Agnostic Religion

QUESTION: What are the basic views of the Agnostic religion?

ANSWER:

What are the basic views of the agnostic religion? Agnostics claim to have no knowledge about the existence of God. In fact, the term “agnostic” literally means “no knowledge.” There is not one commonly-accepted set of views of the agnostic religion. There are actually a variety of different agnostic views as outlined below.

Agnostic Religion: Views and Viewpoints
There are two basic forms of agnosticism. Weak Agnosticism holds that God is unknown. It accepts that God may be known, and some people may possibly know God. The second form, Strong Agnosticism, maintains that God is unknowable, that God cannot be known.

There is an additional breakdown of views on the ability to know God. Limited agnosticism says that God is partially unknown because of our finitude. This view holds that we can know some things about God, but we cannot know everything. Unlimited agnosticism claims that God is completely unknowable. That is, it’s impossible to truly know anything about God.

Agnostic Religion: Views of Reality
The agnostic views about the existence of God stem from views about the ability to know reality. These views of reality were most strongly advocated by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. David Hume was technically a skeptic, but his views led to agnosticism. One of his main ideas was that everything we experience is totally separate and unconnected. The cause-and-effect relationships that we observe can never really be known with any certainty. Instead, Hume thought, causal relationships are based solely on observation, and we see causality as we link events that occur together.

Immanuel Kant was greatly influenced by the ideas of Hume. Kant held that knowledge is provided by experience through the senses. The conclusion is that we can never know actual reality as it truly is if we are dependent on our senses. We can only know something as we experience it in ourselves. Since everyone experiences the same event differently, we can never know the event as it actually happened outside of ourselves.

The views of Hume and Kant impact a person’s views about God. If we cannot know reality as it actually is, then we really can’t even know events as they are independent of our senses. Also we can’t really know the true causes of any given event if everything is unconnected. With this in mind, therefore, the agnostic claims he does actually know the possible Cause of the Universe. Hence, for the agnostic, God’s existence is in question.