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Unfortunately, very few people believe in a "generic" god -- a god which is undefined and truly unknowable.
You couldn't be any more wrong about that than the 100% you are now, because Christians have traditionally believed that their religion replaced all the previous ones as the "one true" deity. They would even describe him in the same way that you have.
The fact that they believe lots of weird things on top of it, those are just minor details. People need to put a face on what they believe. They are also atheist in regards to those 99% of other religions. But they see "atheists" as denying that thing (very big thing) which is undefinable and unknowable. So it's not even truthful to define yourself by that word if you know how most people understand its meaning. Even if you want to tell others like yourself that you are atheist, you are still misrepresenting yourself to the vast majority of people.
It doesn't matter how you yourself define the word atheist. To most people, they see that as a denial of any kind of creator. I'm not even talking about the invisible father in the sky. But of anything whatsoever.
I think it would be more effective to label yourself in a way that more people could make sense of.
You are correct that the truth doesn't matter to most people half as much, nay, a tenth as much, as their preconceptions and misperceptions. That is why by the time they figure out that I don't believe in god, they have already decided I'm a good, ethical, trustworthy person. Once that is established, that I'm an unbeliever simply confuses them, and they decide that it's just some kind of misunderstanding or some phase I'm going through that will self-correct. Or, occasionally, that since I once made a profession of faith, it simply does not matter as no one can un-make that.
Once people decide what's "true", they don't care what's actually true. You can, sometimes, use that in your own favor.
It isn't so much a matter of labels as of framing and presentation -- and the order or presentation.
That's why it's fortunate that in much of the world, your religious (un)beliefs are not the first thing people inquire about, it's maybe the hundredth thing. I think that at some practical level, even the religious understand that religion is no predictor of personal integrity, competence or character.
You couldn't be any more wrong about that than the 100% you are now, because Christians have traditionally believed that their religion replaced all the previous ones as the "one true" deity. They would even describe him in the same way that you have.
The fact that they believe lots of weird things on top of it, those are just minor details. People need to put a face on what they believe. They are also atheist in regards to those 99% of other religions. But they see "atheists" as denying that thing (very big thing) which is undefinable and unknowable. So it's not even truthful to define yourself by that word if you know how most people understand its meaning. Even if you want to tell others like yourself that you are atheist, you are still misrepresenting yourself to the vast majority of people.
You act as though the things "they believe on top of it" barely count for anything.
Sorry, but those "weird things" include everything from God's blood sacrifice to himself of his own son to sending non-believers into a pit of eternal flames and torture.
THOSE are the things -- THOSE little minor details -- are what causes 99.9% of all the strife.
After all, both Sunnis and Shi'as believe in the exact same god and read from the exact same holy book. Yet they're blowing each other to shreds because of stupid little details -- the 'weird things they believe on top of it."
It are those things that gives their beliefs and their traditions meaning, cultural value, and even a form of "evidence," in their eyes, that their religion is true. Otherwise, they're just casting about blindly in the hopes that a non-personal, generic superbeing is up there ready to take care of them after they die. And that's not what most people, certainly not Christians, do.
I've heard not a single Christian describe their god, the God of the Bible, in generic terms. The ONLY time I've heard Christians say that their god is unknowable is when we atheists attempt to judge his actions and his morality. Then, suddenly, god is this amorphous mystery that we can't possibly understand.
Yet when they talk about God being the source of love; or how he hates sin; or how he wants the best for humanity; or how he's going to send non-believers to Hell; or that he's vain, jealous, AND wrathful; that he gave us his only begotten son, and a myriad of other things -- suddenly "God" doesn't seem all that generic anymore.
Sure, there are a lot of Christians who know next to nothing about the god they claim to worship. They don't go to church, they don't read the Bible, they don't really practice their religion. They just believe in a vague, distant sort of way. But that doesn't mean they believe in a generic deity.
When I say generic, I'm talking about truly unidentified. It would be a deity we know absolutely nothing about, one that does NOT intervene in the affairs of humans. Praying to this deity would be pointless and it certainly isn't a "personal" god. You don't have a relationship with this deity. Moreover, there are no holy books describing this deity's attributes -- what it wants, what makes it angry, what pleases it, what rituals we're supposed to perform, and the like.
You can't BE a Christian and believe in a generic deity. One has to believe in the divinity of Christ to be a Christian -- and that means accepting all of the religious baggage that goes along with it. All of that weird stuff, the stuff that makes a religion ... a religion.
No, I'm not misrepresenting myself to most people. In fact, I'm doing just the opposite -- and you explained in your own post precisely why that is. You wrote:
"They are also atheist in regards to those 99% of other religions. But they see "atheists" as denying that thing (very big thing) which is undefinable and unknowable."
People who believe in god only care about the god they believe in. All the rest of them are false anyway, and they would be more than happy if I admitted that I reject all of those other gods. However, the moment I say that I also reject THEIR god, well, watch the smile on their face fade into either overt concern or outright anger -- though as I said some will simply be curious.
Since believers see the world through ONLY the lens their specific god supplies, calling myself an agnostic implies to them that I'm agnostic about THEIR god when, in fact, I'm not. I am a 100% atheist when it comes to their storybook gods. I can stand here with the utmost confidence that religious gods are bunk because there is more than enough mambo-jahambo written in their holy books to condemn their beliefs.
In that sense, I'm misrepresenting myself by calling myself an agnostic -- because, not only will most believers think I'm on the fence about THEIR god and not some generic, unknown, unidentified god that MIGHT exist, the teeny-tiny crevice I leave open for the possible existence of such a generic god is so small and so inconsequential to what I believe that agnosticism is a far, FAR smaller part of that duality between agnosticism and atheism.
It would be akin to walking up to a stranger and saying, "Hello, I'm a computer gamer" before even saying my name. Why would I do that when there are far bigger categories to which I belong that would identify me more clearly -- my name, my nationality, my profession, etc. Being a computer gamer is such a small part of who I am that leading with such a description of myself would undoubtedly be seen as bizarre.
In the same vain, just because I leave open a tiny crack for the possibility of a generic god shouldn't mean I should call myself an agnostic. I leave open a tiny crack for the possibility of ancient astronauts, too, but I don't tell people that I'm on the fence about Erich von Daniken. That heavily implies a 50%/50% split between believing and not believing -- and that simply isn't the case. Not with ancient astronauts and certainly not with any storybook gods from any of the world's religions. I'll bet on Chariots of the Gods? before I'd ever bet on the Bible, for instance.
You couldn't be any more wrong about that than the 100% you are now, because Christians have traditionally believed that their religion replaced all the previous ones as the "one true" deity. They would even describe him in the same way that you have.
I know of a group of "Christians" who don't often mention Jesus. They talk about God and that's it. It's like they believe in the big guy and not his son. My own father never mentioned Jesus. As a matter of fact, if he didn't actually deliver sermons in his retirement years I would never have known he was religious in any way.
I know of a group of "Christians" who don't often mention Jesus. They talk about God and that's it. It's like they believe in the big guy and not his son. My own father never mentioned Jesus. As a matter of fact, if he didn't actually deliver sermons in his retirement years I would never have known he was actually religious in any way.
Intersting. And I've seen it the opposite way around, too. Emphasizing only the New Testament and Jesus' teaching, almost never mentioning the Old Testament.
Intersting. And I've seen it the opposite way around, too. Emphasizing only the New Testament and Jesus' teaching, almost never mentioning the Old Testament.
That would make sense to me since they are Christians.
But most people hearing the word Atheist are going to think that you are some crazy person who thinks that everything came from Nothing.
I'll bet you that most atheist-phobic religious people do not believe this about atheists. The reason I say that is because they don't give atheism enough thought to even try to understand the first thing about what atheists believe--that first thing being the position on god. Mordant's oft-repeated point about being both an agnostic and an atheist is a point that is never going to be appreciated by the average religious person on the street--not instantaneously, anyway. It's still common sense to distinguish between agnostics and atheists--for those religious people who get even that far. And yes, admittedly, even among atheists and agnostics, most probably remain unaware of this paradigm themselves...we're looking at the basis of a more sophisticated next-generation poll on American religiosity here.
But as far as the cosmology of committed atheists goes...find me a religious person who spends any amount of time giving that thought (outside of the frequenters of select Internet forums) and you'll have found me someone I'd be interested to meet and have a discussion with. Most religious people are too consumed by fear/disgust/anger/related emotions to truly ponder the atheistic worldview in anything approaching an empathetic way.
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 09-21-2017 at 02:15 AM..
It what upside down world does that sentence make any sense?
The sentence + additional fragment made sense. He's trying to say that atheists think they're smarter than non-atheists, and he's including all the thinkers he named in the ranks of non-atheists. To which I'd say, not identifying as an atheist doesn't = not being an atheist. For all cases mentioned but Plato, I think that would be an appropriate reply...I think.
It would be much more effective if people like Richard Dawkins used Agnostic instead.
Dawkins actually addresses this point at some juncture of The God Delusion. He mentions that he thinks there's an infinitesimal chance that there is a god. But because the probability he assigns to the existence of god is effectively zero, he's not going to bother with 'agnostic', which tends to imply more 'openness' to the possibility of god than he thinks is reasonable to have. Skimming the rest of the thread, I believe Shirina expressed a similar position.
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