Video: Agnosticism & Labels

Jonathan from Spritzophrenia and I have begun meeting up recently across Skype. Along with another friend of mine we have some possible future projects in the works but here is a conversation that we had about "Agnoticism and Labels". Think of this as a small Phrenic Philosophy (or Spritzophrenia) teaser topic:

[Video: Jonathan and I discuss Agnosticism and Labels in religious conversation.]

I'm certain that we will do more of these. In the future we may also improve the videos with transcripts or other things. I'm happy to receive any feedback from anyone: what you liked, what you didn't like, and what changes you might like to see happen.
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Edit: 12-Aug-2010

Due to some feedback over on Jonathan's blog, I have included the following transcript of our chat.

Transcript of Agnosticism & Labels (J= Jonathan, I = myself)

J

I don’t know how to characterise you and that’s for you to say.

I

(Laughs)

J

But yeah, I fluctuate between being... you know, I’ve had times I’ve been like, “Atheism is the way to go” and times when I’m kind of quite fluffy and spiritual...

I

Yeah

J

...although I’ve always had a strong kind of intellectual bent. I’m just trying to find my way through the world, I guess.

I

Yeah well, I mean, I could definitely describe myself in the same way I think... with the mix. Yeah.

J

Yeah. The term agnostic suits me quite well.

I

Mm. It wasn’t that long ago where I thought that... I think I had a fairly poor understanding of it and I just thought that it was kind of the cop out position, you know. 

J

Yes, yes.

I

(Laughs) But it has actually helped me to do a little bit more philosophy about that kind of thing and, like, even though I don’t really like the works by Immanuel Kant at all. Like I reacted quite strongly against them when I read Kant. But I still think he has a few good points and he taught me to appreciate some of the issues to do with, like, transcendency. The idea of “What is transcendent?” and so on. To see the difficulty in making transcendent claims some of the time, that you have to be pretty sure, you know? So sometimes I think that “I don’t know” is not a cop-out answer, that sometimes I think it’s a valid answer.

J

Okay, yeah. Yeah, certainly your comment about people thinking that being agnostic is a cop-out position: I used to think that too and now I’m much more comfortable with it being a valid position to have. The problem is that it’s perceived as fence-sitting so you get flack from both sides...

I

Yeah, yeah.

J

...People who are strongly committed to a belief system kinda go, “Well come over here and join us”, and the people who are strongly committed to atheism say, “No! Come over here and join us”, so you kind of get flak from both sides which can be a bit uncomfortable.

I

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think that what you said is definitely true. But the whole idea of people want to be able to draw a line in the sand, I wonder whether that’s convenient for them rather than fair to the other people. Like, some of the time I think that the labels only serve to, sort of, help the Label-Maker rather than being accurate or generous to the other person that they’re labeling.

J

Labels are only useful up to a point and I think actually listening to other people, saying, “Okay, you’ve labeled yourself this, so I’ve got a general idea of what you might think” but actually listening {unclear} because, you know, most of us are probably a bit inconsistent. But that is one of the problems with ideas, being that ideas are perfect.