I am a post-theist. Agnosticism is really too weak a term, meaning that one is simply without belief/knowledge. Many atheistic individuals will refer to themselves as agnostic atheists. I really don't like that label.
I believe that morality is the idea we've learned throughout evolutionary history that how well one can do depends on how well one's neighbor does. We bond with each other and organize our societies socially and cooperatively.
Another way the mindset is referred to is skepticism, roughly defined as the avoidance of mystical beliefs in ideas that don't have large observably factual basis.
I simply live by a code of recognition that we know almost nothing. What we do know paints a picture of the history of the universe that makes sense, but it's a furious and coldly just universe. In this view of existence, the fact that we exist as we do is viewed as both the unlikely but also inevitable (1 out of billion billions), cosmically. A certain kind of gift, but one far too powerful to be harnessed by conscious entities.
My pragmatic issue with theism is the abstaction of love, the projection of these very humanized traits to the abstract, philosophical permanent soul (spirit) & soul parent (god) concepts. That was especially confusing to me as a child. I figured out santa didn't exist pretty quick also. I was very mad for being misled. This is one of my most vivid childhood memories.. confronting my mother about that.
Outside the philosophical points that can really go any way you feel (since the root of believing them is the concept that they are not seen or experienced in any way by mortal humans, that the mode of existence is completely beyond the perceptive tools we physically posses), I just can't take any of the other beliefs and practices of religion seriously. Here's why: it's not how I would live after a shift to belief in the permanent soul. My definition of morality remains the same. The idea that one should believe these things through faith in unseen entities, and have love for this conceptualization of a soul parent being and look forward to the related afterlife is odd to me.
I feel it is dangerous when morality is being defined by something other than a person's own critical thought. It scares me to see the religious impositions on sexuality under the banner of morality.
When I try to explain why faith never helped me, I calmly explain that the ideas of soul and soul parent just confused me as a kid, that I prayed like I was supposed to and never felt anything. I explain that I don't believe auto-sexuality or homosexuality is wrong, and that both are natural tendencies that would be unhealthy to suppress. In response they tell me it is god's plan, he made men and women to love each other only, and get married to create families. They can never quite properly explain the reason auto-sexuality is immoral, the best they can come up with is that they feel it is mistreating the body that god gave you, similar to walking on nice carpet with mud all over your shoes.
It took me all of childhood and adolescence to "notice" that I was being swept along by the suggestions of others and that I had no real good reason to trust any of their beliefs. I felt it was unethical to give birth to a child and then impose the expectation on them to believe and think exactly as you do. When I raise a child my goal will be to let them choose what they would like to believe when it comes to these intensely philosophical concepts about existence. I want them to feel they have permission to be whatever they want to be. I never felt that I was given that when raised in the expectation of the religion, being taken to church every sunday and asked to commit to god at age 8.
I felt like I had been brainwashed by the time I got older. I was bullied all my life by these people, peddling their lies alongside some mildly acceptable concepts of charitable morality. By the time I was 19 they expected me to grow up and become a peddler too, to go out to some remote part of the world on a mission.
Due to my suggestibility, I think I just didn't know how to resist it during childhood and adolescence. I do recall vehement protest as a smaller child. What I'd do is avoid getting up and getting ready to go to church. I have memories of being forced out of my pajamas and into "church clothes" in the car parked in the church parking lot.
As an adolescent I did the only thing that made sense to me- thinking. I would always engage my church teachers with questions they couldn't really answer. I always did what I felt was right and to satisfy the authority of the church entities I simply concealed my behavior with deception. They were of course very interested in the behavior of the adolescent members. You were forced to attend interviews with the head leader of your city's church group, in which you had to certify your worthiness to participate in the various rituals and to receive the various divine powers to be given to you at certain age milestones. It was very easy to simply tell them you hadn't done anything unchaste.
Once I was nearly an adult, I noticed that I didn't have to respect their authority anymore and I could finally emancipate myself from the entire system. Ever since then I've been moving along a path of free-thinking, and have arrived at the label of post-theist for a variety of reasons, the primary one being simple logic.
