Agnostics
You know, when it comes right down to it, give me a good honest atheist any day--at least there's hope there. An atheist is every bit as religious as a theist, and even though they may not admit it, their system relies as much on faith as any theistic system. There is a leap of faith to say either "There is a God," or "There is no God," because neither proposition is ultimately provable to someone who doesn't accept proofs beyond the empirical.
But an agnostic is truly the opposite of a Theist or atheist. A person who truly maintains that they cannot/do not know and who seems to demand some sort of sign cannot be reasoned into belief. God Himself could appear to such a person and demand belief (and assuming His operations are as usual--open to free will) they would find a way to explain this as "a morsel of underdone beef, or a fragment of an underdone potato."
Agnostics have no real ability to believe. They have deliberately cut themselves off from belief, probably due to past traumas related to humans they have trusted. They have, in some sense truncated part of their humanness--the price they pay for freedom from a certain kind of pain. They cannot or will not see this themselves, but they have performed a sort of radical spiritual blinding with the notion that they will not be hurt by trusting again.
What amazes me is that they do continue to be hurt. They wonder why people do what they do. They demand accountability from on high for every minor infraction. The "boss" be he human or divine should be controlling all the factors that negatively impact them. They blindly trust in the perfect operation of human institutions and gawp when politicians are shown to be corrupt. They are outraged at corporate indiscretions. I always wonder why. You don't believe in anything at all, why would you believe that people would behave themselves in the absence of any belief at all?
Agnosticism is a tough nut to crack. But falling back on some favorite verses, we know that , "With God, all things are possible." When we find someone who does not respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, we should pray hard and long--that our prayers will increase the resonance of the spirit within them to crack that hard exterior and to open up the hardened heart.
