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October 21, 2007
Posted at 9:00 am by Richard and tagged abba, atheism, belief, chocolate, coming-out, god, labels, nothing, richard-dawkins, sam-harris, spice-girls. Popularity: 100% [?]
I’ve been holding off talking about Richard Dawkins’ “Out Campaign” for a while (yes, it’s probably all died down by now - you’ve either got a scarlet “A” on your t-shirt, website, car and baby, or you don’t) because I still haven’t figured out what I really think about it. On one hand, I applaud the effort to bring atheists together and to “out” themselves, but on the other, I still see the label “Atheist” as useful as “non-chocolate lover” or non-spice girls fan.
Of course, the use of the word “atheist” (and therefore the need to “out” oneself) has been stirred up recently by Sam Harris at an Atheist Alliance conference in Washington - there are no “non-racists”, so “why are we defining ourselves by something that should simply be the case”?
Every political or social group have certain beliefs and/or interests in common. A football team shares a love of sports, and possibly a belief that football is a worthwhile pursuit. A political group might share certain values and beliefs about how a society should function. A religion, well, they often share beliefs about a great many things: politics, sexuality, family values, etc. But more importantly - they share a belief in a supernatural being (or spirit, or afterlife, etc.).
What do atheists share? Nothing. Many of us can’t even agree on a definition of Atheism! I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing that we share, but what we do share is, quite literally, “nothing” - we share a nonexistent thing: a lack of a belief in God. While this probably gives us a more common understanding of God than most religious people (even within the same religion or denomination, it seems every person has their own understanding of exactly what or who God is), this doesn’t seem to be a great foundation for an alliance.
Am I going to “come out”, well - yes, and no. I am without religion. I am, therefore, an atheist. I am also without racism, and am therefore non-racist. I have never killed anyone, and am therefore a non-murderer. I further have no love for chocolate, no love of ABBA or the Spice Girls and most certainly no belief in fairies or celestial teapots. If you wish to define me by any of these “labels”, feel free - but I certainly don’t.
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September 2, 2007
Posted at 7:02 pm by Richard and tagged atheism, belief, friendly-christian, influence, interest, politics, religion, society. Popularity: 51% [?]
I recently read a post by the Friendly Christian, who questioned why some people just “aren’t interested in God”. The suggestion is made that perhaps the Church isn’t friendly or welcoming enough, and that if they improved in this area, perhaps they’d win more converts.
It’s certainly a valid criticism of most of the churches I’ve gone to, as many Churches aren’t friendly to nonreligious people wanting to see what things are like. I’m utterly sick of people asking me “What church do you go to?”, and then seeing the look of shock on their face when I tell them I don’t go to any church, I’m not religious, or (worse!) if I was to use the word “atheist”.
The quote being discussed by the Friendly Christian is as follows:
“I’m not religious. I don’t think much about God, except when I am in a pinch and need some special favors. I have no particular reason to think he’ll deliver, but I sometimes take a shot anyway. Other than that, I’m just not that interested in God.”
This, to me, sounds like a person who has no reason to believe in God except for the simple fact that many others seem to have this belief. If one is raised in a society where God is almost universally accepted, if one made no effort to actively think about God, what possible conclusions could that person come to?
This is where I think the Friendly Christian has got it wrong. This person doesn’t sound like someone who’s been shunned by the church, but someone who (quite legitimately, in my opinion) has no interest in God because the idea has little or no influence on their life. In an ideal world (one where personal beliefs in supernatural beings remained personal - in the sense that your beliefs were unable to affect my way of life), I think such a lack of interest in God would be quite common.
That’s not to say an interest in God is a bad thing, however. As you might have discovered, however, I do have an interest in religion and the concepts of God. These ideas do have an influence on my life because our politicians make them relevant, and because I want to understand why so many people have these beliefs. I find the idea of God interesting from a historical and cultural point of view, and want to learn more.
Are you interested in God? If not, why not?
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August 5, 2007
Posted at 1:19 pm by Richard and tagged belief, eclecticism, einstein, god, hippy, jesus, red-dwarf, religion, truth, wwjd. Popularity: 39% [?]
Last week, I mentioned that science could be a way to “religious experience”, and I discussed in one of my earliest posts (Religious Eclecticism) the idea that all religions could be based on some element of truth. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe whatever truth they may be based on has been utterly distorted, but that doesn’t mean there’s no truth to be found.
I think that all the “prophets” and religious leaders believed in the message they preached, but they didn’t expect (or want) their messages to be accepted as divine and unquestionable truth - they wanted people to think for themselves. I believe that Jesus, if he was a real man and if his message hadn’t been distorted by religion, would still be revered today without needing needing to claim that he was “God”.
Christians often ask themselves, “What Would Jesus Do?”, and I think if Jesus lived today, he’d be amazed by the magic all around us, and might even “find God” in a similar way to Einstein:
Sometimes he was really using God as just a sort of convenient metaphor. But he did have, I think, a genuine cosmic religious feeling, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe. Not just its majesty, but its extraordinary subtlety and beauty and mathematical elegance.
I think Jesus, today, would be more like a modern Buddhist or perhaps a “hippy” (jokes are often made about Jesus being the first hippy, but I think all jokes aside there’s a lot of truth to that).
If we ask ourselves the question, “What Would Jesus Believe?”, whatever the answer is, I definitely don’t believe he’d be a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, for that matter. It makes me think of the Cat’s religion in Red Dwarf…
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July 30, 2007
Posted at 2:41 pm by Richard and tagged atheism, belief, certainty, dilbert, god, pascal, scott-adams. Popularity: 25% [?]
I think Scott Adams (Creator of Dilbert) needs a bit of an atheist education. In his post “The Atheist Who Thought He Was God“, he makes two common misunderstandings/fallacies relating to Atheism. Can you spot them?
Perhaps there are more, but I think they boil down to the following:
- Few, if any, atheists claim to be 100% sure that God does not exist. (99.99999% IS good enough)
- Pascal’s Wager (which Adams’ post is based on - although perhaps not knowingly) doesn’t account for the multitude of beings which claim punishment for non-belief. Of course the other fallacies of Pascal’s wager are equally present in Adams’ post.
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Posted at 11:15 am by Richard and tagged atheism, belief, deaf, god, labels, negative. Popularity: 24% [?]
I started thinking after reading this comment - why do atheists feel the need to call themselves atheists at all? Certainly a hard/strong atheist would be justified in doing so since they have a specific belief to describe, but since most of us do not explicitly deny the possibility of God’s existence (and rather, claim that we simply “have no belief in God”), why should we have a label like this at all?
I don’t go around calling myself an “a-redhead” or an “a-woman”, or saying that I have “a-green” eyes, I’m not “a-artistic” or “a-Swahili-speaking” (feel free to translate these words into Greek for the proper effect). Similarly, a Deaf person wouldn’t go around calling themselves “a-hearing”. Why, then, do atheists insist on using a commonly misunderstood negative label to describe their lack of belief in God? Aren’t we just “not theistic”?
What other positive words or terms could we use to describe ourselves?
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July 15, 2007
Posted at 5:03 pm by Richard and tagged agnosticism, atheism, belief, definitions, god, philosophy. Popularity: 93% [?]
Welcome Stumblers! This post seems to keep getting “stumbled” upon, so I just thought I’d leave this note to say, “Hi”, and please feel free to check out some of my other posts - the most popular ones are listed down the side of this page. Also feel free to if you like what you read. Also, I welcome , so don’t be shy!
While I was watching a documentary on the history of religion recently, my sister said to me “but aren’t you an Atheist?” At the time I replied, “no, I’m Agnostic”. It has made me think, however, about the nature of Atheism and Agnosticism.
While I generally describe myself as “agnostic”, and avoid describing myself as “atheist”, I could be viewed as both, depending on your definitions. As there seem to be many different views on what Atheism and Agnosticism entails, let me be very clear about what I take the meaning of these words to be.
Belief
Definitions for both Atheism and Agnosticism rely on the notion of “belief”, which itself can be contentious at times. For my purposes, when I say “belief”, I refer “to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true” Belief, here, does not imply any lack of certainty - even though it might sometimes in common usage.
Atheism
Atheism, it seems, can mean many things - but broadly it seems to fit one of two definitions:
- the doctrine or belief that there is no God, or
- a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods
The first definition is the one which I had always taken (I’ll call this “hard” Atheism), and it is why I have never described myself as an “Atheist”. To me, to hold a belief that these is no god is just as illogical as a belief that there is a God - possibly even more so. While it may (hypothetically) be possible one day to prove that there is a God (perhaps he shows himself in some incontestable way, or we find a scientific method for exploring “heaven”) proving the universal non-existence of something is impossible (we can prove something doesn’t exist in one place - say, a box that’s empty - but proving universal non-existence is very different).
The second (”soft”) definition of Atheism, however, is one I’d not been aware of until the last year or so. It seems this definition is common among Atheists, but in my experience it is certainly not the generally understood definition of Atheism. In this definition, Atheism is not the opposite to theism or religion, but an absence of it. It is in this sense that I am an Atheist, although without qualification, I still feel the word “atheist” misrepresents my views.
Agnosticism
This is where we get to Agnosticism. Agnostic means, literally, “without knowledge” and as such an Agnostic holds they they have no knowledge about the existence of God. This is not necessarily a “fence sitting” position, however, as Agnosticism (like Atheism) can be viewed in two subtly different ways:
- a religious orientation of doubt, or
- a denial of ultimate knowledge of the existence of God
Certainly using this first definition (”soft” agnosticism), one could argue that the holder of this world-view is “fence sitting” - possibly still exploring or reasoning to discover the truth, or perhaps unable or unwilling to. But again, the second definition offers an entirely different position. A “hard” agnostic does not simply doubt the existence of God (and may, in fact, have faith that there is a God) but makes the claim that it is impossible to ever know if God does or does not exist.
When I describe myself as “Agnostic”, I make the claim that it is impossible to know if any of the Gods described by traditional religions exist. I am also, however, open to the idea that perhaps “God” (if he exists) is nothing like that described by traditional religion, and therefore may one day be provable. For me, the problem with the traditional notions of God are that proponents of these Gods leave no way to ever truly prove his existence - as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy joke goes:
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
The Christian God, therefore, will always be out of the reach of science because as soon as it becomes answerable by science (no matter what the outcome), God will be relegated (by some, at least) to an even further “far away place ” so as to ensure the existence of God can never be proven.
So in this sense, I am a “hard” agnostic when it comes to Gods like that of Christianity (only because no one is willing to say exactly where this God might exist) but a “soft” agnostic when it comes to other possible higher powers. Either way, the existence of any such higher power seems unlikely (but certainly not impossible).
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