Day 11 – the impracticality of agnosticism (III)
If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful… Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose Biblical Christianity. –WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
Given the impracticality of agnosticism, it would seem the prudent course to remain a professing agnostic for as little time as possible. Admittedly, it is not uncommon to spend some time as an agnostic while sorting out the evidence for and against God's existence. After such a sorting has been made, however, it does not behoove the seeker to tarry there any longer. The time has arrived to stop balancing on the fence railing and leap to one side of the pasture. The time has come to begin to exist as either a theist or an atheist.
The agnostic, of course, must make this leap based on evidence that is less than certain. But to choose one side or the other he must do, for to remain on the fence railing forever is lunacy. For one thing, nothing ever gets accomplished while straddling the fence. The work is done and the harvest gathered in the field. Secondly, it is impossible to stay on the fence 100% of the time. Every now and then a fence-straddler loses his balance and falls to the ground, sometimes into one field and sometimes into the other. He appears quite pitiful to workers on either side as he goes through his cycles: falling to one side, climbing back on the railing, then falling again to one side or the other. At one moment he seems to be a theist but later, when he plunges to the other side, an atheist. His existence serves no practical purpose whatsoever.
The agnostic, therefore, must make a decision and move away from the fence into one of the two fields. Only there can he have a meaningful existence. Only there will his life begin to make sense. Even there he can gaze occasionally at the laborers on the other side and, if the work yonder begins to seem more attractive, proceed to that field to work a while. You can rest assured, however, that in due time one side or the other will become his permanent home. That is how real life works, isn't it? We make choices, act upon them, reevaluate them, and finalize them through trial and error in the fields of life. Nothing is accomplished if nothing is chosen.1
Daily Quotation
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 1984), 72.
1Agnosticism, in fact, is so impractical that virtually every person I have read who espouses it is indistinguishable from an atheist. The agnostic Bertrand Russell is a classic example. He professes to be an agnostic, but his rhetoric and outlook are nothing short of atheistic. There is seldom a hint in his writings of the ambiguity he claims to possess about God. While maintaining that he spends his life straddling the fence, he speaks as one who has decided to work in the "field" of the atheists. I am sure there are some agnostics as well inside the church who appear in every respect to be theists. You would never guess they are unsure about God, because they decided long ago to inhabit and embrace the theist’s world. They, like all agnostics, have found it impossible to remain on the fence. The daily lives of agnostics, therefore, are witness enough to the fact that agnosticism is not livable.
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