Agnostics need to focus on spirit more than on God

 
God is spirit.
 
A spirit is an entity that has no parts or shape. It is non-material. It is not like a gas for gas has molecules and parts and ingredients. When people think of spirits they think of something untouchable or undetectable like gas. This error leads to them failing to see how strange the notion of spirit is. It is totally unlike gas.

 

The first problem with spirits is that everybody assumes they are bodiless persons.  Why not bodiless chemicals? Why not immaterial forces?  Why not bodiless robots?  Spirits are so different from embodied people and have no eyes or ears so why are we not calling them bodiless robots?  There is no justification for the notion that if spirit exists that a spirit can be classed as a person.

We think our minds are not material things but like spirits. The first and main thing you will ever experience is your own mind. You cannot measure it or weigh it so it is like a ghost living in your skin. This causes the intuition that there are other immaterial or spiritual minds. But this intuition is caused by an error. If a primitive brain was made in a lab and had an eye it would think there was nothing to it but sight and would be unaware of being physical. It would experience existence as if there was sight but no eyes. It would feel like a ghost just because it cannot know or sense that it is a material being.

 

Believers in spirit look into their minds and think their thoughts are spirit. They think their thoughts are spirit because nobody can measure a thought. But they only think it. We cannot measure or weigh a thought but that does not mean they cannot be measured or weighed. It only means we cannot do it.
We experience thoughts as if they were not spirit. For example, when you see a cube in your mind's eye it looks real. It is not an entity without parts and without shape. But where is it? There is no evidence that it exists except in your inner perception. Science says there is no cube inside your head so people conclude that it was some non-material force, your soul or spirit, that was able to create the image. You will notice that you need second-hand evidence that the cube is not "real". Even if you are spirit, you cannot know this by experience. You have no direct evidence that spirit exists. You deduct it from the fact that the cube you see in your head is scientifically unverifiable and nobody but you knows you see it. But it would be wiser to say that you don't know how you could see the cube in your head and leave it at that. Attributing it to the agency of your spirit is just making a guess. In fact, spiritual powers making a shape would be a contradiction. Spirit by definition is formless.

 

I can watch the activities of my mind without getting involved. In meditation, instead of emptying your mind you simply let the thoughts happen. You do not make them happen. You take the role of a spectator and not a participant. It is said that this proves that you must be a spiritual being. The believers say you are your mind and you take the role of spectator of your brain. You have your brain working by itself as you look on as a spectator! But this denies that the experience could be an illusion. Any experience can be. It may be that you turn off your perception that you are a participant.

 

If your brain can work independently of you then surely it is not you? It is not as good as you? The body is nothing compared to the spirit. That would be degrading your own body and the bodies of others.

 

It is better to see the spectator role as play-acting. Your brain is not really working on its own. If your mind can do this big illusion, then imagine how easy it is for it to make you feel you have free will even if you don't! Free will could be or is a simpler illusion.

 

You cannot know if you are spirit or a soul. You can only guess that spirit exists. You cannot know it or believe it for there is no evidence. So you cannot know if God, who is spirit, exists. You cannot even know if the concept of spirit makes sense because you cannot experience spirit. Those who say they experience the Holy Spirit actually mean they feel good and feel an influence in their hearts. But their religion tells them that what they feel is the result of the Spirit's work and not the Spirit himself or itself.

 

If God is an infinite spiritual intelligence, then why say he is a person? Why not say he is a calculator? Or a computer? If a spirit entity can exist, surely a spirit calculator or computer can exist too. Saying God exists is not an option. Saying a spirit entity that calculates might be. Or it is a better option.

 

Even if your mind is spirit, your intelligence comes from your brain. Thus to sever the two means you lose intelligence. There is no evidence that it is possible for a spirit to be intelligent. To say spirit is outside time and space so that normal rules do not apply to it is just intellectual evasion. If it isn't then nothing is intellectual evasion. Belief in intelligent spirits is superstition. If you can call God an intelligence then why not call him a unicorn? If spirit intelligence is possible then so are spirit unicorns!

 

If God is intelligent, intelligent means he holds infinitely unimaginable information and processes it, then why not say there is a spiritual universe that turned into the material one? Religion will answer that God is simple for he has no parts. But if he is still able to be intelligent then clearly something complicated can be simple so the spiritual universe theory is possible - if you assume spirit is possible.

 

Agnostics should start with the question if spirit is real or if it exists. Agnosticism should not be first and foremost concerned about God's existence but the existence of spirit. That is because God cannot exist if spirit is impossible or absurd. Belief in spirit ticks all the boxes for reification. Reification is when abstract concepts are mistaken for something real and substantial. Even if the reification were not proven to be taken place, it might be and that is enough for concern.

 

We must remember that Christianity borrowed teachings from the Greek philosophers. They believed in some force that was not a being but being and the source of all things. This is really the mistake of thinking that an idea is a thing. Being exists but it does not follow that being is God. If something has no parts is it really there? Are we not mistaking an abstract idea for something real?

 

Belief in spirit is based on pretending you know it is possible when you don't. You don't because you can't. Belief in spirit is based on arrogance.

 

Agnosticism about spirit makes the same error in assuming it is possible.

If Agnosticism is half-belief in spirit then it is arrogance for belief in spirit is arrogant nonsense.