An agnostic would not find it natural to urge anyone else to adopt their way of thought as there is no way an agnostic can provide sufficient rational grounds to argue that human reason is incapable of deriving truths without rational ground. An agnostic doesn't actively oppose that which cannot be proven, because then (s)he would not be truly agnostic. I don't think what you describe as an active agnostic can exist, it would be a paradox. There's a difference between actively opposing the seemingly un-provable, and to never personally accepting something equally un-provable as the absolute truth.
I think we're more in agreement than not but what I'm saying is that it IS possible for a person to feel that others should also not accept anything that's not fully proven until has been and may argue that it's the stance one should adopt towards religion because we cannot prove anything about religions to be true, which would be an active agnosticism, while a passive one would not feel any need to urge others to adopt the same outlook. Whether you do urge others to your views, in any religious stance, is probably somewhat based on the content of the religious stance. Active religious promotion is more common because religions commonly include the belief that people must be of that religion or they await a terrible afterlife so if you love people, you'll push them into your beliefs, or that people who aren't of your beliefs are a danger to the world and an affront to your deity and thus must be punished.
But to say that a person cannot urge others to also adopt a more agnostic approach or wouldn't because its not compatible with agnosticism I think is overlooking how many of us actually are. A scientist or professor is often a great example of an active agnostic, urging others to only rely on that which we can show is likely to be true with solid evidence. The opposition to religions from an agnostic is the opposition they have for anyone adopting views without 'enough' rational cause to. This differs from an active Atheist, who urges that we completely abandon the belief in the possibility that a religion is accurate, whereas an active Atheist would say we shouldn't deny that religions may have some answers, just that we shouldn't assume them correct unless we find proofs to support those claims.
It's a good argument within your definition of agnosticism, but an ism is an ideology, ideologies are not arrived at without relevant deliberate though preceding it.
Whether a person considers something or not doesn't mean they don't have an adopted outlook. They wouldn't have come to that outlook by choice, perhaps, but they still have an outlook, whether they even realize they do or not. I see, in this statement, what you are arguing, but being the adopted belief of being unsure, whether it comes with deliberate consideration or complete ignorance really doesn't make it any different except that deliberate consideration makes it possible to become, as you say, an ideology rather than just a default. I suppose by your constraint that an ism must be an ideology resulting from consideration, then what would you say is the religion of those who don't know because they've never considered it, assuming you MUST be able to label them with an adopted religion? For that's really the only reason that we really do need Agnosticism and Atheism to be actual religions at some point, to reflect 'I don't know' and 'I believe no religion is correct and find religious thought offensive'.
Your example is that someone for the first time in his/her life is forced to choose between multiple complex stories about the world which (s)he has never heard the likes of before that day, and declare one of those stories as part of his/her identity.
Actually, no I'm thinking more of the person that is not even queried, unless you want to consider it that they were mind-scanned to find out what they think. They don't have to be shown their options and in fact, it's likely they would immediately shift their religious perspective if any options were to present themselves, particularly if they'd never given the subject previous consideration. They'd immediately weigh out how they feel about each and make a more informed decision. I'm saying that Agnosticism MEANS undecided and that if nobody ever knew they had a choice to decide on, the default is obviously undecided. It can become an ideology if someone wishes to hold on to that as their state of mind, even after choices have been placed before them, and regardless of your religious viewpoint, you really can't argue against there being some wisdom in that.
I don't think anyone is born agnostic, I think most are born as undecided individuals in every and all ways.
Which, by the definition I'm assigning Agnostic, means they are born agnostic. I see the difference you're making but the distinction between actively choosing (as an ideology) to remain undecided, and being undecided by default, is an insignificant difference in the spectrum of religious definition.
Agnosticism is a mindset that zealots just don't have, and if they got it then they would stop being zealots, no.
I'm not sure I agree here as there are numerous people in the world today actively pushing for us all to adopt agnosticism over the religions we were raised to believe because they believe that those religions have only caused harm and given how committed so many are to them all and yet how antagonistic they can be towards each other and in many ways completely incompatible in sharing the same culture, the aggressively agnostic mindset is on the rise. It could be called the religion of non-partisanism, and it's becoming a major political factor, pushing out all religious terminology from any state level material and trying to mute the religious connotations in public holidays and so on. Some feel very strongly about this and it's not the same as Atheism because it's not saying that religions, any of them, are particularly wrong, just that they have no right to push their beliefs, particularly over the right to be free from religious influence if you wish to be. That can become a strong enough ideology to become a zealot for as well, just less likely since it's usually zealots that this person opposes. But that doesn't mean that the cat doesn't often call the kettle black on every side of a given fence.
Much of all this is just interesting discussion and as an argument is rather silly because I feel we both made our points and they are both conclusive and valid within the differences in our definitions of the term.
We can't have the two choices being only agnostic or anti-religious. There are plenty of people who are *just* atheist, not either of those things. They are sure there aren't any gods, but they aren't particularly anti-religious, in the same way you can be sure there is no Santa Claus, but not be anti-Santa Claus.
Again, the difference is just between actively pushing a belief and just keeping that belief personal. There are both types of Atheists, just as there are both types of Christians, and even Muslims. Even though the latter two religions actively instruct the faithful to spread that faith and fight for it. Whether people are active or passive about their beliefs is a pivot for all religions and might be something we could track as a separate overlay value.
The problem is that of attempting to put the various beliefs *about* religions in the same category as religious belief itself. The religions themselves are mutually exclusive, whereas people can hold one or more of the various non-religious ideas.
I disagree that it would be impossible to maintain numerous religions as true if you could sort out in your mind how things go where they 'seem' to disagree. Many current world religions are homogenized blends of previous 'pagan' ones as it is, and it's not too hard to blend two faiths together, which only sometimes means another one is born entirely. People can personally believe in all sorts of variations and mixes, just as they can hold one or more of the various non-religions.
I don't know much about how you (TB) envision the ideas system to work on the technical side, will ideas even be divided into categories?
Yes, categorizing ideas is a big part of it... I did go into quite a bit of detail in the ideas project thread which is probably some pages back now - I could try to find it later and bump it up and provide a link.
I'm thinking it rarely is black and white and that categories shouldn't be assumed to necessarily encompass the entire population. unless we include some kind of a neutral/"don't care" stance to each category.
That neutral/i don't care stance is exactly what Agnostic is and thus the reason it would need to be a religion so it can even be on that list of religious ideas in the religion category. I mean we could call it N/A but it means the same thing.
Actually one way to do it would be to take the percentages over the total number of held beliefs instead of the number of people. That way you can put all beliefs into the same chart, and have it add to 100%
That's how the math is assumed to go for religion type ideas. Some ideas are tracked by the population and it's a matter of a linear, how much is this idea adopted here, sort of question. And if the idea is adopted enough than it basically counts as being present in the city. But for competing ideas, like political opinons (civics - at least what the people WANT their civics to be), Religions, Corporation Popularity within various market categories listed by utilized resource, Languages, CULTURES, and possibly more, the battle is expressed as % of acceptance vs the total number of competing ideas in the category. I laid out the math in some detail in that post but this is in a nutshell how it would work.
Some individuals would be represented multiple times.
Actually individuals aren't even really tracked into that picture because one person may have divisions within themselves as well. It's more an overall, this is what the populace measures out to in terms of ultimate % of strength in competition with the other competing beliefs.