Soooo, you want to be an agnostic...

I am currently an agnostic/soft atheist. However, I grew up in the Southern Baptist church and in college I was a fairly dedicated evangelical Christian. I was involved with an on-campus group, and I made some amazing friends in that group.

A couple of months ago, I joined Facebook to try to reconnect with people from H.S. and college. As one might expect, a fair number of those folks are still committed Christians. While I have ‘Agnostic’ in my little religious affiliation label in my profile, it hasn’t come up much.

A couple days ago, a guy I’ll call Kenny emailed me through facebook. Kenny and I were friends in college, we met through the aforementioned Christian group. Kenny was a couple years younger than I but we got along well. I remember talking with him about his faith and trying to act as a good example for him. Fast forward to the present.

His email was about his own struggles with his faith and inquiring about my agnosticism and how I came to that point. I offered him an explanation of how I went from There to Here and why, without trying to attack his faith or whatever remnants there were of it. And I offered him encouragement that it isn’t an easy thing to struggle with, but that if he needed to talk, I was glad to do so, regardless of where he winds up.

It’s really an odd situation though. It’s almost deja vu back to my evangelical experiences. I shared my “testimony” and I’m trying to offer him a non-judgemental resource to figure it out. He’s made that critical first step of rejecting the bible as the inerrant word of God. But he’s dealing with the mental chaos of rejecting the foundation of one’s entire life, because you’ve put it to the test and found it isn’t true. I’ve been there, and it isn’t fun or easy, and I’m sure he’ll encounter resistance on the way.

So what I want to do for him is provide that resource, like I mentioned, without trying to push him any particular way. To that end, to folks on the SD have any recommendations of online sites or books resources to point him at? I’ve shared with him already that many people have gone through what he’s going through and came out with a sense of peace on the other end, and I want to provide him the tools to do the same. Any recommendations will be appreciated. Also, if you want to share your own experience in this regard, being able to point him to the thread would be great.

I think to give up your religion or belief in god is daunting for some. They have a fear that without religion giving people morals and rules to live the only other option is chaos and greed. Non-believers only look out for themselves since there is no reason not to.
I’d suggest he look through the wikipedia entry for “humanism”. While I’m not encouraging him to become a humanist the principles describe fairly well how one can have morals, know right and wrong, treat others with respect, and live to promote the value of human life.

The two books that I would suggest are Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, and Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World.

While I imagine that these might fall under the category of ‘trying to push him any particular way’ they were the two most important books in my transition from evangelical Christianity to atheism. Not only are they both fantastically written, they are also non-judgmental (especially Sagan) and both serve very well to replace the sense of wonder and peace gained through religion with a similar sense (and much more peaceful in my experience) gained instead from reason and the natural world.

You aren’t providing testimony or evangelizing. You’re sharing with him something he asked you for: your experience and insight into something he’s struggling with. By your own admission you aren’t trying to steer him anywhere or sell him on anything, just to help him. And that’s good of you.

I might suggest some Michael Shermer, though I can’t think of anything in particular that suits. But Shermer is a non-believer how has no particular beef with religion (and was also an evangelical at one point) and takes a very academic look at things. He also, in one of his books, talks about his own deconversion, but unfortunately I can’t recall which book it was. I hope it’s not in “Why People Believe Weird Things” because that title is a little off-putting for this purpose.

I don’t think you should offer an atheism books - unless he asks. The Sagan book is far more positive than the others. But it sounds like the best thing you can do is role model. Tell him how you solved the problems he is going through, how you are still moral, how you still find a reason to get up in the morning. I think that is his real problem, not logical arguments against religion.

Hmmm. Your friend has doubts about being doubtful, and is seeking guidance to be more doubtful?

Honestly, this is a real poser for me.

Tell your friend, if he has doubts, he is already an agnostic.

For me, agnosticism is not about proving certain religions wrong, but realizing that there are good things in all of them. Doubt enables you to see and understand more, not less, of the world – your world view and mode of understanding is no longer limited to the tunnel vision of any particular religion. It’s not so much “Ooh, look, I’m smarter now because I found all these little errors in the Bible!” but rather “The Bible is one view. I wonder how many other valid ones there are?”

To that end, I’d suggest Unitarian Universalist fellowships if he wants a smoother transition from a church-like fellowship into the larger world of (possibly secular / non-spiritual) atheism or agnosticism.

The thing that has helped me the most as an agnostic is remembering to keep my eyes – and more importantly, my heart – open and to realize that there can be an understated but nonetheless monumental beauty in the world even without a deity. Explore. There’s no rush. Some day his journey might even lead him back to Christianity, who knows?

Been there, done that, got the same t-shirt. I found out religion was a lie when I was in my teens, and you would have thought I was advocating baby rape whenever I said something along those lines.

The best way is for him to dig it up by himself. It won’t be easy. Here’s something that I ask (challenge, actually) others to do.

Take any three religions, widely separated by time and/or distance. I like to use Christianity, the human sacrifices of the Aztecs and the Greek or Norse pantheon. Substitute as desired.

Analyze them from a social and historical perspective and answer these questions:

  1. What are the common goals of the religions?
  2. What are the common means used by the religions to accomplish these goals?

After you have come up with the answer, do the same for any other religion. The answers will be the same.