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

[shortpacked.livejournal.com]

Then I am not sure why people can't know things are true, according to one system with stark definitions.

I can know the sky is dark out right now. I just looked. I am looking, out the corner of my eye, so it didn't just change back to daylight when I wasn't paying attention for that one second.

Furthermore, I think I'm pretty safe to say that I also know that the sun will come up the next day and will set again in the evening. I can't prove it, but I think there's enough evidence to provide reasonable doubt.

My point is, we can know a lot. That's what our brains do -- notice patterns, and make predictions for the future. Saying we can't actually know anything ever, just because there's room for any amount of doubt at all, no matter how insubstantial, is way too Descartes for me. It gets in the way of building on previous knowledge and learning new things, and it provides an easy out for those who'd really prefer to stop encountering things that challenge their worldview. "Scientists can't REALLY know anything" is what keeps Creationism in schools. And it's dishonest.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

What you're running into, at that point, is a case of sloppy definitions - the same way that "theory" in common usage means "hypothesis, not theory" in technical usage, you're hitting a point of conflating "knowledge", "belief", and "faith" into a single word.

You really need to set down what these words *mean*, and get THAT agreed on, before you can argue with them.

(I suggest: "Belief: An assertion of a positive statement as fact" and "Faith: Belief without evidence, or belief contrary to evidence")

[discarn8.livejournal.com]

Faith cannot be belief without evidence, as the faithful will hold up a bible as 'evidence' (or insert your favored source of religious Truth).

I would suggest instead that 'knowledge' is information that has been tested via rigorous peer review via the scientific method. Anything else is varying shades of 'belief' or 'fantasy', depending on how polite/political you choose to be.

There's a big gotcha here. If you follow these definitions, the great majority of what is commonly considered to be 'fact' would actually be 'belief', as you are unable to show your work, nor who validated your work and preconceptions via THEIR work.

*grin* Philosophy is FUN brain-fry.

-John

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No, your failure mode there is simply in not sufficiently defining "evidence", and that failure means you're accepting The Sum Of All Fears as valid historical fact.

[discarn8.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's closer to not accepting ANYthing as a fact, more as a belief. Very few pieces of information warrent 'fact', IMO, and as such we're mostly belief-based processors.

What would you say to ruggedize that definition of 'evidence'?

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

Calling something evidence and it being evidence are two different things.

Also,
I would suggest instead that 'knowledge' is information that has been tested via rigorous peer review via the scientific method.

is describing one of the manners of developing a justification for and verifying the truth of a belief, and thus yielding knowledge. There are other ways to develop knowledge. Formal scientific method yields good results in cases where inductive reasoning is needed, but it is unneeded in cases where direct experience is needed. Also there are many sorts of things that you can not apply the scientific method to that you can still have knowledge of. (I've said this before in this thread: setting aside strong Cartesian skepticism) You can know your internal states in the absence of the SM, you can know things from your past in the absence of SM, and you can know the existence of external objects without having to apply the scientific method (though you do have to answer the Cartesian skeptic for both the past and the existence of outside objects.)

[discarn8.livejournal.com]

Valid point. I sit corrected re: accepting or proving information.

(And throwing out the Cartesian Skeptic is a low blow, I tell ya. *impish grin*)

-John

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

And throwing out the Cartesian Skeptic is a low blow, I tell ya.

You have to close that window before any epistemic discussion begins or you get to run around in circles for the rest of the day. Which, while fun once, isn't the sort of thing I go in for anymore.

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

I mean, you can invite the Cartesian Skeptic to a conversation, but if one conversant isn't willing to allow us to acquire reliable knowledge about the outside world, then really, there isn't much to talk about, and that would be a damned shame. And really it seems to me to be akin to the free will vs illusion of free will question. No matter which position is right, taking the negative position fails to yield anything useful, so it seems best to act as if we can have knowledge of the outside world and as if we have free will.

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

Actually, I take back the statement that nothing useful comes from either position. They can act as specialized plumage in student-philosopher mating rituals, sort of a short hand way of indicating to other young philosophy students which seemingly profound sorts of things you espouse, thus identifying yourself as a potentially suitable mate for like-minded philosophy students.

[discarn8.livejournal.com]

*ROFLMAO*

Oh, my... That came out of left field. *applause*

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

Well, back in college, I was a philosophy major who became a philosophy minor when I realized I wasn't at all interested in the memorize name and date classes. I got to see a fair number of different types of philosophy students in their natural habitats. The mating rituals were varied and sometimes very bizarre.