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In so many situations in your life and career, claiming to know something you don't can have severe consequences; far worse than admitting you don't know something that you feel like you should know. I think most people will agree with that until the situation involves religion and suddenly the rules change. Why?
amen to that brotha.
I don't get it either. In fact, I am so confused about something that seems so simple I assume it's me. And that confusion causes me to lack conviction due to uncertainty. The only thing I can come up with is that we range from ape to awake. Bell curve it, integrate it, and see what gives. Toss in mental illness, addiction, and abuse ... and what we have here is a failure to communicate ... and we get ... screwed pooches over easy and a side of B.S.S.
Interesting update - those of us who don't know are now at 50%, down from close to 70% a few days ago. The biggest gain has been people who think there is a force or deity; MysticMinions perhaps...
EDIT - and right after posting, a "believer" came along and bumped us to below 50%. A little odd how it seemed to have settled for several days and then started slowly but regularly getting votes in other categories...
Last edited by ReachTheBeach; 07-14-2015 at 10:21 AM..
Be definition, a person who believes there is/are no God(s) is an atheist, and a person who believes that the existence of God cannot be either proven or disproved is an agnostic. The terms are not mutually exclusive.
Semantics, but "agnostic" is literally "one who does not know the truth". If you are convinced that there is/are no God(s) and identify as an athiest, then I think that is exclusive to agnosticism... But who really gives a schnit.
Semantics, but "agnostic" is literally "one who does not know the truth". If you are convinced that there is/are no God(s) and identify as an athiest, then I think that is exclusive to agnosticism... But who really gives a schnit.
[Sigh] Except that atheism is not a knowledge position, but a belief position. Very precious few atheists claim absolute knowledge that there are no gods. They are agnostics who see no justification to believe in any gods.
That said, it is no less legitimate for an atheist to say there is no god than for you to say "there is no tooth fairy". And as Cruithne ably pointed out just today, if you go on to qualify "there is no tooth fairy" with "well technically there might be one hiding under a rug somewhere" then people will question your sanity.
Everyone knows that technically no one outside of a deity is omniscient, but we often make knowledge statements that aren't technically true as a verbal shorthand. Because beyond a certain point, "I think all gods to be vanishingly unlikely" is, while technically accurate, not functionally different than "there is no god". But that doesn't make it a knowledge claim of the sort you're suggesting, either. And it doesn't change the definition of atheists as "one who does not believe in any gods".
One belief system berating another belief system. Both using fairy tales to fight each other instead of real logical facts. So it becomes an issue of who has better word games or offers more hope. Equalizing a disbelief in god to that of a tooth fairy is silly. But then again a belief system pushing itself as "the real truth" is old and useful. It sells. Sad but useful, I guess. Add one to the list ...quack quack.
My belief system has bigger fairies than your belief system. And I don't mean they are taller.
Interesting update - those of us who don't know are now at 50%, down from close to 70% a few days ago. The biggest gain has been people who think there is a force or deity; MysticMinions perhaps...
EDIT - and right after posting, a "believer" came along and bumped us to below 50%. A little odd how it seemed to have settled for several days and then started slowly but regularly getting votes in other categories...
Interpretation of the poll can certainly vary. If 'there is no God' has gone does to an increase in 'don't know' that rather suits me as 'No God' is shorthand for 'don't believe' with a lot of caveats. It still looks to me like 10 believers to 20 disbelievers.
Interpretation of the poll can certainly vary. If 'there is no God' has gone does to an increase in 'don't know' that rather suits me as 'No God' is shorthand for 'don't believe' with a lot of caveats. It still looks to me like 10 believers to 20 disbelievers.
I am just a little suspicious of timing. Kind of odd how several of the "some other force" votes showed up late. I might be wrong, but I think 7 of the (currently) 9 votes in that category were cast all in a row after a few days had gone by with no new votes. Again, I haven't kept a careful accounting so I could be wrong but just a few days ago when it seemed like it had settled I made a comment about it and I am pretty sure that at that time there were just 2 in that category.
I hadn't checked the results. but sometimes a few belated believers hurry up to boost the numbers of the faithful. Polls in a limited area and subject are not significant anyway. On Christianity, they'd probably have an 80% majority of totally certains.
The reason I noticed is that every now and then I noted the current state in posts. I am probably reading too much into a coincidence of a mystic poster seeming to leave the discussion about the same time the number of mystics shot up.
Just say you don't believe in god and have done with it.
There's no grey area for me.
In what was among the very worst of the episodes from the original Star Trek series, there was one where the Enterprise crew was transformed into the Clanton/McLaury gang and found themselves in Tombstone on October 26th of 1881. The Earps are gunning for them.
Spock figures out that it is all an illusion, but that they can be killed if they believe in the illusion. While he is absolutely certain that it is an illusion, he is aware that his human companions, no matter how well they understand that it is an illusion, will have the tiniest fraction of a doubt and that would prove fatal to them. His solution is to do one of his mind melds where he imparts his own absolute confidence to the others.
Are you representing yourself as similar to Spock in the program? Not even the tiniest flicker of a doubt about this business? I recall being in a Lake Tahoe casino where they had set up a special slot machine where it cost a dollar to play and either you won the 1.6 million dollar jackpot, or you lost, no smaller payoffs. The odds were something like 2.3 million to one that you would win the big prize. There was a fairly long line of people waiting to take their chance at this. They all must have recognized how miniscule their chances were, just think about trying to guess a single number between one and 2.3 million. Yet each player must have had some small measure of hope, that they would somehow or other be the exception they would be that one on 2.3 million.
I think that such a hope is the other side of not being an absolutist in one's assertions about the cosmos. Just as we cannot vanquish all possible doubts about our conclusions, we cannot vanquish all possible hopes in the gambling situation.
That is why I am uncomfortable with being an absolutist about there being a singular intelligence responsible for the universe. I do not see it as likely, I do not even know if we are aware of all the possible alternative explanations, and I do not know if humanity is intelligent enough to even see or understand the truth if it was made manifest to us. For those reasons I avoid absolutist statements rather than "being done with it" as you suggest.
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If 'there is no God' has gone does to an increase in 'don't know' that rather suits me as 'No God' is shorthand for 'don't believe' with a lot of caveats. It still looks to me like 10 believers to 20 disbelievers.
