Err what people? Atheists? Religious?
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Atheist GAF: Your moment of realization
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Angry Fork
Member
I'm assuming religious. When atheists share their opinion or defend themselves the supernaturalists say things like don't judge me, you believe what you want i believe what i want etc. that kind of backpedaling in an attempt to escape an argument they're losing.
I don't consider myself an atheist but more of an agnostic.
However, I started to question things when time in a church class. The younger kids would be taken to a class for the last 45 minutes of the main church session until it was over. So I was maybe 3rd or 4th grade.
We were doing this exercise where there was a list of people and whatnot and it said to rank the order of the people in which who you love the most. This was the list
Parents
Pets
Jesus
God
Friends
I had my parents first. But I was told that I was wrong, and I should love God (first) and Jesus (second) before my parents. I just couldn't comprehend why that should be the case when I've never seen or spoke to either Jesus or God.
However, I started to question things when time in a church class. The younger kids would be taken to a class for the last 45 minutes of the main church session until it was over. So I was maybe 3rd or 4th grade.
We were doing this exercise where there was a list of people and whatnot and it said to rank the order of the people in which who you love the most. This was the list
Parents
Pets
Jesus
God
Friends
I had my parents first. But I was told that I was wrong, and I should love God (first) and Jesus (second) before my parents. I just couldn't comprehend why that should be the case when I've never seen or spoke to either Jesus or God.
SuperEpicMan
Banned
Sometimes I wish I was able to have a faith of some kind, it would give my life some much needed purpose and clarity. When I see religious people even if I think there is no truth to their religion, there doesn't need to be any to a certain extent.
Not sure. It was gradual.
As a kid I used to pray every night, pray in church. My parents and I are from Poland so I have a pretty devout Roman Catholic upbringing. Eventually I stopped praying every night. Possibly due to monotony, it wasn't getting me anywhere etc etc. Still believed though. If I wanted something bad enough I'd pray for it.
Took religious education, CCD. This was probably what started to drive me over the edge. The more I learned about religion, the more I went to church and CCD the further away I drifted from the church. It was a transition of I believe and practice, slowly into I just believe but don't want to practice (becauce church and CCD are boring as fuck)
Around my first communion I still believed. At my confirmation I was agnostic. I felt like agnostic was the best possible belief I could have. The most open minded.
But junior year I read Life of Pi and the message there about religons, atheism, and agnosticism really hit me. I realized being agnostic was like doing something half way and half assing it. I should know what I believe in and stand by it. Pick a damn side, essentially.
This was around the time I started discovering the works and lectures of Carl Sagan through Cosmos and various youtube videos. Neil Tyson and other astronomers, astrophysicists, and scientists were painting a picture of life and the universe and creation that I thought was more compelling and beautiful than anything I read in the bible.
So here I am. Atheist. What do I believe in? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U49i8HYMp2k
As a kid I used to pray every night, pray in church. My parents and I are from Poland so I have a pretty devout Roman Catholic upbringing. Eventually I stopped praying every night. Possibly due to monotony, it wasn't getting me anywhere etc etc. Still believed though. If I wanted something bad enough I'd pray for it.
Took religious education, CCD. This was probably what started to drive me over the edge. The more I learned about religion, the more I went to church and CCD the further away I drifted from the church. It was a transition of I believe and practice, slowly into I just believe but don't want to practice (becauce church and CCD are boring as fuck)
Around my first communion I still believed. At my confirmation I was agnostic. I felt like agnostic was the best possible belief I could have. The most open minded.
But junior year I read Life of Pi and the message there about religons, atheism, and agnosticism really hit me. I realized being agnostic was like doing something half way and half assing it. I should know what I believe in and stand by it. Pick a damn side, essentially.
This was around the time I started discovering the works and lectures of Carl Sagan through Cosmos and various youtube videos. Neil Tyson and other astronomers, astrophysicists, and scientists were painting a picture of life and the universe and creation that I thought was more compelling and beautiful than anything I read in the bible.
So here I am. Atheist. What do I believe in? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U49i8HYMp2k
WeAreStarStuff
Member
Grew up in a very religious household, but always had an inquisitive mind. I was forced to go to church at least once a week as a child and I hated it, and had so many questions, oh so many questions.
Even as a wee lad I would ask questions, and the answers I received just didn’t make sense.
Child Me: “So if someone is born a jew they are going to hell for not believing in Jesus?”
Dad: (with an annoyed expression.) “Yes.”
OK…….that’s not……….right????
Child Me: “You’re whatever religion you are born into. You could have been born a Muslim.”
Preacher: “And I would be the best Muslim there can be.”
OK………
Child Me:” But there are gay animals..”
Dad: “That’s from all of the pollution.”
OK……….
Child Me: “How could God/Noah get all of those animals on one boat?”
Fanatical religious lady: “The lord works in mysterious ways.”
OK…….
There were just too many questions that I could not receive answers to. Too many unexplainable things accepted as fact for no real reason besides following the crowd. There were too many contradictions, cognitive dissonance, and straight up BS for me not to scratch my head and start to wonder about this religion I was brought up in. The funny thing is that I just became apathetic, not an atheist, but I just didn’t care about any of it for most of my life.
I didn’t really start thinking about Christianity/Spirituality all that much again until the end of college, and really the few years right after college. I went out with some friends into the woods. I got high for the first time (at age 23!) on a warm summer day, laying on the ground looking up at the trees, and I realized that that moment was more beautiful, more poetic, more ‘spiritual’ than anything that religion had ever offered me. Since then I have gone a journey of my mind and developed an obsessive fascination with science (particularly quantum physics.) I have reached the conclusion that religion is just a trap; a snare on the human condition which tries to rob that which is innate and internal within all of us, and make it some external, intangible deity. We are star stuff, and that is deeply profound to me.
Even as a wee lad I would ask questions, and the answers I received just didn’t make sense.
Child Me: “So if someone is born a jew they are going to hell for not believing in Jesus?”
Dad: (with an annoyed expression.) “Yes.”
OK…….that’s not……….right????
Child Me: “You’re whatever religion you are born into. You could have been born a Muslim.”
Preacher: “And I would be the best Muslim there can be.”
OK………
Child Me:” But there are gay animals..”
Dad: “That’s from all of the pollution.”
OK……….
Child Me: “How could God/Noah get all of those animals on one boat?”
Fanatical religious lady: “The lord works in mysterious ways.”
OK…….
There were just too many questions that I could not receive answers to. Too many unexplainable things accepted as fact for no real reason besides following the crowd. There were too many contradictions, cognitive dissonance, and straight up BS for me not to scratch my head and start to wonder about this religion I was brought up in. The funny thing is that I just became apathetic, not an atheist, but I just didn’t care about any of it for most of my life.
I didn’t really start thinking about Christianity/Spirituality all that much again until the end of college, and really the few years right after college. I went out with some friends into the woods. I got high for the first time (at age 23!) on a warm summer day, laying on the ground looking up at the trees, and I realized that that moment was more beautiful, more poetic, more ‘spiritual’ than anything that religion had ever offered me. Since then I have gone a journey of my mind and developed an obsessive fascination with science (particularly quantum physics.) I have reached the conclusion that religion is just a trap; a snare on the human condition which tries to rob that which is innate and internal within all of us, and make it some external, intangible deity. We are star stuff, and that is deeply profound to me.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
rofl right out of the ass
Angry Fork
Member
rofl from all the pollution, that's great.
For fuck's sake, agnosticism is nothing to do with half-assing things. If you think it is, then you don't know what agnosticism is. It's not choosing not to make a decision; it's choosing to take an educated stance on the nature of knowledge; that there are claims that can not be (or have not been) demonstrated. It's about taking a position that puts knowledge and proof over belief and faith.
It's not incompatible with atheism or theism. It is, however, the only purely rational position to take, to my mind. Every right-thinking person in the world should be an agnostic, unless they've got a damn good reason to be otherwise.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Why is that surprising, don't they have to study philosophy for years before becoming a priest, or something like that? It probably isn't the same for all the variations of Christianity though.
I'm not pointing out a priest's fault, I am just surprised that's all. Christianity has such a fucked up vision of morality that it's pretty interesting, and good, to see a priest NOT preaching sacrifice.
Angry Fork
Member
There is no evidence of a God so there's no reason to believe there is one. God is no longer a viable hypothesis for everything to exist. If I said Tony Blair was God you wouldn't say "well I don't know for sure" you'd ask to prove it and if they can't then he isn't. If there's no proof of God there's no reason to take the side of i don't know.
I was a little surprised by my atheist friend's response to my agnostic beliefs. It sometimes seems atheists dislike agnosticism more than theists do. But it does humour me how some atheists take their beliefs so heavily on faith. When I discussed it with my one friend and about how science can't adequately explain the origin of the universe he just shrugged and said "we'll figure it out eventually."
In my belief, some things by their very nature are unknowable and any claim either way is just silly.
As for the original post, I remember thinking a lot about religion in high school. My family is pretty liberal in their faith with my mom being closer to a New Age Christian than anything resembling classical belief. I did a fair bit of research on a lot of different religions and it just didn't make sense that if the Christian god were real why he/she/it would just let so many people live in ignorance with the ultimate outcome of their eternal torment. It really highlighted the incongruity between the all-loving image and the petty and jealous one.
That, and discovering that Christianity essentially just ripped Zoroastrianism in most of its fundamental components.
WeAreStarStuff
Member
The funny/sad thing is that my father is otherwise a very intelligent man. He was an engineer, and now a scientist....such is the cognitive dissonance of religion. The mind boggles.
Pretty much this. Atheism isn't "I don't believe in a god." It is "A lack of a belief in god." A subtle, and yet distinctive difference as words have an exact meaning.
The truth is that we don't have all the answers to our existence. Science is great for explaining things that we observe in nature and making educated guesses about what happened billions upon billions of years ago, but the fact remains that we weren't there to experience how this party started. While I don't subscribe to any of the major religions, how do I know that existence wasn't defined by some "higher" power?
WeAreStarStuff
Member
A book falls off a shelf in a closed closet.
Now I could assume it slipped b/c it was precariously placed and gravity did its dance, or I could think “maybe” there is a monster in my closet. I open my closet and see the book on the floor, but no monster. I can search the closet for a monster if I’m so inclined, but after a thorough search no monster is discovered. Now, can I ever prove that there was not a monster with a fetish for literature tossing in my closet? No. Would it be logical for me to assume without evidence of one that there was likely never a monster in my closet, and to simply place my books more securely next time? Yes. In the same vain, I can never prove that there is no god [I will not touch the never proving a negative argument/fallacy], but I have no reason to believe in one either. Could there be some super high being controlling everything? Yes. But, you could also say we are all just a computer simulation in an advanced computer. Or, we are all but a dream within a dream and etc. You can look for a monster in the closet, I’m just going to pick up the book and read it.
I really think most people are agnostic without realizing it. Agnosticism is just a flavor of atheism or theism, but people mistakingly parade it around as though it's a philosophy that can be isolated (and I'm not claiming that's what you're doing, I'm just bringing up the point for discussion). One can be either an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. It frustrates me when friends solely call themselves agnostic, when that's not a thing that stands on its own.
Except, the very definition of religion and god(s) is beyond the scientific method. There's a reason the scientific community hasn't run any studies on "discovering the nature of God" or whatnot and why we have Deism and respectable researchers that still hold faith.
Hell. even our science is starting to come to a point where it's creating issues with our methodology itself. Physics has demonstrated that merely observing a phenomenon will have an impact on its outcome which can have wide reaching implications in all our research and understanding currently.
I think it's not to much to realize that the scientific method isn't perfect and can't address everything.
Are you also searching for gravity?
Because I find the concept of a graviton a little incongruent.
I'll put you in the 'not understanding that agnosticism is not an alternative to atheism' pile, then. This is a purely natural and sensible follow-on from 'the existence or otherwise of God is unknowable', and is why the natural position of an agnostic would appear to me to be weak atheism.
WeAreStarStuff said:
You're not being quite clear enough in the distinction. There are two possible positions:
1. I do not believe that there is a God.
2. I believe that there is not a God.
These are both atheism. But not all atheists hold both positions; that's why there's a distinction to be drawn between what some people call weak and strong atheism. You have to make the distinction, in my opinion, because only one of the positions is logically defensible; the other relies on faith.
BeesEight said:
Atheists who don't also identify as agnostics often do. It seems to make them uncomfortable, because they want to claim the purely rational position, but agnosticism has a better claim to that. They want absolutes, and agnosticism doesn't offer them.
'Beyond' is a loaded word. 'Outside' works better. And it's outside the scientific method not because of any failings in the scientific method, but because the definition of God used by most doesn't meet any of the requirements for being studied scientifically. The general case of the God hypothesis is untestable (as all good agnostics will tell you). It also has no testably predictive power. It's also not very useful when it comes to furthering knowledge. It's less that God is beyond the scientific method, more that God is useless to it.
It never claims to. It does address everything that falls into its remit, though. The examples you give don't alter that one jot.
Yeah, I think the hard thing with agnosticism is that it isn't a simple, hard position. There are gradients in belief that kind of break down this idea of two separate camps and it makes it hard for people to compartmentalize the ideologies.
Because I believe the origin of the universe is. Especially once you start getting into the string theory explanation for the universe. If the creation of our current universe is the product of two alternate realities colliding, there really isn't going to be much you can "observe and test" to find if this is true. The scientific method will eventually fail (in my belief) to fully explain this phenomenon.
You're far too fast in responding for me. Yes, this is more eloquently phrasing what I intended to say. All I'm trying to communicate is that the scientific method does not address everything, so the position that "science will figure it all out" is a position of faith because science isn't organized to address all questions.
Atramental
Banned
A lot of factors played into my moment of realization but the main catalyst was going to Bob Jones University.
Going to that institution helped me realize how bat shit insane Christianity really was.
Going to that institution helped me realize how bat shit insane Christianity really was.
Angry Fork
Member
We do have competent theories on the origin of the universe, but as far as I know they can't be properly measured/proven with current technology. That doesn't mean "god did it". With the current models/theories god is not needed for the origin of the universe.
You cut off human potential by claiming there are things we can't know. Maybe that is the case, maybe we'll never be able to find out what happens after we die but that doesn't mean we should take non-theories into consideration. (And unless evidence comes to light that there is an afterlife, we have to assume there isn't). We are animals evolved just like tigers, dogs, bonobos etc. Do you think they have an afterlife too? We don't get special rules just because we're afraid of death and contemplate reality. Supernatural hypothesis are ones that do as they say, change the natural order of things. God's existence would do this and it has not been seen within nature or the cosmos.
With what we do know about the human body/brain we can infer that the idea of your body/mind reassembling itself in some after life and managing to keep your memories/ideas/personality intact is wish thinking. Sam Harris brought this up in a point noting that if you damage just a small portion of your brain entire other facultires shut down and you can become a vegetable, but for some reason if your entire brain dies we'll somehow live again and be able to recognize our relatives. It's just silly. There could be some kind of 'soul' where everything in our lives are stored and consciousness is separate from our brain, but we haven't found such a thing despite knowing pretty much everything else about the human body. (Although admittedly we still don't know a lot about the brain).
We're getting there. Every generation we get closer and closer to answering the big questions. Hundreds of years ago the same people said well we don't know where people came from so let's leave the god hypothesis open. Then evolution came about and they had to backtrack to the origin of the cosmos. Science has already saw to it that god is unnecessary for it all to work. The God hypothesis can't be disproved but the burden of proof is on those who say a god can/does exist, not the other way around.
There could be a higher power that put microbes on our planet or something and then left us. Aliens looking to have some fun could have done it for all we know. But there is no evidence of that happening and we have/are developing better theories for our origins then 'something we don't know about came here at some time and left us this is all conjecture but let's pretend it's a real theory' etc. Another problem with the god hypothesis is if you say it's outside the spectrum of time/space, "we'll never know" etc. then that's not an argument or scientific theory. It can't be tested or argued via scientific/mathematical terminology.
This is fair but I don't think it's how people should look at the world. If you say something is unknowable than you limit what we can find out. Science already has made god unnecessary for the universe to be 'maintained' and it will eventually explain it's origin. When that comes there will be no reason to believe in the supernatural hypothesis. You can say he exists outside of time/space or something and therefore can't be measured but then what's the point of the hypothesis at all? Then it's not a scientific theory it's just some constantly regressing argument that doesn't explain or answer anything and is of no worth to truth and enlightenment.
The existence or otherwise of God is knowable. He either exists or he doesn't.
Agnosticism is weak atheism because it ignores the fact that the answer is 'yes' or 'no' and chooses to settle with 'maybe'. It seems to me that most people are uncomfortable to claim that God does not exist is because Skepticism is so prevalent on the sciences, i.e, the idea that you can't never be sure of something but only of the probability of something to be what it is. This ignores that A is A, Aristotle's law of identity that shows that existence exists.
My stance on a Creator is very simple, for God to have created existence he would have to exist outside of existence, which is impossible given that nothing can exist outside of existence just as something can't come from nothing.
Given that God can't exist, and everything else can be explained by natural law, the only rational conclusion is that God does not exist, not that maybe he does not exist.
Studying Greek mythology from a young age. Etiology is the same across cultures, really, and everybody wants answers to the same questions. "Believing" in one particular set of stories or another struck me as hilarious for as far back as I can remember, even as a cultural Jew who celebrates the high holidays.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Er...what? An agnostic doesn't deny that God either exists or he doesn't exist. An Agnostic says that we don't know the answer to that question, not that there isn't one.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I don't think most agnostics are going around specifically searching for god to be meriting that implied generalization. They are merely (rightly) saying we do not know, and have not made sense of some very fundamental aspects of life. Until we do, there is the chance they could involve what may be identified as a "divine" force of some sort.
Rationally they may well live according to the amount of evidence they have found to god's existence, and so may appear very atheist, but that categorization is an issue of belief, and if belief is genuinely pending more information one way or the other, honestly what else could they call themselves? Yes, "agnostic" is but one possible dynamic of belief, but if it is the sole characterizing dynamic actually in play, it can be a categorization of belief as well. It is the belief that our current scope of observational ability is not enough to determine the answer.
That analogy is false because it assumes the "monster" must be of an observable nature by current conventional means. But the concept of a divine form isn't one of a man floating out in space somewhere, so the nature may be different. This isn't the same as believing just anything that isn't observed, such as The Matrix concept, but it's saying until we make sense of what doesn't make sense, until we see what appears to take place yet haven't seen, there is room for something we have never known.
As for why this could be a god of some sort, that comes down to "god" seeming utterly vague except for some notion of a fundamental essence of where cognition is based, a meta-cognitive force. Until we truly make sense of cognition and its existence, it philosophically makes sense why such a thing could be a pending reality in exactly the same way we consider the notion of a multiverse in figuring out the nature of physical things through quantum physics.
Rationally they may well live according to the amount of evidence they have found to god's existence, and so may appear very atheist, but that categorization is an issue of belief, and if belief is genuinely pending more information one way or the other, honestly what else could they call themselves? Yes, "agnostic" is but one possible dynamic of belief, but if it is the sole characterizing dynamic actually in play, it can be a categorization of belief as well. It is the belief that our current scope of observational ability is not enough to determine the answer.
That analogy is false because it assumes the "monster" must be of an observable nature by current conventional means. But the concept of a divine form isn't one of a man floating out in space somewhere, so the nature may be different. This isn't the same as believing just anything that isn't observed, such as The Matrix concept, but it's saying until we make sense of what doesn't make sense, until we see what appears to take place yet haven't seen, there is room for something we have never known.
As for why this could be a god of some sort, that comes down to "god" seeming utterly vague except for some notion of a fundamental essence of where cognition is based, a meta-cognitive force. Until we truly make sense of cognition and its existence, it philosophically makes sense why such a thing could be a pending reality in exactly the same way we consider the notion of a multiverse in figuring out the nature of physical things through quantum physics.
Omegasquash
Member
It's not that hard, actually. I believe that there is a god, but I do not and cannot claim to know what it is. As such, I can't live life according to a code that someone else tells me...they're welcome to live their life as such. I will KNOW that there is a god when it appears in front of me and presents evidence sufficient enough to make me know it.
Belief and knowledge. Sometimes one leads to the other, but I'm not holding my breath on this one.
Because I believe in a world we can understand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but agnostics believe you can't prove or disprove a god, so we don't know for sure. That's what I took it as when I was agnostic. It's what I still think it is.
But then I realized you can't think like that. I really don't like the whole idea of we can't know everything, we can't have all the knowledge. It's true, but you can't think like that because you get stuck in a fallacy where you can't really prove anything. Atheism is just more concrete to me. The universe started in a certain way without divine intervention. We're trying to figure it out. We believe there are answers out there we haven't found yet. But they're out there. What I don't like is having the possibility of a God. God is an idea/object/person/whatever that is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove based on the nature of his powers. In all cases like that, I choose to not believe.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Eh, the provability or dis-provability of God is a different issue IMO. I hold that God is a man made construct and you can't disprove him because the goalposts will always be moved by some of those who believe.
Where's that gnosticism-agonsticism-atheism chart when I need it...
Ventilaator
Banned
I was all "lol no" at the god concept when I still believed in the tooth fairy, to be honest.
Of for
fuck's
sake.
It's like people completely ignore the 94586002460 times these things have been explained.
Not all agnosticism is an indecision the matter. Agnosticism doesn't ignore that the existence of god is a binary question, it realizes that we have no claim to knowledge about what that answer is. It's not (necessarily) a "maybe" but a "we can't know."
Agreed. Just because we can't definitively know one way or the other doesn't make a proposed alternative correct. The origin of the universe could be the Big Bang. It could be String Theory. It could be some unformulated concept about cosmic plates spinning madly upon a fulcrum of concentrated gravity.
I do. I don't have faith in the human potential. I fully belief there are some things wholly beyond our understanding. But that also doesn't mean I think that alternative viewpoints are correct.
Do animals have an afterlife? I don't know. I can't possibly know without dying and even then, I may not know because they have separate afterlives. These things, by their nature, are outside the scientific method and any rational sense of knowing.
While I don't believe we will ever know, I'm not arguing that we should strive to discover it anyway. There is still lots of knowledge to be learned and many discoveries can be made serendipitously. I fully agree the god hypothesis is pretty awful and at best can only suggest some sort of deism that would specifically run counter to all the established faiths on earth.
I think saying something is unknowable allows more tolerance in our society. We can't prove or disprove god, so why can't we allow all faiths and beliefs co-exist? Though, this doesn't excuse all the crimes committed in the name of faith, obviously, as I have no inclination or desire to defend the more repugnant clauses that have appeared in religion.
Hm, I'm not sure how else I can frame it.
The scientific method has a structure to it that focusses the areas of research into quantifiable things that can be tested and experimented with. I believe the origin of the universe lies outside of the field of science. I don't think we will ever be able to develop technologies that can "discover" this information.
For example, in quantum physics, the mere act of observing an event changes the outcome. This can suggest that some events are unable to be properly scientifically studied.
I was more suggesting the difficulty could be for some atheists. My friend in the example I was using was very adamant in the non-existence of god that he took the belief that science will disprove it on faith. It was a curious situation where his faith was analogous to the theist faith that he so vehemently argued against.
I'm not calling out Tawpgun but I thought I was pretty clear that I don't believe all atheists are the same. Does not his belief just confirm what I said?
If you don't wish to discuss it with me, that's fine. But I don't see why we can't keep things civil.
I think you are looking for a fight where there is none. Nowhere did I say we should not study the origins of the universe. In an earlier post, I actually argue that such research still holds great value. I really don't see why you appear to be getting worked up about this.
I could be very wrong about the origin of the universe. Tomorrow a scientist can publish a paper detailing it down to the very last detail. I'm skeptical of that though. I'm open to the possibility of it happening, but I don't believe it will. First, our technology is too limited by it, there is some interesting research that could have profound implications for further study in the field and I doubt there will be a way for us to adequately test any of the theories.
I am really not sure what your angle is here.
Oh...kay?
Yet to come to this conclusion you would have to have some knowledge about the origin of the universe. It would be impossible to know whether something could not be studied or discovered if we were unable to study or discover it, as such a quality could only be determined from studying or discovering it. Which makes that entire line of thought nonsensical. So you're making an assumption, then self-confirming it on faith.
I think it's fine to believe that we may not ever know the truth due to potential complexity, but to claim to know that something is unknowable becomes a silly game of semantics with no real meaning.
airmangataosenai
Member
It took years to go from Catholic to Atheist, I probably didn't accept the label until The God Delusion but I fit the category much earlier. I started the whole journey towards the end of the Confirmation process when I finally learned what the Eucharist was truly supposed to represent (Literally the body and blood of Christ, not just the "Spirit") and I found it insane.
Because these things have been discussed a million times elsewhere and in this very topic, even a few posts above yours. It's fine to jump in the middle of a discussion but maybe some background checks should be made.
Agnosticism is not compatible with atheism, and even if some atheists make the distinction, it's either because they don't know what the word means or because they have an extreme position which is not the logical one.
Agnosticism has nothing to do with religion per se. You can be agnostic towards the existence of aliens.
No, there's no faith involved in science. Unless you're using that word in a colloquial sense, which has nothing to do religious faith. Just like "the theory of evolution" is nothing like "so I have this theory that my flatmate is using my computer when I'm not home".
I really don't think than anyone here would argue that science can prove/disprove the existence of god, the afterlife, or invisible cookie monsters living at the center of the earth. Science, by its definition, can only give answers regarding the observable, natural world. Not the metaphysical/supernatural. Everyone knows that.
Angry Fork
Member
It seems like the main difference between agnostics and atheists is that agnostics are open to the idea of the existence of something beyond our current understanding of nature/physics. And if it (God in this case) is constantly beyond what we learn then we can't know what it is. This is fair in that viewpoint but I don't think it's the right one to go by especially if you decide to look at the world scientifically. I feel like to objectively know whether something is true/false, whether it exists etc. you have to use the current tools/ideas that we know of.
I think anything that's suggested to be outside time/space isn't a proper theory since it can't be tested/observed. If in the future it turns out general relativity is wrong for example (which all signs point that it isn't, but let's pretend we have to be open to all possibilities anyway), then that will be changed and our view of the world/universe now has to be seen through those new rules. I don't think a theory that states it's constantly beyond what we're capable of is worth discussing at all. So if the God hypothesis is unknowable or untestable then it's not a hypothesis to me. The same view I have towards ghosts is the same toward God. If there is no proper evidence for it's existence then it doesn't exist. And I reject the belief of an existence outside what we know/time/space etc. since it doesn't coincide with our reality.
In my view everything that exists is knowable, it's just a matter of time and vision to get to those answers. Now I'm treading dark territory though because you can argue we might never know details about planets in other galaxies (despite knowing they exist) since we'd need to harness some kind of warphole-type travel to get there. So in a sense there is faith in science that they will find solutions to our limitations. But at least it's faith in something real and in human potential rather than the supernatural. But by the time we ever achieve such modes of transportation we probably won't be the same humans we are now =(
edit - This does remind me of the allegory of the cave though. And thinking about whether or not what we think is our reality is just us in our own cave.
I think anything that's suggested to be outside time/space isn't a proper theory since it can't be tested/observed. If in the future it turns out general relativity is wrong for example (which all signs point that it isn't, but let's pretend we have to be open to all possibilities anyway), then that will be changed and our view of the world/universe now has to be seen through those new rules. I don't think a theory that states it's constantly beyond what we're capable of is worth discussing at all. So if the God hypothesis is unknowable or untestable then it's not a hypothesis to me. The same view I have towards ghosts is the same toward God. If there is no proper evidence for it's existence then it doesn't exist. And I reject the belief of an existence outside what we know/time/space etc. since it doesn't coincide with our reality.
In my view everything that exists is knowable, it's just a matter of time and vision to get to those answers. Now I'm treading dark territory though because you can argue we might never know details about planets in other galaxies (despite knowing they exist) since we'd need to harness some kind of warphole-type travel to get there. So in a sense there is faith in science that they will find solutions to our limitations. But at least it's faith in something real and in human potential rather than the supernatural. But by the time we ever achieve such modes of transportation we probably won't be the same humans we are now =(
edit - This does remind me of the allegory of the cave though. And thinking about whether or not what we think is our reality is just us in our own cave.
I don't claim to know that the origin of the universe is unknowable, I believe it is so.
There is a difference between knowledge and belief. I don't know, and I can't possibly know, the origins of the universe or the existence of God. None of us can make that claim.
We could know the existence of gods, if one popped right up in front of us and explained it to us. Likewise, if we had a time machine and popped back to the birth of the universe, we could know it's origin as well.
I believe, however, by their nature these things aren't knowable due to the limitations of our technologies and our perceptions of reality. To claim knowledge of either is a matter of faith.
Fully agree.
Also agreed.
There was some confusion with an earlier statement of mine and I apologize for it. I only meant to make an aside observation of a friend of mine who is a very strong atheist. He feels that science will explain everything given time which is not an accurate view of science. There are limitations to the scientific method that will preclude some questions from being answered by it. So, his position that science would solve everything was essentially putting a greater sense of faith in it than was necessary.
krameriffic
Member
This is not a shortcoming of quantum physics, this is in fact one of its defining features. It's not that aspects of the system are unknowable, it's that the outcome is random (but still very much governed by a strict set of rules). There is a subtle distinction between outcomes being random and outcomes being unknowable. It's the distinction between a nondeterministic universe and a universe where the rules are ephemeral, esoteric and unknowable.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
But claiming that they're unknowable is also a matter of faith. The only rational position is that we don't know if the beginning of the universe is knowable or unknowable.
Angry Fork
Member
If you think it's knowable you're optimistic if you think it's unknowable you're pessimistic =P
I'm basically arguing the optimistic one is the better idea to live by and is the side of progress.
True, agnosticism is as much a faith as theism and atheism.
I'm sorry, perhaps I should have been more clear in that sentence. Let me rephrase:
"I believe the knowledge of the origin of the universe lies outside the field of science."
I would love to get into a debate about the philosophy of science, but I feel that may be too derailing for this thread.
I was amused by his behaviour, nothing more. I think you were reading too much into it.
Which was exactly the point I was trying to make. I have no issue with what you believe as long as you accept that your position is indefensible without also admitting that it is a faith-based one. I don't claim to believe that it is unknowable or knowable, just that humanity will make its best effort to learn as much as possible. The result is anyone's guess, but to believe in advance that they will or will not find what they're seeking has no rational justification.
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