There is nothing wrong with being agnostic. It is the bridge between belief and non-belief.
Approximately 43 years ago I was pursuing the same line of reasoning as you, trying to get to the essence of things. I had satisfied myself with most things but couldn't get past what I describe as a tiny bright light which seemed to be located in my chest. I could "see" it and feel it but I could not dissect it. I concluded that it was God within, as it is with all of us, and that that was the essence I was seeking.
Keep in mind that God, by definition, is boundless. Any attempt to bind Him, even a small part of Him, with scientific proof is futile for that would violate the premise of boundless. Everything we do is "inside" God as He envelopes everything. You can't reach outside Him. Content yourself with just accepting it and you will have progressed.
Within those limitations, we can occasionally learn what He did but never how He did it.
Each time God reveals Himself to us we learn how much more there is to reveal. I am in a continual state of anticipation waiting for the next revaluation and hoping that I recognize it when it comes.
Keep in mind Alamo Girl's reminder, God said I AM. That is all you need to know and the other things will be revealed.
Thanks.
That’s very reassuring.
I do this from what I call an agnostic stance because I think it’s important to go into an inquiry like this with NO PRECONCEPTIONS.
Ultimately, it has to do with the nature of knowledge and consciousness itself.
No matter how I look at it, it seems to me that science cannot adequately explain life. And as I said above, that means there is something else.
I have had discussions with BB and AG and others on other threads about the limits of knowledge. Because of Godel, we know there are things in the universe that are unknowable. They exist, but they are unknowable.
What if part of that unknowable universe is alive?
A kind of scary logical conclusion is that just because we can’t see or know about them, that does not mean that they cannot see or know about us!!
One of the problems with these kinds of lines of thought is that they are VERY BIG!!!
One of the conclusions of my essay above is that if life is made of patterns (USUALLY patterns made of matter), then nothing could stop those patterns being patters of light or patterns of sound, maybe even patterns of looped space-time.
Years ago, I stood on a mountain near Yosemite and put my hands on the bare rock and had an overwhelming feeling the rock was alive.
About a week later, I spoke with a gal I hadn’t talked with for about twenty years, who was very into climbing, and she just out of the blue, talking about her climbing experiences, said the exact same thing!
So whatever it is, it’s way, way, way bigger than us. But we ARE a small part!
One of the things I wonder about is the anthropomorphizing of God. Nobody said God has to be like man. Nobody said God has to be good or kind or loving.
I think that if the theories go to their final conclusion, it will be concluded that he IS all the things I mentioned, but maybe that’s just my belief that good triumphs over evil.
One of the things I think about life is that it is very anti-entropic in a way. So a belief in good over evil might mean a belief that the universe is somehow getting more organized over time.
That is one thing I have come to believe. That all is not yet set, that all is not predetermined. That there might be laws of nature and man and laws of the spirit that are yet to be revealed, in fact YET TO EVEN COME INTO EXISTENCE.
I don’t think physics or the hard sciences can rule out that scenario.
Anyways, feel free to be as critical as you can! It works for me because it makes me go back and review what I did/wrote and see if I missed something! (which, of course, is very likely!)
Regards,
djf