Lying in bed several Sunday mornings ago, I browsed NY Times review of three religious books (or, should it be “books on religion”, to be more politically correct*). One of them titled AGNOSTIC: A Spirited Manifesto caught the attention of my drowsy mind: spirited agnostics?
I know this contribution of mine does not match the gravitas of René Descartes who, also lying in bed, developed the Cartesian coordinate system after observing the movements of a housefly.
* Please await my soon forthcoming post on the phrase “people of color“. Thanks for your patience.
Someone referred to herself as a hopeful agnostic.
When I mentioned to another friend that was a tempting self-description, she severely warned me to fight the temptation.
Q: What do agnostics hope for? Presence? Absence?
My first thought was that the answer is both obvious and you knew that, seeking only to be a troublemaker.
After a bit of thought, though, realized that maybe some agnostics hope for the absence of a G-d. Maybe they took the other side of Pascal’s Wager and were having second thoughts.
More seriously, Pascal’s Wager only makes sense (at least to me) when you bet on living your life as though G-d does exist. Even if one were to ignore some evidence of G-d’s existence on the basis that it can all be explained by statistics (it would, for example, be more amazing [less likely] that amazing things now and then happen to us than that they never happen), Feuerbach’s explanation for why we seek a god, that we are trying to get into better touch with that better self we all know is in us, almost compels us rationally to wager that G-d exists.
Does that help?
Whoops. Stated that in reverse.
. . . (it would, for example, be more amazing [less likely] that amazing things now and then NEVER happen to us than that they NOW AND THEN DO [never] happen) . . .