A brief conversation
Dec. 3rd, 2007 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demiurgentA 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.
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Re: a late arrival
Date: 2007-12-04 06:02 am (UTC)1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
Notice the second part, the broader definition. Using that definition (which I think a reading of Eric's post supports) you can, I think, see where he gets his three broad brush positions. Problem seems to be that from his grouping of Atheist, you get two different species. The philosophical atheist and the faith based atheist. The philosophical atheist overlaps position-wise with the agnostic and the faith based atheist, and I'm not sure it really deserves its own category. Problem is, there is no compelling reason to lump it with one side or the other. (So yeah, I'm wrong, we need 4 legs. Actually we need a fifth leg for the folks who aren't theists but who believe in the supernatural (and not just the unexplained natural) and probably a sixth grouping for folks who believe in some sort of theistic entities who work within the rules, naturalistic deities (I'd say arguably the later Norse, Greek, and Roman gods probably would fit there, and there are at least some Oden and Thor followers knocking about.)
Re: a late arrival
Date: 2007-12-04 03:39 pm (UTC)Atheist could mean:
I don't believe there is a god
I believe there is NOT a god.
It is impossible for there to be a god.
Agnostic could cover the three positons in my other comment:
I don't know
I can't know
It's impossible to know.
Theist could cover the same range of gradations:
I belive that there is a god
I know that there is a god
There MUST be a god for X to work the way it does.