You will note, in the other comments, that I have already acknowledged that the word 'religion' was a mistake.
As for your offense? I can only offer my apologies, which I certainly do.
As, it is worth noting, my coworker did to me, and I was happy enough to accept them. What you choose to do is of course up to you.
I do need to respond, however, to one statement:
I will, hopefully, hear him admit that it is not irrational to positively disbelieve a sufficiently outlandish and unsupported claim--that it does not require an act of faith
As we stated elsewhere, there is a qualitative difference between disbelieving a single claim -- be it any of your examples -- and asserting that there is and was no intelligence involved in the creation of the universe. The former does not require an act of faith, no. Nor does it require an act of faith to passively disbelieve in gods of any stripe.
However, the active declaration that there was no motive force behind the creation of the universe, of some form we do not understand -- that does require an act of faith. Because the simple truth is we don't know what created the universe. Some here have posited it was never actually created. Some (not here, admittedly) have posited intelligent design. Some have posited random events and factors. But at this stage, we're nowhere near anything close to a hypothesis on any of these things.
That is the statement of faith we're discussing. It does not apply to everyone here. And as the debate has unfurled, an increasingly sophisticated understanding of what others -- most particularly Atheists -- mean by atheism has been coming out. I hope some of those definitions are ones you could agree with. If not, I hope you contribute your own.
It does, however, apply to the school of thought that says that agnosticism is just atheism without a spine -- that is a school of thought defined largely by dogma.
And that's faith.
You're absolutely right that it's not a religion, and the word should not have been used. But it is an expression of belief -- and it is accepted on faith, by those who espouse it.
I'm more than happy to acknowledge you are not one who espouses that on faith, and I apologize if my initial rant, admittedly written in anger, caused you discomfort.
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Date: 2007-12-04 06:53 am (UTC)As for your offense? I can only offer my apologies, which I certainly do.
As, it is worth noting, my coworker did to me, and I was happy enough to accept them. What you choose to do is of course up to you.
I do need to respond, however, to one statement:
As we stated elsewhere, there is a qualitative difference between disbelieving a single claim -- be it any of your examples -- and asserting that there is and was no intelligence involved in the creation of the universe. The former does not require an act of faith, no. Nor does it require an act of faith to passively disbelieve in gods of any stripe.
However, the active declaration that there was no motive force behind the creation of the universe, of some form we do not understand -- that does require an act of faith. Because the simple truth is we don't know what created the universe. Some here have posited it was never actually created. Some (not here, admittedly) have posited intelligent design. Some have posited random events and factors. But at this stage, we're nowhere near anything close to a hypothesis on any of these things.
That is the statement of faith we're discussing. It does not apply to everyone here. And as the debate has unfurled, an increasingly sophisticated understanding of what others -- most particularly Atheists -- mean by atheism has been coming out. I hope some of those definitions are ones you could agree with. If not, I hope you contribute your own.
It does, however, apply to the school of thought that says that agnosticism is just atheism without a spine -- that is a school of thought defined largely by dogma.
And that's faith.
You're absolutely right that it's not a religion, and the word should not have been used. But it is an expression of belief -- and it is accepted on faith, by those who espouse it.
I'm more than happy to acknowledge you are not one who espouses that on faith, and I apologize if my initial rant, admittedly written in anger, caused you discomfort.