What kind of unbeliever are you?

CursedSkeptic

Atheists are as diverse as the gods they don't believe in, but what kind are you? Are you in the Hitchens anti theist camp, actively opposed to religion and are glad that it is all hokum? Or perhaps you are somebody who thinks back on their days as a devout believer with a nostalgic tear in their godless eye? My situation is that I am glad that the Judaeo Christian god doesn't exist, but I have changed my position from atheist to agnostic. Don't think, like many of the people I have made aware of this change, that this means I think that the existence of god is any more likely, I have just decided that in order to be intellectually honest I have to be agnostic. Questions such as does god exist, does the FSM exist, and indeed, do invisible pink unicorns exist are outside the realms of science in that they are unfalsifiable. With this in mind, I must now accept that I will never know the answer. Therefore any arbitrary judgment I make on any of these unknowables are no more than faith as I have no evidence for my belief, even though I may have excellent arguments against one position or the other. Now I can proceed to completely ignore these unknowable question, and those who have decided to make a judgment in one particular direction (I mean theists, not atheists in this case) and all the weird and wonderful ideas they attach to it. So I am an agnostic and I am now happy that I being internally consistent in my point of view.

eoin5

The position I take on both religion and everything else is that nothing is for certain, its the Robert Anton Wilson view of things. This leads me straight to the agnostic column.

What you believe in does not always correlate to the likelyhoods of your beliefs being true, even as a skeptic you can believe in something that you would like to be true without it being probable. Its a human thing.

I believe in Eris the god of chaos because she is deadly and I'd like her to be real, that makes me an agnostic theist.

Doctor DooM

eoin5 wrote: »

The position I take on both religion and everything else is that nothing is for certain, its the Robert Anton Wilson view of things. This leads me straight to the agnostic column.

What you believe in does not always correlate to the likelyhoods of your beliefs being true, even as a skeptic you can believe in something that you would like to be true without it being probable. Its a human thing.

I believe in Eris the god of chaos because she is deadly and I'd like her to be real, that makes me an agnostic theist.

Best reason to believe in a god ever.

I don't believe in silly institutions, thus I do not believe in the church. I don't/ can't fully comprehend the universe so I will not be so bigged headed as to assume the truth. Just the likelihood of god being some antropomorphic being who happens to always be so insecure he demands your worship/ seems to always have slightly right wing political desires for his people yet wants us to just love one another really just rings incredibly false to me.

Dades

CursedSkeptic, although technically an agnostic, would you consider yourself a "practical atheist"?

That is, atheist with respect to any gods as described by man, but technically agnostic about any unknowable entity by virtue of it's un-falsifiability?

CursedSkeptic

Dades wrote: »

CursedSkeptic, although technically an agnostic, would you consider yourself a "practical atheist"?

That is, atheist with respect to any gods as described by man, but technically agnostic about any unknowable entity by virtue of it's un-falsifiability?

My previous position was pure and simple atheism. This never really sat well with me. I am in a scientific field and am a skeptic, therefore I like to be as rigorous as possible when deciding what my position is on anything. I felt I was not being 100% internally consistent when I chose atheism as it is ultimately an arbitrary choice. I am well aware of the arguments for and against gods existence, but I am also aware of the fact that all they ever will be is arguments, not evidence. So to answer your question, I am an agnostic who will appear for all intents and purposes no different to an atheist.

Rev Hellfire

The existence or non-existence of god(s) is totally immaterial to me, it will make no difference what so ever either way from what I can see.
Though that said having an awareness of what others believe is very important since that has the ability to cause tangible effects in the very real here and now.

Zillah

CursedSkeptic wrote: »

I have just decided that in order to be intellectually honest I have to be agnostic. Questions such as does god exist, does the FSM exist, and indeed, do invisible pink unicorns exist are outside the realms of science in that they are unfalsifiable. With this in mind, I must now accept that I will never know the answer. Therefore any arbitrary judgment I make on any of these unknowables are no more than faith as I have no evidence for my belief

Hardline atheists, unite! Form of practicality! Deploy "brain in jar" argument. Activate!



I noticed you used the word "faith" there. Lets address that word, and what it really means. As you say, technically we can never be sure if the FSM exists, and so to conclude it does not we are exercising faith. But wait, this can you've opened is spewing worms! How is it that we ever conclude anything at all? When I walk out my front door I assume doing so is not going to condem my eternal soul to an eternity of torment. Is this "faith" that I am exercising? In fact, the entire universe could be my brain living in a jar where some nefarious scientist is feeding it false input. We must, in fact, exercise this "faith" all the time.

Which is where I reach the central thrust of my argument. You've redefined faith into the realm of useless. It means nothing other than making one initial assumption that the universe can, in any way, be known. Lets call this "Faith A".

Now let me address the faith of the religious. This "Faith B" is of the willful, ignorant variety. That where people make not rational assumptions, but highly irrational ones. Assumptions that require gigantic leaps of logic, deliberate efforts to disregard evidence and desperately cobble together arbitrary pieces of fact, fiction and fallacious argument to create an immense fantasy supporting a preposterous world view.

By conflating these two concepts you do rational atheists a great diservice.

You call yourself agnostic. You must also call yourself vampire-agnostic. Astrology-agnostic. Not-a-brain-in-a-jar agnostic. Not-going-to-explode-when-you-blink-agnostic. You must call yourself an infinity of meaningless titles, all because you've been duped into thinking that the claim about God is any way special when considering all of these foolish notions.

CursedSkeptic

Zillah wrote: »

Hardline atheists, unite! Form of practicality! Deploy "brain in jar" argument. Activate!



I noticed you used the word "faith" there. Lets address that word, and what it really means. As you say, technically we can never be sure if the FSM exists, and so to conclude it does not we are exercising faith. But wait, this can you've opened is spewing worms! How is it that we ever conclude anything at all? When I walk out my front door I assume doing so is not going to condem my eternal soul to an eternity of torment. Is this "faith" that I am exercising? In fact, the entire universe could be my brain living in a jar where some nefarious scientist is feeding it false input. We must, in fact, exercise this "faith" all the time.

Which is where I reach the central thrust of my argument. You've redefined faith into the realm of useless. It means nothing other than making one initial assumption that the universe can, in any way, be known. Lets call this "Faith A".

Now let me address the faith of the religious. This "Faith B" is of the willful, ignorant variety. That where people make not rational assumptions, but highly irrational ones. Assumptions that require gigantic leaps of logic, deliberate efforts to disregard evidence and desperately cobble together arbitrary pieces of fact, fiction and fallacious argument to create an immense fantasy supporting a preposterous world view.

By conflating these two concepts you do rational atheists a great diservice.

You call yourself agnostic. You must also call yourself vampire-agnostic. Astrology-agnostic. Not-a-brain-in-a-jar agnostic. Not-going-to-explode-when-you-blink-agnostic. You must call yourself an infinity of meaningless titles, all because you've been duped into thinking that the claim about God is any way special when considering all of these foolish notions.

I am agnostic because I find it difficult to accept that I am being rigorous if I am going to make arbitrary decisions on things which are unknowable. I can however, state that anything which is ultimately unknowable is of no use to me, and I can simple ignore it, which is precisely what I do.

ChocolateSauce

Dades wrote: »

CursedSkeptic, although technically an agnostic, would you consider yourself a "practical atheist"?

That is, atheist with respect to any gods as described by man, but technically agnostic about any unknowable entity by virtue of it's un-falsifiability?

That would describe me, CursedSkeptic, quite well. Although I think there is very probably no "god"/being/force, I can't know. I would consider myself being 100% against the idea of a monotheistic god, or the god of any man-made religion.

I guess I sum it up by saying I am atheist to the gods of man, and agnostic to Einstien's god.

Zillah

CursedSkeptic wrote: »

I can however, state that anything which is ultimately unknowable is of no use to me, and I can simple ignore it, which is precisely what I do.

Everything is unknowable by the standards you are setting. You make those sort of assumptions all the time. For some reason you've decided that the God issue deserves special merit.

gramlab

What kind of unbeliever am I?

One who lives my life happily without the need for religious belief
One who is happy for anyone else to hold thier beliefs
One who gets annoyed at the double standards, intolerance, egotism and arrogance shown by most comitted religious people
One who gets defensively angry when someones belief openly condemns my loved ones to a hell because they may not believe
One who gets .................


Overall an agnostic who doesn't care one way or the other until my feathers are ruffled

eoin5

CursedSkeptic you sound like you are an agnostic atheist.

The theism question is a yes or no only answer, you are either a theist or an atheist. You either believe in a personal god or not.

Everything else is about probability, you are either 100% sure one way or the other or you are an agnostic.

I think football is a good example, I could say I believe Sunderland wont finish in the top 5 this season but I'm sort of agnostic about it because I admit theres a chance that they will.

Zillah

eoin5 wrote: »

Everything else is about probability, you are either 100% sure one way or the other or you are an agnostic.

Thats ridiculously simplistic.

aidan24326

Zillah wrote: »

For some reason you've decided that the God issue deserves special merit

In a way one could argue that it does though. The fact that the universe exists at all suggests it could have had a creative influence, which we may arbitrarily call god (or whatever)

I think the problem is one of definition or the lack of. People mean different things when they say 'god'. I would be outright atheist with regard to the god of popular religions that people kneel down and pray to, but as for a god in the sense of universe-creator we can't be certain. Whether the universe was created or not is a valid question.

I accept though that this more sophisticated god is not what the vast majority of religious people are referring to.

eoin5

Zillah wrote: »

Thats ridiculously simplistic.

Thank you! I try my best

Zillah

aidan24326 wrote: »

In a way one could argue that it does though. The fact that the universe exists at all suggests it could have had a creative influence, which we may arbitrarily call god (or whatever)

This is a very common fallacious argument. Why is there something other than nothing? Its a very interesting question, one we may never answer. But it has absolutely nothing to do with God. This "creative influence" demands an explanation as much as anything else. All you've done is move the goalposts. Why is there a creative influence rather than no creative influence?

What made that domino fall over? Oooh, it was that domino. Mystery solved. No, wait, what made that domino fall? Ohh, it was etc

aidan24326

Zillah wrote: »

This is a very common fallacious argument. Why is there something other than nothing? Its a very interesting question, one we may never answer. But it has absolutely nothing to do with God. This "creative influence" demands an explanation as much as anything else. All you've done is move the goalposts. Why is there a creative influence rather than no creative influence?

What made that domino fall over? Oooh, it was that domino. Mystery solved. No, wait, what made that domino fall? Ohh, it was etc

I guess our minds are conditioned into thinking that everything must have a cause. For there to have been no creative influence, either the universe has always existed in some form or it can appear from nothing, from the unknowable unknown so to speak. I feel that while our current technology and brainpower is probably insufficient to answer these questions, that they should in principle be answerable if any lifeform/entity could evolve to a level of understanding a fair bit beyond where we're at now.

Zillah

Strange that CurserSkeptic never came back to this considering he seemed so sure at the start

CursedSkeptic

Zillah wrote: »

Strange that CurserSkeptic never came back to this considering he seemed so sure at the start

I don't use this site very often, but even so I don't think there is any need to go further with this. I have stated my point, you have stated yours and it seems neither of us are going to be convinced. I would suggest that you make sure you are being true to T. H. Huxley's original definition of the word agnostic, its meaning has become warped by misunderstanding over time.

Zillah

I'm going with what you described in your original post. You stated your position, I explained where you went wrong, now you're not bothering to continue. Thats how I see it.

CursedSkeptic

Zillah wrote: »

I'm going with what you described in your original post. You stated your position, I explained where you went wrong, now you're not bothering to continue. Thats how I see it.

You said we must exercise faith all the time. This is not the case, and is completely contrary to anything I have expressed. The brain in a vat or any other derivative of Bertrand Russel's questions on philosophical skepticism are plainly unfalsifiable. Therefore I am agnostic towards them. Agnosticism as defined by Huxley refers to the fact that certain things are fundamentally unknowable as they lie outside the realms of evidence. Because these things are not knowable the only position which an individual who refuses to make decisions on anything other than evidence can hold is agnosticism. An atheist is somebody who is of the opinion that the existence of a god appears to be so unlikely that they make a decision on the matter. But this is arbitrary, not evidence based, because no opinion on god or anything else unknowable is.