Apatheists unite! (if you can be bothered)

[Monketi Ghost]

My sister is an apatheist. She really, truly, totally doesn't care about whether there is a God or not, afterlife or not, etc.

Just doesn't care. Doesn't make a difference to her. Her view is that if it exists, great, but if it doesn't, eh, whatever.

If you knew her personality, you'd understand.

She is exactly the type to face the biggest question of the universe with a cold shrug and turn her mind to this week's episode of Glee.

I just died a little inside.

 

[arthwollipot]

I was going to say that. But since you just did, that's fine by me.

Yeah, whatever.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Meh

 

[Kopji]

If I may take a more serious note... I think it is worthwhile to understand the basic theistic arguments, and is also good to be basically knowledgable about the major religions and what they teach.

If you are apathetic about God you are their sworn enemy. Understand them as well as you can.

 

[Ladewig]

deleted by poster.

 

[Manopolus]

I honestly don't care even if certain religions ARE true and I go to hell if I don't believe. Here's the thing: Even if it were the case and I knew it to be so, I would still refuse to let it have any impact whatsoever upon how I live my life NOW. I guess I've just always been one of those punishment resistant types.

Right is right and wrong is wrong and ambiguous is ambiguous. The presence of a God or Gods does not change any of these things notably. I do not trust any authority - godly or otherwise to make my decisions for me, and I think doing what I think is right for me -- or possibly doing what I just think is more fun, in some cases -- is more important than doing what such an authority tells me to do.

I suppose if I couldn't be agnostic, due to actual knowledge, I might be a Satanist, depending upon your definition of such. If God exists, I don't accept His authority. (Note that accepting the authority of his opposite is equally indigestable which makes "satanism" subject to definition).

Eventual self interest has nothing to do with it. Call it arrogance if you want, but God just doesn't matter even if I were to somehow KNOW of His existence. I considered myself an ally of satan years before I rejected the existence of God, btw. It wasn't an evil thing, it was more a simple rejection of an ultimate authority.

Anyway, that's where my own rejection of the religion I was brought up in came from. Pretty much everyone I knew (as far as I knew) believed in some form of Christianity, so simple atheism didn't even occur to me, at first.

For me, I am not disinterested in matters of religion... I wouldn't bother with this part of the forums if I wasn't interested. I find religions fascinating, actually. I just find the question of God irrelevant. Religions, however, ARE relevant to history and society.

 

[Oystein]

I did give the afterlife and the claims at least of the Christian religion a great deal of thought, and, doing so, moved from agnostic (didn't really know, but could not quite believe in any supernatural, so assumed there is no God and I will disappear when I die) to atheist (am convinced and ready to defend that there is no supernatural and I will disappear when I die). I did so mainly because I was prompted by people who were/are dear and near and did believe in God very much. Mainly my twin sister and the love of my life who I was never with because that goddamned god told her not to.

Today I would again give the question a good deal of consideration, this time around based on a risk-profit consideration. Something like Pascal's Wager, but with a more economical touch:
Risk = Probability of bad event x Expected cost or loss

I have since youth considererd the probabilty that there is some sort of life after death very very slim. But not exactly zero.
The cost would be eternal life of bliss and happiness. Is that an infinite cost? Not sure... I think there are diminishing returns to life in Paradise, and the value of eternal life in Paradise might be a finite integral.
But still: near-zero probability x very big cost = ???

So I set out to narrow down on both ends. Still don't have numbers, but the more I looked into it, the smaller the probability for the Christian afterlife became. Especially considering that other religions make conflicting claims - the total probability for any afterlife must be split among the existing, but also the extinct and the conceivable but non-existing religions. The cost became more and more ill-defined and thus smaller. It seems that the Christian version is the kind of happiness those in North Korea enjoy who most loyally lick the Kind Leader's feet.

I concluded that the risk of ignoring the afterlife is negligible and does not justify much effort.

 

[geni]

I see religion as thus:

1. What I believe in has no effect on the truth.

Prove it.

2. I live according to my own sense of what is right or wrong, what does it matter if a god has the same views?

Dissagreeing with extremely powerful beings who aparently take an interest in eath is not garenteeded to end well.

3. Even if a god does exist, what emphasis is there for me to worship it?

Or else.

For those that actualy inteven on a day to day basis there is a far stonger reason to belive. Do you really want to face an army backed by Ares (actualy that wouldn't be too bad Athena would present more of a problem)?

I get accused of being 'lazy', but then upon asking my accuser "Why do you think you are right?" I never get a surefire answer for their belief, even with atheists. If you can't KNOW something, then it tends not to be of much use.

Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We also can't solve the schrodinger equation other than for some fairly simple systems.

Science is often equated with atheism, with the axiom of "If it can't be proved true then it is assumed false" applied to and I can appreciate that line of thought, but still, I do wonder why the existence, or lack of, a god should affect you as a person.

Same reason that the existance of any non human intelligent entity is of some significance. If said entity happens to wield a hammer called Mjöllnir so be it.

The fact is that most modern gods tend to be scientificaly diffcult but that doesn't mean that the answer would be of some scientific interest.

 

[FireGarden]

I'm also triple A: Agnostic, Atheist, Apahtheist.

The way I justify the latter is along the lines of:
If God exists, then the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
If God does not exist, then the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

So the existence of God is not a matter worth investigating if all you're interested in is the argument for evolution.

Of course, there's more to life than evolution. But the argument tends to come up the same. Is anything provably different if an unprovable entity exists or not? It's Sagan's Dragon: "what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?"

Of course, there's a limit to apathy. If the afterlife could be proved or usefully investigated, I would be interested. But, while it's an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire.... I am not. (Though I am interested in those who believe such things).

 

[Matt the Poet]

If there really is a God personally invested in my behaviour to the extent that It's prepared to punish me if I get it wrong, all the evidence says I'm doomed anyway. Since It's seen fit to explain what 'getting it right' means via a collection of mutually contradictory and barely coherent texts, It's clearly a pretty arbitrary Being. For all I know I'm going to hell because I didn't wear a blue hat every third Tuesday, but It hasn't got around to revealing the text that says so yet...