Why I'm a Rationalist.

Because currently, it makes sense to me.

Agnosticism has been described here and elsewhere as "fence-sitting," and as charges go, it's difficult to refute. Human beings are social creatures, and part of a society is identifying oneself with a group; refusal to identify with one quantifiable group is seen in turns as lazy or stubborn or as part of some contrived iconoclasm.

Doubtless this is true for some agnostics. In a world where "atheist" is getting to be commonplace, agnostic sets you apart. You're different. Neither Bible-thumper nor a mascara-wearing Hot Topic tragedy, you're your own creature entirely! And you don't even have to think about it to join the club, all you have to say is you don't know and shrug it off. No difficult questions, no entrance exam, no obligation beyond the statement of your own indifference.

Except there is.

Is a person Christian just because they claim to believe in Jesus, whether they walk the Carpenter's footsteps? How do they know? Are they atheists if they say they believe in nothing but the tangible, though they've never found themselves in fear for their lives and suddenly comforted by the power of a prayer? Does belief - even a belief in nothing - mean anything deeper than a social label, if it's never challenged?

And so we come to the Metalkort, arena of ideals.

There is a tangible universe around us. We have senses (designed/evolved) to accept input from this world, and a brain (designed/evolved) to interpret that input. That this universe exists and that we exist within it is taken for granted, drug-fueled speculation regarding consensus hallucinations notwithstanding.

Within this tangible universe, there exist a great many schools of thought regarding its origins. Some insist to a greater or lesser degree that with enough effort, everything can be broken down into human-scale understanding, quantified mathematically, and rendered explicable. Many (if not most) of the other schools attribute our existence to the will of a being largely or completely beyond our comprehension, whose motives are open to broad speculation and whose methods are, in essence, forever denied to us by the insurmountable difference in the nature of our being. There's god, and there's man.

Here's the rub: I would like to embrace the wholly-scientific view of the universe. Yes, it lacks comfort in the promise of a personal eternity, but on the other hand I like the idea that mankind might eventually understand everything. I look back at what we've achieved technically in my own flyspeck lifespan, and project that forward across geologic time, and on the whole I'm very rah-rah about our species. We can do anything...assuming that "anything" is within our grasp, which presupposes a rational, human-scalable, understandable universe.

I would like to, but I can't entirely, because I've caught myself more than once hoping there's a God. I caught myself praying when I was riding out a tornado under a cabin in the middle of the woods. I wished there was a hell awaiting the 9/11 hijackers. I've shed tears at the searing blast of the crescendo of Handel's Messiah. None of these thoughts or actions can be comfortably stuffed into a rational cubbyhole, because despite all logic there's a part of me that fervently wants to accept there's something else.

So here I remain, on the fence. Torn between a desire for a scientifically-explicable universe and a fantastic unknowable; two belief systems which seem irreconcilable, each with its own compelling draw.

Thoughts?