Why are agnostics unsure about believing in God?

Answer 1

Some people are unsure whether God exists or not because there is no direct evidence

for him.

Another opinion People are unsure that God exists because they do not wish to accept the eyewitness testimony of those who have had dealings with them, despite the great amount of supporting evidence. In terms of inconsistency, many of these people have no trouble accepting the existence of many major ancient personages but doubt Jesus existence despite far greater weight of evidence. Opinion I for one is now not sure if there really is a god. How can a god allow children to go hungry? How can a good god allow children to die of hunger and diseases? How can a good god kill all his own creation sparing only Noah and his family. How can a good god commit genocide to all who has never heard of him? How can a good god assign sin to all mankind for the mere act of eating a certain fruit that he put in the garden himself? These are the kind of questions that prompted me to be unsure in the existence of god Opinion I would rather turn the question around: why are some people sure that a god exists? I have no idea, as there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case.

Answer Many see the existence of a god as unsubstantiated; the burden of proof is not on the skeptic to show absence, but on the believer to show presence. Because of the mere nature of any deity, it is also impossible to show such proof, and hence no rational belief is possible. This leads many to not believe.

Others follow the contradiction reached by the properties claimed about many deities reflected in their actions and commands. A good example is the JudaeoChristian god; how can a benevolent and omnipotent deity allow such harm to come to "His" chosen people?

Counterarguments such as "life is a test" are then themselves countered by the simple fact that a benevolent intelligence would not test, but instead apply their power to help; after all, how many tests must you pass before being admitted into a school or being given a degree? Inconsistencies and gaps in the logic abound in most religions, not just those two.

Yet further reasoning is that a believer has faith because they are "called" or "have their eyes opened" (or however it is described by a particular group). If one does not have their eyes opened, how are they supposed to believe? Thus, there is no point in attempting to believe if you are not called; if you are called then you would believe and the problem is dealt with. In effect, you cannot change something, so allow it to either change or not change as it will. "Can't win, don't try, wait for a consolation prize".

Scientific or imperical proof requires recreation of events by controlling certain factors, and since God cannot be controlled or predicted it is impossible to aquire proof which would suit these methods.

Answer 2

A better question is why people believe that God does exist.

For the most part, people believe in a god for one of two reasons. One, that they have been brought up in a community that convinces then of God. Secondly, that they are afraid of the consequences of not having a God.

Young children will believe what they are told without question almost without fail. Young children need to survive, and if they questioned what they were told by ignoring them, then children would NOT stay away from the cliff face, and NOT keep away from the fire. If children questioned what they were told by their parents, then they would surely injure or kill themselves. Therefore, humans are programmed to believe what they are taught at an early age, so that we may survive. If we are brought up with the idea of God taught to us, we will believe it and may well forever be stuck in this belief.

Some people believe in a god as they fear death, loneliness or ignorance, by providing (respectively) Heaven, 'being everywhere at all times', and providing a simple yet unfounded answer to existence of life on this Earth - he made it. People may convince themselves of God so as to solve these problems.

People who do not believe in God are obviously neither of those things. They are more often than not brought up in an Atheist or agnostic community, and seek real answers or discover true beauty in science and to not need a supernatural, imaginary deity to allow then to wallow in a close-minded comfort zone.

God does not exist. There are thousands upon thousands of arguments, with provable bases, that disprove God. You merely need to scan the internet quickly to see many of them. If anyone is sitting there reading this, thinking "God does exist!" Then please, please contact me. I would genuinely love to hear from any Christians or anyone following a different faith, and listen to why you follow your religion.

Thanks.

Answer 3

Asking this question is equivalent of asking "why do people deny the existence of the tooth fairy?". People deny tooth fairies, or gods, is because there is no evidence in their favour. The burden of proof is on the ones who does believe in tooth fairies or god. It is the believers that will have to show why they believe in god, just as the believers of tooth fairy will have to justify why they believe what they do. Not believing in tooth fairy requires no justification. It is the same way with the belief in the existence of god.

Answer 4

Agnostic: Without Knowledge

Knowledge: Acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, or report

God: the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.

They must gain knowledge of God through sight, experience, or report to know that god exist.

Answer 5

People who are unsure whether God exists are known as agnostics. They know that there is no evidence for his existence, but wonder whether the strength of belief held by others means that perhaps there is something to it.

However, most people are either sure that God exists or equally sure that he does not.

Answer 6

Many people are unsure that God exists, because God chooses to remain hidden. People point, for example, to suffering, or to scientific theories of origins that do not invoke God. People may point to unanswered prayers, or to seemingly religious figures who were shown to be charlatans. People may point to imperfections in the human body, or to learned figures who declare contradictory beliefs.

More information:

There are tens of proofs for God's existence. These have been recorded for centuries and are easy to look up. However, this subject ultimately becomes one of personal belief, since our possession of free-will mandates that it be possible to put forth arguments (fallacious or not) against every one of the proofs.
Here are a few.
1) Teleological Argument: The universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of Atheism.)From the complexities of the human eye to the order and arrangement of cosmology, the voice of God is heard. God's existence is the best explanation for such design. God is the designer.Is there evidence against Evolution

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

2) Anthropic Principle: The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical. Professor Russel Stannard (a particle physicist) states: "The universe has been bent over backwards in order that intelligent life should exist...must have known we were coming."

3) Sensus divinitatus: The innate sense of the divine exists within all people. People and cultures of all time have, by instinct, sensed a need to worship something greater than themselves. No ancient societyever existed that did not believe in a supernatural power.

4) Tradition: There are events in human history which cannot be explained without God. Many people have their subjective stories that bend them in the direction of theism, but there are also historical events such as the Giving of the Torah to over two million people at Mount Sinai, which are underpinnings for the belief in God.

5) Pascal's Wager: Belief in God is the most rational choice due to the consequences of being wrong. If one were to believe in God and be wrong, there would be no consequences. However, if one were to deny God and be wrong, the consequences are eternally tragic. Therefore, the most rational choice is not agnosticism or atheism, but belief in God.

6) Logic. Why is there reality rather than nothing? Aside from God's creating it, there are only five options:
a) The universe is eternal and everything has always existed.
- Even atheists have abandoned this possibility, especially because it would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

b) Nothing exists and all is an illusion. There is no reality; there is only nothing.
- This possibility, it should be obvious, is completely self-defeating. In order to even make such a proposition, the subject has to exist in some sense. If all is an illusion, where did the illusion come from? Even the solipsist, who does not believe in the existence of other minds, has to explain the genesis of his own mind.

c) The universe created itself. This is the idea that the universe and all that is in it did not have its origin in something outside itself, but from within.
- Like with the previous two, this makes a logical absurdity. It would be like creating a square triangle. It's impossible. A triangle by definition cannot be square. So creation cannot create itself as it would have to pre-date itself in order to create.

d) Chance created the universe. The odds of winning the lottery are not very good; but given eons of time, everyone will win. While the odds of the universe spontaneously appearing are not minuscule, could it happen, given enough time?

- This option is a dishonest sleight of hand that, like "survival of the fittest," amounts to nothing, because it implies that "chance" itself has quantitative causal power.
The word "chance" refers to possibilities. It does not have the power to cause those possibilities. It is nonsense to speak of chance being an agent of creation, since chance is not a force. "What are the real chances of the universe being created by chance? Impossible. Chance is incapable of creating a single molecule, let alone an entire universe. Why not? Chance is no thing. It is not an entity. It has no being, no power, no force. It can effect nothing because it has no causal power within it. It is a word which describes mathematical possibilities which, by the curious flip of the fallacy of ambiguity, slips into the discussion as if it were a real entity with real power, the power of creativity." (R.C. Sproul, Not a Chance. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999.)

e) The universe is created by nothing. Simply put, nothing created the universe.
- The problem here is that it is either a repetition of option "a" (the universe is eternal) or fails due to the irrationality of "d." In our current universe, the law of cause and effect cannot be denied by sane people. While we often don't know what the cause of some effect is, this does not mean that there was no cause. When we go to the doctor looking for an explanation for the cause of our neck pain, we don't accept the answer "There is no cause. It came from nothing."

Now, the other side of the Question: why might people notbelieve in God?

1) Peer influence. In high school, for example, the one or two religious believers in a class may be subject to ridicule.

2) Convenience; desires. No one wants "bothersome" rules, or limitations to their personal pleasure. We see how lack of self-discipline has led to epidemic obesity, drunkenness, divorce rates, violence etc.

3) Lack of proper information. People have inaccurate notions about God, religion and belief. They've picked up tidbits, jokes, and "sound-bites," and on such solid authority they dismiss the entire topic.

4) Unfortunate experiences. Many have had personal hardships, or a harsh religious upbringing or education, and as a consequence may retain an unhappy feeling towards belief, without realizing that emotions and proofs are two different things.

5) Many think that science, and specifically Evolution, have proved that there is no God. They don't comprehend that even if Evolution was an unquestionable fact, it would not automatically follow that God isn't there. They also seem unaware that there are a significant number of highly-qualified scientists who do not believe in Evolution.

6) Intellectual laziness. Many people have simply never delved into the subject, to see if God's existence can be convincingly demonstrated.

7) Stereotyping. People call us "religious nuts," "Bible-thumpers," etc.; so the average layperson may get a negative feeling toward all belief, not realizing that he/she should first look into the existence of God in principle, before necessarily looking into religion.

Answer 7

Agnostics are aware that the existence - or otherwise - of God is unprovable. Rather than taking the atheistic position of saying that his existence is, at best, unlikely, they give religion the benefit of the doubt and therefore hold the view that his existence is unknowable.

Answer 8

We don't see any proof that cannot be explained in a non-theistic way.