demiurgent (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
demiurgent) wrote2007-12-03 12:06 pm
demiurgent) wrote2007-12-03 12:06 pm
Entry tags:
A brief conversation
A brief conversation with a coworker, fortunately where no students could hear:
Him: Well, agnostics are just atheists without the courage of their convictions.
Me: Wow. That was both a lie and offensive. That's a neat trick.
He looked confused. I went on to tell him what I'm going to tell you, right now.
Atheism is not the lack of religion, despite the roots of the word. Atheism is a religion. It is the specific belief, without evidence, that the universe lacked intelligent or motive force behind its creation.
Many atheists refute this, mind. They say that they stand for science, and skepticism, and that any divine presence would need to be proven, and without that proof one must assume there is no divine presence. That, they often say, is simple science and stark reason.
And that's utter bullshit.
Science is agnostic.
Science says "I do not know, until I see. When I see, I can gather evidence and hypothesize. After I hypothesize I gather more evidence. I experiment. I test my hypothesis. I revise my hypothesis. If I and many other scientists perform these experiments and verify and reproduce my results, we might -- might -- upgrade my hypothesis to a theory, but that takes a lot of doing."
Atheism doesn't do any of that. Atheism takes it on faith that there is no god in any form, comprehensible or not. And the evidence for that is just as prevalent as the evidence for Yaweh, Allah, Aphrodite or Manannán mac Lir: absolutely none.
Guys? We don't know. We don't know who or what if anything started the cosmic ball rolling. We don't know if there's something beyond the edge of human perception. We just don't fucking know, okay?
Now, you can be convinced the Christians have it wrong. Or that the Greeks were full of shit. Or that the Wiccans are fooling themselves. You can be personally convinced that the universe is a cold place where everything is essentially chaotic and all things happened because of chance. That's fine.
But don't pretend you have an inside understanding that the religious nuts don't. You have a belief. Nothing more, nothing less. And that's fine. If it makes you happy, power to you.
And if you believe in a god, gods, goddesses, or whatever? Fine by me. Whatever helps you get to sleep, man.
Me? I'm agnostic. I don't have the hubris to think I've got the final answer. I'm still watching and waiting, and I'm keeping an open mind -- to all sides of the question.
And for the record? Don't you fucking dare say I don't have the courage of my convictions. It takes a hell of a lot more courage to admit what you don't know than assert what you believe to be true.
Sadly, it means I don't get to be nearly as smug as certain theists or atheists. But don't worry about me. I usually find something else to be smug about.
Him: Well, agnostics are just atheists without the courage of their convictions.
Me: Wow. That was both a lie and offensive. That's a neat trick.
He looked confused. I went on to tell him what I'm going to tell you, right now.
Atheism is not the lack of religion, despite the roots of the word. Atheism is a religion. It is the specific belief, without evidence, that the universe lacked intelligent or motive force behind its creation.
Many atheists refute this, mind. They say that they stand for science, and skepticism, and that any divine presence would need to be proven, and without that proof one must assume there is no divine presence. That, they often say, is simple science and stark reason.
And that's utter bullshit.
Science is agnostic.
Science says "I do not know, until I see. When I see, I can gather evidence and hypothesize. After I hypothesize I gather more evidence. I experiment. I test my hypothesis. I revise my hypothesis. If I and many other scientists perform these experiments and verify and reproduce my results, we might -- might -- upgrade my hypothesis to a theory, but that takes a lot of doing."
Atheism doesn't do any of that. Atheism takes it on faith that there is no god in any form, comprehensible or not. And the evidence for that is just as prevalent as the evidence for Yaweh, Allah, Aphrodite or Manannán mac Lir: absolutely none.
Guys? We don't know. We don't know who or what if anything started the cosmic ball rolling. We don't know if there's something beyond the edge of human perception. We just don't fucking know, okay?
Now, you can be convinced the Christians have it wrong. Or that the Greeks were full of shit. Or that the Wiccans are fooling themselves. You can be personally convinced that the universe is a cold place where everything is essentially chaotic and all things happened because of chance. That's fine.
But don't pretend you have an inside understanding that the religious nuts don't. You have a belief. Nothing more, nothing less. And that's fine. If it makes you happy, power to you.
And if you believe in a god, gods, goddesses, or whatever? Fine by me. Whatever helps you get to sleep, man.
Me? I'm agnostic. I don't have the hubris to think I've got the final answer. I'm still watching and waiting, and I'm keeping an open mind -- to all sides of the question.
And for the record? Don't you fucking dare say I don't have the courage of my convictions. It takes a hell of a lot more courage to admit what you don't know than assert what you believe to be true.
Sadly, it means I don't get to be nearly as smug as certain theists or atheists. But don't worry about me. I usually find something else to be smug about.
no subject
They don't.
Ever."
In which case you're arguing that there is evidence against the hypothesis, not that there isn't any evidence one way or another. I've got no problem with that!
"If there's absolutely no reason to believe a hypothesis *might* be true, there's absolutely no reason to behave as if it *was* true. "
And I think I've said this a few times nowm, that I DON'T argue that.
I think the point where you and I are disagreeing is on the difference between improbable and impossible. If you want to say that based on lack of any positive or negative evidence, it is highly improbable that there isn't a flying spaghetti monster controlling our lives and therefor act as if there isn't one, then I have no problem with that, and would agree with you. If you say that it's impossible for there to be one, then I say you are acting on a belief. Or if you'd prefer to avoid semi-religous language, a "base assumption".
There's no problem with acting on base assumptions. We all have to operate on them. Scientific method operates on several base assumptions, including that the world is measurable and knowable. You have to have some base assumptions to be able to make any sort of decisions about anything. But there's always a possiblility (note, I didn't say probable, just possible) that the base assumption is wrong. That doesn't mean you should operate as if it is.
In an infinite world, it is possible that there's a flying spaghetti monster someplace exhibiting godlike powers. Not probable, and the possibility may be just this side of 0, but I don't say that I know it's not true, because I don't have any evidence that it does or does not exist. That doesn't mean I'm going to live my life as if it does. There's also a possibility that I could win the lottery. An actual measurable possibility. I don't buy lottery tickets either.
I know people who say that they are able to recieve telepathic communication with their cats. I don't say that's impossible. I don't think it's likely, and I think that it's probable that what they attribute to psychic communication is really subconcious interpretation of body language. But in the absence of meaningful evidence one way or the other, I'm not going to say it's impossible. Neither am I waiting for my cats to start communicating with me psychically though.
The possible presence or absence of a god doesn't really influence my life any more than the possible presence or absence of monitarium. The underlying philosophical causes of the way the world works don't really matter - they're fun to speculate on, but I live my life the way I do because I think it's the right way to do so. If tomorrow I were to experience something that convinced me of the presence or absence of a god, I wouldn't look back on my life and go "If only I'd known that, I'd have done this differently."
I'm just not arrogant enough to believe that I can definitively say that a given thing isn't possible in the lack of strong evidence that it isn't possible.
no subject
no subject
There are also propositions that are provable, unless you buy the strong Cartesian skeptic's position.
The rest fall into three broad categories:
With weak evidence against a proposition:
Provisionally against
With no compelling evidence for or against a proposition:
Provisionally neutral
and
With weak evidence for a proposition:
Provisionally for
If it turns out that the evidence in any case above is false, belief in the proposition should probably shift toward the center.
no subject
No evidence of any sort for a proposition, and proposition is not testable = proposition is useless crap.
no subject
no subject
(As a second side-note, a non-trivial number of my friends actively believe in Thor, so as an example it's either perfect or all wrong. On Thor, I personally remain neutral, beyond having seen one a very large, powerful friend of mine scream in rage and get a thunderclap accompaniment once. But then, I have a terrible tendency to write stories that include the pathetic fallacy, too.)