Agnostic?

There are many questions tied up in this. The first one is "What do you believe?" The second one is: "What is Useful to Believe?" and another one is: "What is useful to pretend to believe in Public?"

The first one is personal and you might never share this with another person your whole life. The second question actually is more involved which is actually "What is it useful to believe to stay alive?"  And the third question is also tied to this is: "What is useful for me to pretend to believe when I'm in public?"

The actual complications of all this make saying you are agnostic one of the safer things to say for example, in many colleges one might attend. However, this wouldn't be true in religious based colleges, which might make all this even more complicated and confusing for everyone than it naturally is anyway.

The reason I'm bringing this up is I lead with "What is useful to believe?" which is a much different question than all the others. The reason I lead with this question is I have had to deal with suicidal thought at times in my youth that went on for several years different times. And the problem with all suicidal thoughts is that when you are in this state it is always suicidal and potentially homicidal if you have ever studied psychology especially if you carry the testosterone of a male.

So, my point of view has most always been, "What is it useful to believe to want to continue to stay alive without harming myself or anyone else?" So, even choosing what to believe can be an act of compassion towards yourself and all life around you.

Last night my friend who considers himself to be both an agnostic and a Tibetan Buddhist (which is compatible by the way) was talking to my younger daughter who is 16. She had a bad experience at a Christian School where girls weren't nice to her because of her more eclectic point of view. Her reaction to this was to begin telling people that she was atheistic which was only a reaction to how these girls treated her in this Christian school. So, by her choosing to go to this school (which I was always against by the way) she now believes she is an atheist. But, this was also a transition school for her to go to a much better school scholastically in which most students there might consider themselves agnostic. It is also an Ivy league type of prep school where more than a few wind up going to Stanford and Harvard and other Western and Eastern types of Ivy league prestigious schools.

So, my friend was sharing with my wife and his girlfriend and both of my daughters his view on agnosticism. What I found was funny to me was that my friend, his girlfriend and my wife who were sitting on the other side of the table all had  Master's Degrees from College which is a good influence education wise on both my daughters sitting next to me.

My point of view is that when someone usually says they are Atheistic what they are really saying is that they are Anti-Christian (at least this tends to be true in Christian Countries. So, I have been counseling my daughter and trying to get her to say that she is agnostic to people rather than trying to say she is Atheistic because Christian People usually get pretty upset about this term whereas they usually can understand a young person being Agnostic because they just haven't made up their mind yet or something like that.

I recently had a talk with my 16 year old and I said that when I had had Childhood epilepsy (Blunt Trauma) which is the only kind you grow out of, that I didn't believe in God for a couple of years because: How could there be a God and how could he let this happen to me? But, I also told her that I grew out of this by age 15 when I invited God to live in my body with me and he did from then on.

I told my daughter that I have seen so many people die from suicide and alcohol and break-ups with their lovers and drugs and all kinds of combinations of problems and accidents that I sort of think that whatever it takes for people to do to stay alive and not kill themselves or others can be useful. I have just seen so much death and confusion in people in my lifetime that I know how hard it is for anyone to stay alive and sane. I think she heard me. I hope so.