Agnosticism is salvation, is it ?

We live our lives wondering about destiny, fate, luck and work but we never asked ourselves if they are really concrete concepts, is there such a thing as fate or destiny ? is there an entity holding the threads of our lives and moving us as it wishes to whatever plan it has for us ? Ugh, this question always bedazzled me, it may seem unimportant but it is crucial for a sane, healthy society to know its goal in this life, without knowing our origins we have no goal thus we turn to Darwinism and we simply become beasts feeding on each other for the sake of power and living the present, living life without a goal is like arguing Poetry, Philosophy, Art all have no meaning, there must be something I argued a long time ago but where is it ? can we prove it somehow ? can we grasp it and feel it ? If I said Yes that would be the end of so many troubles around the globe, unfortunately we just don’t know, by ´Don’t Know´ I mean we simply can’t prove or disprove it .
Given the topic of my last few posts, now feels like a good time to clarify my current position. I haven’t been trying to hide it, per se, I guess I’ve just been so caught up in discussing other things that I’ve not paused long enough to state it plainly.
After losing my faith in Islam, and with the concept of faith generally, I went through a period of time where I was unsure what I should call myself. I felt strongly that it would no longer be appropriate to use the term “Muslim”, but what was the alternative? Former Muslim? Skeptic? Agnostic? Atheist? I didn’t know.
For a while I toyed heavily with the term agnostic. I liked the fact that agnostic implies a certain humility, in the minds of most people, because frankly I’ve always considered humility to be one of the greatest virtues (and I still feel this way). At the same time, there were also things that I didn’t like about the word. some people simply see it vague and just uncertain as a term, for them it implies someone who hasn’t given much thought about belief even though I spent my entire life assessing religion and trying to understand it until I came up to the conclusion that it’s all false and has no gram of authenticity .
I also had problems with the term atheist. As a Muslim, it had always been my belief that an atheist was someone who claimed to know for sure that there was “no god”. I certainly wasn’t claiming this. In fact, at the time, it felt arrogant to me. With such a vast universe (or even multiverse!) how could tiny peons, like us, possibly claim to “know”?
As I began to investigate the terminology further, I came to realize that both people and I had been mistaken. Below I would like to share with you, what I learned, and then I will close by telling you where I stand.
Firstly, it’s important to understand (and most people don’t) that gnosticism/agnosticism and theism/atheism deal with two different spheres. The former two deal with the realm of knowledge, and the latter two with belief. “Getting” this distinction is the key, I think, to a proper understanding. Once it really clicked, for me, my remaining questions and concerns faded away rather quickly. Let’s break it down…
A gnostic — claims to know whether or not there is a god
An agnostic — claims not to know whether or not there is a god (or that we cannot know)
A theist — believes in a god
An atheist — does not believe in a god
As you may have picked up on, from the above definitions, the terms gnostic & agnostic are not mutually exclusive with the terms theist & atheist. Let’s break it down even further…
A gnostic theist — Claims to know that there is a God and believes in a god
An agnostic theist — Claims not to know whether or not there is a God, but believes in a god
A gnostic atheist — Claims to know that there is not a God and does not believe in a god (sometimes called a “positive”, “hard” or “strong” atheist)
An agnostic atheist — Claims not to know whether or not there is a God, but does not believe in a god (sometimes called a “negative”, “soft” or “weak” atheist)
Every one of us, whether we realize it or not, falls into one of these four categories (unless you have no position of any kind). Simply ask yourself, “do I claim to know whether or not there is a god?”. If your answer is “yes”, you are a gnostic; if “no”, you are an agnostic. And then, “do I believe in a god?”. If your answer is “yes”, you are a theist; if “no”, you are an atheist.
Most people don’t use this sort of dual terminology, when describing themselves, in everyday discourse (to do so would be a bit clunky). So when someone claims to be an “atheist”, for example, it simply means on its own that they lack active belief in a god. Nothing more. Contrary to popular notions, agnosticism is not a halfway point between atheism and theism. Many atheists are also agnostics and vice versa.
With that said, I am an agnostic atheist. Where do you fall on the continuum?
Written by : Amine Asri — Co-founder of Candor a magazine dedicated to understanding the philosophy of our cosmos .

