"Coming from what I feel was a a strict religious community, I often felt ostracized and even guilty for having doubts and thoughts about God. I felt myself branded a heretic. It is because of this that I decided it would be very interesting if I had a place to discuss doubts anonymously. So for anyone who has ever doubted or disbelieved, Agnostics Anonymous is hear to help. Through this anonymous service, you are allowed to do something unquestionable -- question!"  

-submitted by The Anonymous 

 

     "My name is Josh and I am agnostic... "Hi Josh!".."Did I get my AA's mixed up? No? Good.."      Thought I'd make a bit of a joke there, the site needs some humor somewhere, after all. Now to business, I grew up earliest in a rather mixed religious environment in Oklahoma. My father had strictly told my grandmother that he was not a Christian, which probably came as a shock to her, and my family of 4 in the house happened to be given the freedom to choose who to go with, him or my grandma, a Southern Baptist. I always loved my grandma and since I'd have company Sunday mornings with my cousins, uncle, and aunts, I often chose to go to church Sunday mornings rather than sit at home or go to the grocery store with my dad. When I did go the the grocery instead, I would later catch flak from the relatives for staying home and breaking a commandment. The confusion between my families and their side's beliefs grew somewhat and when I saw my cousin Linden get baptized, I didn't seem to get up the guts to ask my pastor about it. Call it doubt, call it fear, I think it was a bit of both.
     Once I turned 7 my dad had joined the Navy and was required to pack up and move us all to California, separating me from my relatives and breaking my link to the Southern Baptists. I still to this day am not baptized. Even though I am back in Oklahoma now at 16, I now fall asleep during sermons (embarrasing, yes, particularly because I have been noticed doing so before and indirectly chastised by the pastor for it) and rarely attend church partly because of that.
      The last significant time I went after singing a hymn I felt an odd tingling sensation. My relatives say it was God telling me what I was missing, that could be, but it could also simply be a strong feeling of belonging. I cannot say for sure, but I lean towards the latter explanation, as I did feel like I was part of a group and later shook as many unknowns' hands as I could. A month or less afterwards, I was, at least according to my Aunt, "Saved" over the phone, but those temporary feelings of Christianity faded and I was still not baptized. Since I have my doubts, I can be called an agnostic.
      Now that I told my life story, I'll state that I have a bit of a problem with some of the Southern Baptists actions as well. The boycott of Disney goods simply because of a gay-friendly insurance policy was, to me incredibly stupid, shallow, and another example of letting one guy (a religious leader I assume) lead them around in their beliefs. The Falwell "Tinky Winky" thing is insanely ridiculous, reaffirms my belief that this guy's a grumpy old modern Puritan who not only can't take a joke (as the Falwell vs. Larry Flynt case showed) but thinks everything radiates ethical morals (as the "Tinky Winky tells kids to be gay" crap shows). Is it any wonder he has won "Asshole of the Month" in Hustler magazine (no I don't read this, too expensive <heh> but saw the movie) so many times? Things like this make me laugh and shake my head at the pitiable things these types can come up with. Well, now that I'm done rambling <though not incoherently!> I'll allow others to confess their agnostic tendencies."
 
-submitted by Josh

 

"I wanted to be a nun when I was 7. I swear, at age 7, that was my goal in life. Fortunately, that stage didn't last long. That whole Sound of Music phase would have bored me to death anyway. Now I look back on it and think, what the heck? Since then, it was a relatively easy task drifting away from religious aspects. I'd drifted my entire life from Buddhism (I remember squatting rather uncomfortably in various temples holding joss-sticks. If I moved too much, the ash from the joss-sticks would fall and burn holes in my clothing...)to Christianity and somehow to my own brand of religion -if you could call it that. Anyway, this morning, I sat in one of the dumbest lectures I've taken in my entire college life so far, waiting for the test papers to be handed out. Then I started doing something I hadn't done since high school (which probably wasn't too long ago after all): I started praying. Of course, I was praying for my own vested interest so that I'd pass the test but I hadn't bothered to do that for the past one and half years and I didn't see why I should have suddenly started again. I started wondering if it was possible to not believe in a god and simultaneously pray to one. Kind of like wanting to believe that we were placed on this earth for a reason but knowing at the same time that the best reason for you being here would probably be due to family planning. I'm not sure how to finish this up as I have no conclusion to my story --I'm still learning and will probably drift many times more. Oh dear, I don't know the meaning of agnostic."

-submitted by Joe

 

"When I was little I somehow got the idea into my head that I was going to die before I w as twenty-one. It stuck with me. When I was seventeen I read a book that changed my entire perspective on life. The opening lines of that book has become a kind of mantra for me. 'To live, first you must die. To be born again, first you must fly. To be born again, first you must fly.' On my twentieth birthday I came to the realization that I had exactly one year before my prophecy became a reality. Less than that if you look at the thought literally. I began to examine my life. I thought of all the things I had done, and all the many things I hadn't. At twenty years old I really hadn't done much to be proud of. I had one long term relationship, which ended very badly. I hadn't really gotten anywhere in school. I had an okay job that I didn't really like. And I had managed to alienate most of my friends. I smoke to much, I drink and drive, and I had been single for almost two years. Not much to be proud of there. I suddenly felt the urge to do something with my life. That lasted about an hour. To be honest, I always figured I wouldn't get this far. I had no grand plans, no ambition, no drive to really make on impression on this world. So I didn't do anything about it. Six months later I find myself wondering if my little prophecy was just an excuse to really live my life. What if I said I was going to die young so I didn't have to plan ahead? When people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would say myself. If it was a close friend I would follow that with, 'Because I am going to die before I am twenty-one, so the most important thing is to be myself.' Well, I realized tonight that I don't know who that is. I also realized that maybe I am going to die before I am twenty-one. Maybe that's when my life will really begin. Perhaps I have just been waiting. 'To truly live, first you must die.'

-submitted by Change My Name Please

 

Perhaps no one has tried harder than I to believe in a God of infinite love and wisdom. I have long felt that if such a God exists, he surely would know how to transform each sentient being into one who could enjoy beauty and goodness, though such a transformation might not take place in this sphere of existence. If this were true, life would have meaning and hope. I am personally not interested in any other kind of God. I find little evidence either in my own experience or in my observations, however, to give me confidence that such a God exists. I see around me the pain and cruelty which abound in the world. If I could be utterly convinced that God is not a fathomless abyss of love for each and for all, then I would be an atheist. As it is, I have a feeble hope, although I can not say that I believe. I think this qualifies me to be a part of agnostics anonymous.

-submitted by Jo

 

Having yesterday confessed my doubts, today, I wish to confess my faith, feeble though it is. I hope that what the German Christian theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, says is true: "What has to be called eschatological is the movement of redemption, which runs counter to evolution...this is the movement which runs from the future to the past, not from the past to the future. It is the divine tempest of the new creation, which sweeps out of God's future over history's fields of the dead, waking and gathering every last created being...In this redemption, evolution turns and becomes re-volution, in the original sense of the word. The linear time of evolution will be carried into a unique and then final eschatalogical cycle: into the return of all the pasts in the eternal aeon of the new creation of all things." I further confess that the resurrection of Christ seems as likely as not to me, simply at a logical level. I am convinced that his followers believed they saw him after his death. The change in them, their willingness to go to death, attests to that. Of course, it can be argued that, at different times, different disciples had hallucinations, or, as has been done in sensational and quite unlikely ideas, that Jesus really did not die. This is the end of the confession of my agnostic faith, the flip side of my agnostic doubt.

-submitted the following day by Jo

 

I'm not sure what kind of confession to write.I was curious as to what agnostic meant,so I pursued my curiousity.All I can say is I have my own way of thinking.My name is Amy I am 27 years old and I have been through a strange life.I believe that we are all a part of something: God,creator,energy,force,whatever you want to call it I can't give myself to one belief,one God,one way of thinking.Whose right,who's wrong,who knows," Who " is God?Who made God?What is this life?What is nothing?I can't believe in one God,one religion,who's religion is correct?Who's way of thinking is correct?Is it mans beliefs or this so called creator's beliefs.I trust myself,my experiences,my way of thinking.I have however found similiar ideas or beliefs in other peoples ways of thinking,or things that touch ground,but nothing I can totally give my soul to.I guess thats all I have to say 4 now.I hope to here from interesting people and what thoughts or beliefs they may have.

-submitted by forever misunderstood

 

My name is Sarah and I'm an agnostic. There, I actualy said it. I still can't believe I'm doing this. I grew up in a very strict but also very enthusiastic kind of church - United Pentocostal. You may have heard of us referd to as "Holy Rollers". If not, just try to imagine a cross between an Amish and a Charismatic. Even when I was a very young child I disbelieved a lot of Pentocostal doctrine, like it being a sin for a girl to wear pants or cut her hair or that no one was saved who had not recieved the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tounges. According to Pentacostal doctrine, Mother Teresa is writhing in Hell right now. But I never doubted for more than five minutes at a time that there was a God. In fact, God was my entire life. Not a small, medium, or large part of my life, but life itself. I felt called to be a missionary doctor when I was nine, and strangely enough, even when I was almost positive that my worst fears were true and there really was no God, I still felt this calling, and I still do. But I'm anticipating. It was near the begining of my senior year of high school (I am a freshman in college now) that I went through "the dark night of the soul". It was as if someone literaly reached inside of me and turned my belief in God off like a light. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I literaly lost nearly twenty pounds in about three months. I asked everybody I knew to tell me something, anything, that could prove that there really was a God, but no one could. My parents were begining to think that I was possesed, and I don't blame them, the thought had occured to me, too. But for every Christian explanatian (not just for my doubt, but fore everything) there was an equally valid secular explanation. "Oh, sure", a part of me would say, "how else are you going to get people to believe something that makes no sense than by telling them that if you doubt it, they are possesed, or rebelling against God, or going to Hell? Or by telling them to 'lean not uinto their own understanding'? Or that 'it's a mystery, simply beyond human intelligenc'?". And so on and so forth. For three months I was in a constant daze while my mind spun around like a dog chasing it's tale. I couldn't even kill myself because the new-found thought that there might be nothing after death terrified (if you'll excuse the pun) the HELL out of me. I think that that was the worst thing of all, suddenly knowing that dying was simply going to sleep and never waking up. I couldn't stand it. The thought made me cold all over with horror. It seemed to me that if I was one day going to cease to exist, if I would never even know that I had once existed; it would be as if I had never existed at sll. It made me feel that my existence now was somehow not real, because at some future date it would be erased. Perhaps if any of you watch StarTrek and have seen a few of those episodes involving "quantum mechanics", you will understand what I am trying to say. I guess after about three months of constant terror and despair my adrenals finaly gave out, because the mysterious "spiritual vacuum" that had enveloped me for the past three months disapeared as suddenly as it came. But the doubts did not go away that easily. I could again feel the "presense" of God, but I was no longer sure that that was what it really was. What if it was only my own unconsious mind that I had taken for God all these years? And I have still not been able to find the answers to these questions. I call myself the Seeker because that is basicaly what I am, seeking answers. And also, I suppose, to distinguish myself from the "I don't know whether or not there's a God and I don't care" type of agnostic. Because I DO care, I just can't help it. I probably think more about God now than I did before I began to doubt His existence. I suppose that it is impossible for a mere human being to find the "absolute truth" (assuming there IS an absolute truth) through any amount of qustioning or study, but I have to try; what else can I do? Sometimes I wish that I could stop caring and stop torturing myself over questions that simply cannot have a definite answer in this life, and be "fat, dumb, and happy", but I can't help feeling that to do so would be to relinquish my humanity. I know that this confession has been rather heavy compared to the others, sorry, I don't mean to bum you out.

-submitted by Seeker

 

My name is Sarah and I'm an agnostic. There, I finally admitted it. I've already added a comment to your message board on "God and Suffering" under the alias "Seeker", but then I felt that it was kind of rude to enter the conversation without introducing myself, so here I am. I call myself the Seeker because that's basicaly what I am right now; I'm definately not the "I don't know whether or not there's a God and I don't really care" type of agnostic. This is very difficult for me because I grew up in a pretty strict but also very enthusiastic religious atmosphere; I was a United Pentacostal. Perhaps you've heard of us refered to as "holy rollers". If not, try to imagine a cross between an Amish and a Charismatic. And I was serious about it, too. Oh, I had my doubts about it being a sin for a girl to wear pants or cut her hair, and I wasn't entirely certian that everyone who died without recieving the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues was going to Hell either. After all, that would mean that Mother Teresa is writhing in Hell right now. But it never occured to me that there might not really be a God at all until the begining of my senior year of high school (I'm a college freshman now). It was as if someone suddenly reached inside of me and simply turned the swith marked "God" off. For three months I went through this "dark night of the soul", and in those three months I lost 20 lbs. The worst thing was the sudden thought that perhaps when we die we simply go to sleep and never wake up, period. For some reason I simply couldn't bear that thought. It seemed to me that if I was going to cease to exist some day, then when that happened it would be (from my point of view, which would itself be non-existant) as if I never had existed. And if at some future date I would never have existed, then my existence now seemed to me unreal, as if I didn't really exist at all. Perhaps you StarTrek fans will understand the quantum mechanics of what I am trying to say; I don't know how to express it any better than that. I tried every argument I knew to prove to myself that there was a God, but they all seemed silly and shallow. "Just admit it", I thought to myself, "you're just afraid to die". And I was. Whenever I talk to other agnostics or atheists about this, they all seem suprised that the thought of oblivian scares (if you'll excuse the pun) the HELL out of me. I mean, am I more cowardly than most people? Or do most people just try not to think about it? Maybe it was just because I had never really had to deal with death before, since I had always thought that it was just a passage from this world to the next. Anyways, I guess that after three months of constant terror and despair my adrenals gave out, because just as suddenly as it came, the "spiritual vacuum" I was in vanished. But the intellectual arguments against the possibility of God didn't. I could "feel" God again, but I was no longer entirely sure that it was God that I felt. And so I am still trying to figure it out. I know that this isn't the kind of problem a person can just "solve", but what else can I do? This isn't just an interesting philosophical question for me; God was (to be honest, I guess He still is) my entire life. But I need to find some answers before I can honestly and intelligently say that I believe in His objective existence. That's why I'm here.

-submitted by Seeker

 

i am agnostic because sometimes i believe in a higher force but usually i dont. i dont believe in an after life, i only believe in this one and that thought has motivated me to make something of myself. i cant bear the thought of being forgotten after i die. i want to be remembered forever, which in itself is a sort of subsitute for heaven and hell and eternity. my whole life could be summed up in the words "i want to believe". but believing is hard and in the formal way it feels false. and when it comes right down to it i would rather not believe than be false. well...

-submitted by Sadistic bastardus

 

Hi,My name is Nancy. I was born in Ecuador South America. I confess there has been times in my life that I have doubted my believes. When I was twelve years old, I asked my self what was the reason for me to exist. I looked my self in the mirror and wondered if there was something behind or beyond this form. I looked up and affirmed that if there was a God, something that was higher, this God will show me of its existence and help me to understand about life. I come from a catholic background and at fifteen I wanted to be a nun, but my mother didn't let me. When I was twenty, I had a near death experience. I went into a dark, static peaceful place. I wanted to surrender to death because it felt save and truly it felt good, but the fear of dying came to me when I thought of my kids and husband. I felt a presence there. Someone was observing me and listening to my thoughts. I cry to this presence not to let me die because my family needed me. I came back to the operation table and I started to breathe again. According to the doctor, it was a miracle that I was alive since my heart and breathing had stop, and they were unable to help me. Even after this experience, I had my doubts. I thought may be was just the working of my brain because of the lack of oxygen. Two years later, I was going through a personal crisis in my life. I screamed that it was not possible the existence of God with so much suffer and pain in this life. After I had cry desperately for about half an hour I screamed and said, I don't know if there is a God. If there is a God, I don't know what or how is this God. If there is a higher power in the universe, a creator, God if you truly exist, you will helping me in this situation by doing specifically what I ask you to do. It has to be done before the end of this day and I will not move a finger to make this happen. I will stay here in this room and wait for all this to happen. I had the complete confidence that I will either receive an answer or not, and through this proof I will see clear. I asked for three things to be done in a certain way. Before the end of the day by 8:00pm the three things that I had ask for happened exactly the way I asked. After this, I have experienced throughout my life other amazing experiences and miracles. Although I firmly believe in the existence of God in a non traditional way (I don't have a religion), there are times in my life were doubts come. It is okay to doubt what you don't know. It is okay to doubt even when you know because our civilization has a lot of old conditioning and programming to release. We are the creators of our destiny whether we do it knowing or not knowing. God is everywhere because God is everything. God is in its journey of self-recognition trough everything and as everything. "The sacred and the mundane" are God's experiences. We are God. Individuals and unique as forms because that is what God is all about, creativity, and imagination. In reality we are one mind, one energy, one life force. This is my truth. Whatever your truth might be, I respect it. I embrace your path to self-discovery.

-submitted by inner

 

My name is Winifred Plumleigh Preston and I d----- dure I am agnostil, freethinker, atheist or whatever anyone wants to judge me. I just finished a battle I had this morning with one of those bible thumping off the wall interpreters of what civilizatiion is and what it should be. In his business he cheats, but he is a CHRISTAIN and has been saved! He is a bigot, but anyone who murmurs anythiing about his beliefds or faith is condemed to hell. He is uneducated and refuses to read anything that might smack of reason or logic. I am a baptized and confirmed Episco-pal; I like the church and have no partilcular gripes about it. Gradyually, I turned inot a free thinker and while I faced a damed world, damned by ignorance4, damned by dishonesty; damned in all ways that Christains claime to be wrong. IU am silck to death of b bigotry and judgments by the spirtualists trumet. My God, these people VOTE!!! If there is a God...please help these thoughtless, smug believers.

-submitted by [left blank]