Why are you agnostic?

TracyRN said:
I would like to hear from ex-Christians who are now agnostic. Why are you agnostic instead of atheist?

Does any part of your Christian background play a part in you not choosing atheism?

Thank you.
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I chose agnostic as apposed to atheist partly because atheists that I knew where kind of defensive in the way that some Christians I knew were. It's not like I really chose not to believe, it's just that the only people that I knew that were Christian used Christianity to reaffirm their personal ideas and church was usually swayed by emotion not what's in the bible. To me, I don't care what someone believes as long as it doesn't negatively affect others or themself it's fine. There's too much my way or the highway in both the atheist and christian communities which doesn't really set right with me, so I don't participate in either.
 
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Oops. There didn’t seem to be anyway to follow what I quoted with a comment so it looks like I’ll have to make my comment on your excellent post here.

I entirely agree. It is challenging to find a forum of either type where group-think and conformity isn’t rampant. What is wrong with both groups is they’re composed of people and we people have a hard time not letting the personal bleed into our best efforts at reason. That wouldn’t be so bad if we acknowledged the difficulty and gently nudged one another when we went wrong. But what more often happens is we get angry and act as if it should be easy to do so it must just be dishonesty or ill will that is to blame.
 
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thatquietchick said:
I chose agnostic as apposed to atheist partly because atheists that I knew where kind of defensive in the way that some Christians I knew were. It's not like I really chose not to believe, it's just that the only people that I knew that were Christian used Christianity to reaffirm their personal ideas and church was usually swayed by emotion not what's in the bible. To me, I don't care what someone believes as long as it doesn't negatively affect others or themself it's fine. There's too much my way or the highway in both the atheist and christian communities which doesn't really set right with me, so I don't participate in either.
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I can definitely relate to what you're saying. As MarkD brought up in his last post, a lot of the atheist and Christian side amounts to group think. It seems that taking sides matters more than getting to the truth and so it becomes just like what we see in politics between Repubs. and Democrats.

Don't get me wrong, I don't go out of my way to be a non-conformists. I try to agree where I can (based on good reasons and evidence), but at the same time I see no point in always defending one side over the other when they are both the same - both tend to behave dogmatically almost as if you can never stray from their orthodoxy.
 
As an agnostic, I can say that I want certainty. When I find myself in the gray areas, it's not that I want to stay there (although there are some positives, even similar to spirituality) but rather it's because I'm not convinced on a lot of the issues that people view as being black-and-white. I see holes, assumptions, jumping to conclusions, politics; basically, I see a lot of things being passed off as knowledge or certainty that is really nothing of the sort.

I think for other agnostics, there may be some sort of fulfillment in exploring the unknown and even remaining there.
 
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