainly around the evolution of the human species beginning millions of years ago but it also dealt a lot with what the Theory of Evolution actually was and what science actually was in general. It was during this class that I realized that science could never disprove God but at the same time it could also never prove God as well. So after coming to that conclusion I decided that it is impossible to know (at least for me) if there is a God and even a person who was deeply devoted to one religion/God their faith in that creator had to be inherently BLIND and without any proof, evidence, or facts other than their own personal opinions. So, I stopped worrying about, but not pondering, the existence of a God and have been essentially at peace and more happy with life than ever before. So, if there is a God, what do I think God is?

I have given a lot of thought to whom or what God is in the past year or so and I have begun to narrow down my beliefs. Let me start by saying that I do not believe that any religions on Earth have it “right” so to speak, and that there is no God worshiped anywhere today that is the correct one. Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “I believe in God, only I spell it nature.” In a nutshell, that is what I think of God. I think that God and nature are one and the same. I don’t think that God is some power that created the human species apart from every other species, in effect making “us” more special than everything else. I don’t think that God judges or holds any particular values or morals to be the correct ones. I think that if there is a God, then it created life and all matter and that Gods’ rule is in fact the laws of nature. So, it is with those beliefs that I feel that one of the only ways to learn more about God is to study God, A.K.A. – The Natural World. And the field of study that deals with exploring the natural world is science. Therefore, I believe that to deny science is to deny God. That is of course, assuming that there is a God. Well, that is a very brief opinion of what I think God is. I’m sure there are many who won’t agree with me, but at the very least I hope I made at least one person think. Until next time,
-Zach