#130 Brock

“Your use of the word ‘agnostic’ is strange to me, since it literally means ‘One who is doubtful.’ There is no faith inside an agnostic. I guess I’ll just say that faith may be a requirement for your existence (and many other people’s), but it’s no requirement of mine. Atheism would be a faith of a sort, but agnosticism is simply not believing in answers that cannot be verified.”

Thank you for the thoughtful addition. I would tender that the faith inside an agnostic is the faith that, given the observable world, the question of the afterlife does not matter significantly. In other words, the agnostic says “I don’t know, so let it all work itself out–it’ll be ok, or at least as it should be.” That’s the leap of faith, that it will work out. Without that faith the agnostic quickly turns into a very serious seeker of Truth, arriving at one or another conclusion. This is why actual agnostics are very rare: they decay into either atheists, or some other religion depending on the thoroughness and honesty of their seeking phase.

Again, my conclusion is based on the observation that it is impossible to be without a faith, even if the object of that faith is not traditional.

Regards,
–JC