I am busy today and in lieu of an original post, thought that I would post an old article of mine that was published in the UK magazine New Humanist in July 2011. I moved my blog to FtB in 2012 from my earlier platform where it started in 2005, so the article appeared before many current readers would have started reading the blog and they may find it of interest.
The topic was whether being agnostic on the question of the existence of God was a viable position to take. I argue that the answer is no, hence the title of No Doubt that I gave the piece.
That magazine used to have a more playful, irreverent style that you can see just below the header. It later became more staid.
The Swedish (and possibly Scandiavian) position is “who cares?”
Religion is seen as a quite personal issue.
If you like religion, watch out for cults that want your money. Apart from that it is an issue alongside the horoscopes you find in newspapers.
If The New Humanist wants to use cellulose on the issue, I might humbly suggest more urgent issues (genocide, climate collapse), but that is all.
From the New Humanist article:
What about mathematically? There might be an infinite number of possible different deities. In that case the probabilty for the existence of each deity would be about 1/# == 0.
Theism , Agnosticism , Atheism are all viable positions -- Look around you.
If you mean viable in the sense of can we be true to our principles (science, logic , reason)? Then Agnosticism is the only viable position.
The rest is either faith or a bunch of hand waving and arguments by analogy (But you don’t believe in Santa Claus! But you are ambivalent towards aliens!) or who can win a debate or citing scientific authorities like Ricky Gervais. If you believe otherwise -- show the work -- whats the hypothesis -- where are the experiments -- where are the controls. Otherwise you are dabbling in philosophy, not science -- just pretending that the science supports your viewpoint.
Shrug. So all the Atheists should just call themselves agnostic- problem solved! Its funny how its always the Agnostic should change their label -- they being equivalent and all that.
If you want to define Atheism and deism to be equivalent sure. God is unnecessary to me too (but so is quantum physics and calculus)
But in the end ..who cares -- what you do matters more than what you believe. and for a large part of my life I believed that non religious people would have better morals , on average, than the religious. But now I think we are all the same.
@Jorg @2
There are an infinite number of possibilities. The possibilities of us existing in this form discussing Manos post therefore is 1/infinity = 0.
So who am I talking to ?
from before the higgs boson was confirmed! from before pricky gervais had gone full shitbird.
The definition you suggest doesn’t really work. An agnostic would say that your definition is the definition of agnostic. Agnostic is the position that god is unnecessary but possible, atheist is the position that god is unnecessary and impossible. That it is the atheist definition that goes too far in trying to deny god and all rational atheists are really agnostic.
It has an even worse problem in that a lot of people that believe in god would fall into atheist by that definition. All of the people who admit they can’t prove god exists but believe on faith are atheists by that definition.
It really doesn’t matter much. You already picked out the important distinction at the start of the article. Agnostic and atheist are essentially functionally the same and people pick depending on how they want to identify more then philosophical categorization.
@JM #6:
I am an anti-religionist. Reading how you define the terms,I should consider myself agnostic rather than atheist.
However I have been more comfortable with the atheist label. I can see how to some that the idea of atheism is one of head-in-the-sand denial, of not even admitting the possibility of a creator or “higher power”. But I have encountered too often the alternative, a wishy-washy type of “anything may be possible” agnosticism, the definition that the bullshitters, from religious cultists to astrology buffs and tea-leaf readers, love, because it provides them with a seat at the table.
Atheism, on the other hand, is a door slammed shut in the face. To be an atheist says, unequivocally, personally, that I do not believe in your nonsense. How rude! Rude but necessary. Too many manipulative lies and too much wishful thinking in this world; let’s call a spade a spade. Start with the basic tenet that there are no holy texts in this world, only texts written by humans, period. If you want to argue that then we have nothing to say to each other.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the word “exists” means. If we define “exists” to mean material existence in space and time, then god doesn’t exist pretty much by the official definition: he is “transcendent” which means that he is outside space and time, or nowhere in space and time, and he is a pure “spirit” or in other words has no material existence at all. I think I would prefer to define “exists” in this crass materialist way :), and then I believe every fundamentalist would agree with me that god doesn’t exist. Of course imaginary ideas also exist in a different sense (Platonic forms?), I guess we atheists have no problem accepting that god exists as an imaginary idea, like Spiderman.
@acsglster #8:
It’s an appealing argument, but when you get on to the subject of “existence”, the unfortunate flaw is that we each live in a simulation (well I do, at least, and you, whoever is reading this, probably do too if I’m not a brain in a vat). No really, what I think of as reality is a simulation constructed by my body! So knowing that everything I think of as real is simulated, the “material existence” argument becomes questionable. I guess you could say that the idea of a god doesn’t match anything in the simulation, so it’s less real, inasmuch as any of our simulations truly reflect a reality.
(Note that this is different to the question usually posed, which is whether the reality we see (actually the individual realities that our bodies are simulating, but that we assume reflect a constant singleton from our different perspectives), is itself a simulation…)
Responding to a few lines in the linked essay:
Why not just change “aggressive” to “confident”? Or is confidence seen as being equivalent to aggression?
Back when I considered myself to be agnostic, I would have responded to “Is God necessary as an explanatory concept?” not with “no” or “yes”, but “I don’t know!” — that’s what “agnostic” means!
However, I didn’t know a lot back then, and I was often confused about what to think (and I have some sympathy with those who are still confused).
I haven’t learned so much that I know everything, but I’ve learned enough that I can now say that I am confident that God is not a necessary explanatory concept.
Actually writing out what I’ve learned would probably be a long essay, but to try to summarize:
-- I’ve learned enough about the ontology of minds and physics to be confident that minds are processes of functioning brains, and not things that can exist without a functioning brain
-- I’ve learned enough about history and archaeology to be confident that religions are wholly human fabrications
-- I’ve learned enough about cosmology to be confident that our planet is the result of physical processes that started with the big bang, and even if the big bang is not fully understood, it does not require a God for it to have happened.
-- I’ve learned enough about organic physical reactions to be confident that life is an unusual ongoing chemical reaction that began about 4gya, but does not require a God to have started it.
-- I’ve learned enough about how minds can have sensory and processing misfires — hallucinations — to be confident that reports of personal “miraculous” experiences are hallucinations
-- I’ve learned enough about religious philosophy and theology to see that it’s all terrible reasoning
[There might be more, but I think that sums up most of it]
Owlmirror @#10
In my experience if you are a woman for too many men the answer is ‘yes’.