What I Believe Now: Eight Agnostic Perspectives

Losing belief in God does not leave a permanent void

Because I write about my deconversion and the problems in religion, I’ve often heard the following:

“I understand what you don’t believe, but what do you believe?”

The short answer is that I don’t have any single ideology that I can point to and say “that’s what I believe.” My worldview is a combination of many ideas that make sense to me.

Let’s use this definition of belief:

To believe is to have confidence in something which is not absolutely proven.

My beliefs are the perspectives that I hold confidently, yet recognize as fallible. My strong suspicions about the nature of reality. Ideas that I live my life by, although they can’t be proven.

Humans aren’t perfectly objective and rational machines. It’s normal to have beliefs, but we do need to remember that beliefs are not facts.

I want to demonstrate that a worldview without God is not necessarily devoid of wonder and mystery. I also want to emphasize that I do not intend to speak for agnostics, atheists, or ex-religious people as a whole. We’re a diverse crowd.