Are Agnostics Welcome Here?

[Trent Wray]

Just one thing to add.....

The main reason IMHO that people still cling to any kind of warping of any definition of God is because they cannot accept that there is nothing else after death. This concept of not existing after they die seems to drive people totally bananas. Cognitive Dissonance then drives them to warp and contort the God hypothesis to try to overcome the facts against it in order to maintain the concept of life after death.

IDK .... I go back and forth about this in my own mind, if the fear of death being the end of the road is really the main reason.

I mean .... maybe when you daily have to consider life and death struggles to find food, shelter, etc ... but when you have those things and can take them for granted, I think it goes "deeper".

Just look at how we trivialize death for entertainment purposes, or convenience nowadays. We eat garbage, drive cars, play with weapons, participate in dangerous sports and activities for fun, watch it on TV, etc for entertainment purposes ... I doubt every time a believer gets in a car they think about the risk of them dying and have to remind themselves about heaven, or every time they go for a dip in the ocean they have to remind themselves about heaven in case of being eaten by sharks. And I know they're not always okay with watching the crimes on victims on Law and Order and telling themselves they're okay with it because it's all ficiton, and if it were fact, they would hope those victims went to heaven, etc ...

In other words, I think death is so taken for granted these days, that the ideas of clinging to gods for a ticket to the afterlife are more "godbot" pap spewed forth.

I think a big part of it has to do with guilt, and having to find a rationalization to allow themselves to do things they either feel bad about .... or blaming others for things they think they should feel bad about. Like promiscuity, homosexual urges, wealth and luxury and financial success, hating, anger, etc ..... "human" wants, desires, issues. I think a lot of those who are religious cling to their religion to justify their choices of either being human or not tolerating other humans or a combination of the two, yada yada.

Perhaps at a root level, it's "fear of dying" and that being it. But once that is settled and can be taken for granted, then it's more a matter of bringing God into the picture as a cop out/scapegoat so one doesn't have to take responsibility for their actions. "I hate gays because God likes it." "I won't have sex with everyone because God likes it". "I'm going to kill the infidels because God likes it" ... instead of simply saying, "I hate gays because I hate them and I'm full of hate ...." ...... "I want to kill the infidels because I want to kill them and I have a desire to kill ...." yada yada. Who wants to admit that to themselves ? And if you don't want to admit it to yourself, you need an excuse not to for that dissonance gap. IMHO.

 

[Trent Wray]

It's Ch-ck -. Ch--s-, blasphemer!

In all honesty, when I go to CEC ... I do actually call him Charles Edward Cheese lol . It drives my kid crazy

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If I were to FTFY:

Not that I'm grinding this particular axe, but how is this for a non-falsifiable 'god'?

- [invisible pink unicorns] created the universe
- [invisible garage dragons] merely observe the universe
- [neither responds] to prayer
- [neither intervenes] in any way with the universe post-creation

....

Is there any point to such exercises in nonsense?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Firmly grounded in reality? Let's try this: I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of reality and its laws to be able to assert there is no god of any kind. How's that sound?

For any individual who is being truthful, it sounds fine. But when people like Wollery try to tell me and others here that we must be atheist agnostics because he cannot imagine how we could come to any other conclusion, that's not so fine.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not 100% certain of anything. But I was actually commenting on the math. How about "for all practical purposes"?

For all practical purposes, I'm certain I need O₂ to live. For all practical purposes I'm certain there is enough evidence (aka overwhelming evidence) to conclude gods are fictional things people made up and no reason to conclude otherwise. How's that?

 

[annnnoid]

I have said, “Gods don’t exist”. No qualifications, end of story.

This is the so-called “strong atheist” position – not merely a position reflecting the absence of a belief in gods, but rather a position which positively affirms that no such things exist.

And I’ve been asked how I can make such a statement.

Well, here’s why....

In summary:

(snip)

.. but there can be no gods.

And I have not one shred, not one iota, not one quark of doubt about that. Just as I have no doubt that the earth is round, that Tolkien wrote fiction, and that unicorns don’t grant wishes.

Nor should I.

Y’know Piggy, you make a very good case for the non-existence of God. Many here simply rant, and betray their emptiness. I could try and pick apart a great many of your points, but the ultimate result would be a stalemate…and the issues are complex to the point of incomprehensibility. Your conclusions though seem to rest very solidly on your not-too-shabby ability to actually intelligibly evaluate and understand evidence. A reasonable approach. It is often the criticism that is most consistently leveled at believers, of any persuasion….that they ignore the evidence.

A few years ago a conference was held. Beyond Belief it was called. All the brightest lights of the skeptic and atheist community assembled (Dennet, Harris, Dawkins etc.) to duly ridicule the ignorant of every variety. Among them were included two individuals who have been friends for quite some time...who didn't seem inclined to toe the company line. Noam Chomsky and Scott Atran. This was their response to the rational approach…to the assumption that we know enough about what we know to definitively conclude whether or not we know enough about what we know.

…it should be obvious to everyone that by and large science reaches deep explanatory theories to the extent that it narrows its gaze. If a problem is too hard for physicists, they hand it over to chemists, and so on down the line until it ends with people who try to deal somehow with human affairs, where scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so, except in a few areas that can be abstracted for special studies.
On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world.
Noam Chomsky

I find it fascinating that among the brilliant scientists and philosophers at the conference, there was no convincing evidence presented that they know how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based. It makes me embarrassed to be a scientist and atheist. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that scientists have a keener or deeper appreciation than religious people of how to deal with personal or moral problems.
Scott Atran

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
Richard Dawkins

….and an appropriate reply…from none other than a certifiable genius:

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
Blaise Pascal

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce


Invariably, the ignorant will chime in with their ‘God of the gaps’ nonsense. Not worth responding to. The argument is vast, complex, and…at this point…unresolved. The choices are invariably personal, which is where all real choices happen. Somewhere that science has yet to come anywhere close to arriving at (as Chomsky accurately pointed out).

 

[laca]

No, there isn't. You left out the all important comma which would make the sense of the second phrase different.

"running not to the store" implies you are neither going to the store nor running.

"running, not to the store" implies you are in fact running, but not to the store.

OK, now all you have to show is that "not running to the store" is the same as "neither going to the store nor running". If my English isn't failing me again, I'd say that "not running to the store" could still mean going to the store, which would make the two different (according to your interpretation).

BTW., since we're on the subject, is "running not to the store" even syntactically correct without a comma at all? I mean, wouldn't it have to be "running not, to the store"?

Ain't grammar fun.

Yes, it is.

 

[laca]

You can always take an imaginary point of view, which you seem to have done in this case -- i.e., one outside our timespace -- but by doing so, you again make real = not real, and exists = doesn't exist.

That doesn't answer the question. How does our point of view influence what exists and what doesn't?

BTW. I did not mention "outside our timespace" because I don't think that's coherent.

So now fart = not a fart, and monkey = not a monkey.

Yes.

Adding it all up....

God may be a real monkey that farted the universe, if and only if we accept that "real" and "not real" can mean the same thing, and "a fart" and "not a fart" can mean the same thing, and "a monkey" and "not a monkey" can mean the same thing.

That's a strawman. And it doesn't answer the question: how does our knowledge of the very early universe clearly disagree with an undetectable initiator?

In that case, can I beat you with a baseball bat and call it giving you a million dollars?

You wish...

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

So then being afraid to spell out the word God because YHWH forbids us to sound out his name in full in Hebrew despite being able to write it out in full in Hebrew....must be quite theistic....no?

If one is afraid of a certain god to the point of distorting spellings in a language foreign to this god then one is more inclined to believe in the existence of this god than not...no?

Also....an aspect of being agnostic means that you are WILLING to REASON....and reasoning means evaluating facts and concluding from them REASONABLE results...no?

So if one cannot overcome even the most meaningless taboos of a certain religious tradition then one is a PRISONER of that religion regardless of how much one WISHES to think that s/he is an agnostic....no?

Lighten up Sheldon.

 

[laca]

If it's unknowable, it can't be "real" or "exist", because in that case the world with and without it is identical.

No. For example, if it created the world, there would be no world without it.

And no, there's no justification for special pleading just because you're talking about a god. "Real" and "exist" have to retain their meanings for the statements "God is real" or "God exists" to be anything but nonsensical.

And since it's unreasonable for you to demand that I believe nonsensical things -- because, after all, there's nothing to believe in that case -- this type of non-claim doesn't change things a bit.

I'm not sure where I demanded that you believe anything, let alone nonsensical things. I'm just trying to illustrate - however clumsily - that you can't know for sure that there are/were no gods of any kind.

 

[laca]

Sounds like a perfectly plausible confession of someone who hasn't given it sufficient thought to come to a conclusion. Which is fine. But of course, it has no effect whatsoever on the conclusions I reach.

I've given it as much thought I could. To reach a better (more strict) conclusion, I'd have to get PhD in physics, cosmology, biology and who knows what else. I'm comfortable with the conclusion I reached. A conclusion does not have to be final and unchangeable to be called one.

 

[Piggy]

That doesn't answer the question. How does our point of view influence what exists and what doesn't?

BTW. I did not mention "outside our timespace" because I don't think that's coherent.

It does indeed answer the question.

Our POV doesn't influence what exists or doesn't exist. I wasn't ever implying that it did.

But according to your thought experiment, your monkey-that's-not-really-a-monkey-but-is-still-a-monkey does exist outside our spacetime (whether or not you use the phrase) and therefore any reality or existence it may have is not a reality or existence that we can have any access to, and is therefore utterly irrelevant.

It can only have reality or existence, even hypothetically, from a purely imaginary point of view, that of an observer outside our spacetime.

That's a strawman.

The heck it is.

You were claiming to be providing an example of an unfalsifiable god that we need to take seriously. (If we don't, then we can stop talking about it.)

You say it's a monkey, but not a monkey, that's actually a monkey.

You say it farted the universe, but not really.

So you're using the word "monkey" in a way that doesn't actually mean "monkey" and "fart" in a way that doesn't actually mean "fart".

This doesn't make your example unfalsifiable. It makes it nonsense.

 

[marplots]

If it's unknowable, it can't be "real" or "exist", because in that case the world with and without it is identical.

I like this because of the clarity. I dislike it because it seems to deny the reality of concepts and their consequences.

So, for example, does multiplication exist? It has no mass and the world with and without it would be the same -- or certainly was for some billions of years.

What about other concepts? If I absolutely dig Bugs Bunny and my worldview has been shaped by the cartoon, so I behave differently based on having seen it... does the rascally rabbit exist? Is he real?

I think you'd agree that belief in God exists and that fact has consequences and has shaped the world tremendously. But then, we have to wonder about things that used to exist (slavery in the US) and how, even though they no longer do (and even the concepts as motivators have disappeared -- for the sake of argument) they changed the world as we know it now, a kind of reaching into the present of some no longer existing past that arguably has made the world different and continues to do so.

In any case, I'm interested in your thoughts.

 

[Piggy]

No. For example, if it created the world, there would be no world without it.

Wrong. If it's unknowable, then by definition, there can exist no evidence that it created the world, no trace of it left anywhere, which means that the world looks the same with or without it.

Which is to say that the alleged effect (the universe) and the alleged cause (the monkey) are absolutely unconnected, which means neither one can be the cause of the other.

I'm not sure where I demanded that you believe anything, let alone nonsensical things. I'm just trying to illustrate - however clumsily - that you can't know for sure that there are/were no gods of any kind.

Nonsense doesn't illustrate anything.

 

[devnull]

I like this because of the clarity.

Seconded.

I dislike it because it seems to deny the reality of concepts and their consequences.

Nope.

So, for example, does multiplication exist?

Of course, because the universe with multiplication is demonstrably different to a universe without it.

 

[Piggy]

I've given it as much thought I could. To reach a better (more strict) conclusion, I'd have to get PhD in physics, cosmology, biology and who knows what else. I'm comfortable with the conclusion I reached. A conclusion does not have to be final and unchangeable to be called one.

If you think you don't know enough to reach a conclusion, then you can't reach a conclusion, which means you stop at agnostic.

As I've explained above, reason clearly indicates to me that we do, in fact, know enough to reach a conclusion on this matter, which makes me a strong atheist.

 

[Piggy]

I like this because of the clarity. I dislike it because it seems to deny the reality of concepts and their consequences.

So, for example, does multiplication exist? It has no mass and the world with and without it would be the same -- or certainly was for some billions of years.

What about other concepts? If I absolutely dig Bugs Bunny and my worldview has been shaped by the cartoon, so I behave differently based on having seen it... does the rascally rabbit exist? Is he real?

I think you'd agree that belief in God exists and that fact has consequences and has shaped the world tremendously. But then, we have to wonder about things that used to exist (slavery in the US) and how, even though they no longer do (and even the concepts as motivators have disappeared -- for the sake of argument) they changed the world as we know it now, a kind of reaching into the present of some no longer existing past that arguably has made the world different and continues to do so.

In any case, I'm interested in your thoughts.

Multiplication is something people do with their brains, or have computers do for them, which means it takes energy and because E=mc², it has an equivalent mass.

If everyone were to stop doing multiplication, denying it all energy, then there would be no multiplication in the universe, which means it would not exist. If there's a period of time when no one on earth is doing any multiplication, then it doesn't exist during that time.

Buggs Bunny is a cartoon and cartoons are real, so Buggs Bunny really is a real cartoon, as long as any of the cels exist, and a universe with those cels is not identical to one without it.

Belief in God exists, but belief in God != God.

 

[laca]

Piggy, I think the main point on which we disagree is what we call gods. You mean only relevant gods, I don't.

You say that non-relevant gods are, well not relevant. Which is of course true, for all practical purposes.

I too am a strong atheist toward any god humanity demonstrably dreamt up during the ages, however, my understanding of the word atheist does not allow me to disregard non-relevant gods. Call it nitpicking, intellectual masturbation, philosophical fig-leaf collecting, whatever. It is how it is.

Thanks for the interesting discussion, I'll bow out because I don't think we can arrive at a common point due to the differences laid out above.

 

[laca]

If you think you don't know enough to reach a conclusion, then you can't reach a conclusion, which means you stop at agnostic.

My conclusion is that I'm 99.999999999999999% sure there are no gods of any kind. It is still a conclusion, even if it's not a 100% certainty.

 

[Piggy]

On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little

This reminds me....

There's an often-used argument against strong atheism, which I didn't address in the long post, which claims that we must stop at agnosticism because science only produces provisional knowledge.

Perhaps I should mention it now -- seeing as how it's 2 in the morning and I still can't sleep....

The thing is, science is a tool of human reason, not the other way round. With our reason we developed science and evaluate its results.

It's a truly marvelous tool, but all tools have their limitations.

And it's a mistake to assume that the limitations of the tool are limitations on reality.

For instance, if I have a map of Florida that uses a scale which makes it impossible to render streams less than 6' wide, it would be foolish of me to assume that no such streams exist in Florida. To find out if they do or don't, I need to go there and look for myself to see.

And if science is a tool that does not come to anything but provisional conclusions, since science is a tool of reason it would be foolish for me to assume, on that basis, that no certain conclusions can ever be reached by means of reason at all.

And yet, I am often asked to accept that because science is limited in this way, I must conclude that there has to be some measure of real doubt about anything and everything, even if it's a small margin of doubt.

So folks will say, well, perhaps there's a 99.9[...]62% chance that gods aren't real, or whatever, but that leaves some room for doubt.

And yet even the formulation here makes no sense.

I mean, we can calculate an estimated probability that I will be killed by an asteroid strike, as long as we know how many asteroids are out there and their trajectories and sizes and what my lifespan is and so on. And we can conclude that I have, say, a 1 in 2.5 billion chance of dying in an asteroid strike, which makes it much less likely than my dying in a car crash.

But science does not lead us to believe that there are, oh, 3 gods per every 10 billion cubic parsecs, which means my chances of encoutering a god are....

Because science and reason do not tell us that the universe is very sparsely populated with gods.

Science and reason tell us that gods are, and always have been, fictions invented by human minds, with no correlates in objective physical reality.

As such, my odds of encoutering one are not "vanishingly small" but actually zero.