A brief conversation

[demiurgent]

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.

Comments

[slarti.livejournal.com]

The term I tend to use is "agnopathy" -- "I don't know, and I don't care."

(Yes, this might possibly be an act of linguistic butchery. As with faith itself, I don't know, and I don't care. :-)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I've heard "apatheist", too, but I don't think that's right, at all.

After all, the position I described is not saying "the existence of gods is irrelevant and/or uninteresting", it says "Since there is no evidence for any gods who actually exist, I believe in no gods. There may or not be gods who are not real, but who cares? Since they're not affecting the real world, their existence has been predefined to be unknowable, incrutable, and totally irrelevant. As soon as they BECOME relevant, they fall into the first category and their existence can be measured and proven."

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

That statement, if we had to classify it as theist, atheist or agnostic, I would classify as agnostic. It's not saying there are no gods, it is saying you have not found any evidence for them, so you do not believe in them.

It is, in the end, a difference between the active and the passive. The active disbelief in any form of intellect 'out there' is a very different animal from the essentially passive 'I haven't seen any reason to believe, so I don't believe.'

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, I was answering your initial question: "What do you call someone who lacks belief in gods?" By my terminology, I lack belief. I do not believe they exist. I do not believe they don't exist. I, unlike an agnostic, do not have any sort of state where I actively leave myself open to the question of whether or not they might exist. I consider that question vaguely potentially interesting, and given some direct experience, it's by no means inconceivable that I could change my mind. In the direct day to day, however, I don't especially care, and I'm okay with that, because I am apathetic in most ways.