"Hey, you know that belief system that attempts to answer the great unanswerable questions and gives you some shred of comfort? Nah, you live in an unfeeling, uncaring world. There is nothing, no great answer. Just living until you die.
Why are you crying?"
If you call yourself an atheist vs agnostic, I immediately just see an edgy teenager who wants to be confrontational. Not someone seeking actual answers or discussion. Most of the greatest scientific thinkers acknowledge that science is the answer to “how?”, but not “why?”. We simply don’t have that answer. Anyone claiming to is arrogant at best.
Just like nobody knows for certain if centaurs or the Tooth Fairy actually exist or not. Right.
…I can certainly relate to the idea that we cannot fully comprehend reality. No, seriously, I do; and I’m often ranting against assumers claiming to know shit that they cannot reliably know*.
But, at the end of the day, this shit is supposed to be practical, not some mental masturbation over the metaphysical fabric of the reality. You need to draw the line somewhere and say “nah, this is likely enough to be bullshit that we can safely say «it’s bullshit»”. Otherwise your “agnosticism” is simply a fancy name for solipsism.
*for example, implying that they know who says it (edgy teenager) and “intention” (to be confrontational), based on the label that one might use (atheist). That stinks assumption from a distance, like it or not.
neither science nor philosophy can provide objective truth in answer to the question “is there a god?”
That’s a loaded question. What type of god? You wanna define it before you ask if it exists.
And after you define it, you can also gather all the proof that it exists and you can present it to science and to philosophy. And they will look at all that proof and say “X”. Because they doubt.
But it’s still on you to prove your claim that there is a god, if you believe it. If you’re just on the sidelines asking because you’re not sure - there’s a simpler answer: yes, there is a god. It is me. And I need about 10% of your monthly income. Get in touch, I’ll send you some details where you can donate your share. In return, I will of course love you unconditionally until you slightly annoy me with your lifestyle (which I already know you will, I am omniscient and I literally made you this way, you have no choice in the matter), at which point you will know my vengeance, for I am the Lord. Throughout this period where I exact my retribution, the expectation is that you’ll shut up and take it, and never forget about that 10% you owe me. Otherwise I will literally put you through hell.
If you somehow doubt ANY of these claims, for reasons like “why would God contact me on the internet, or need my money, or hate me for how he made me”, or any of these silly questions, just remember - neither science nor philosophy can provide objective truth in answer to the question “is there a god?”. Just like they can’t provide objective truth to “is god that dude on lemmy?”
My dude there’s a few billion of you that I’m looking into, I don’t have all day to listen to your half-assed “logic”, I am eternal, I’m beyond your comprehension. Enjoy the rusted-spear-devil-dick, I’m Audi.
The first part is a response to “why would somebody be sad if their religion turned out to be false”, which for the record, if you need it explained to you why that might be, you’re really earning that “edgy teenager” label.
The second is saying that there’s literally no way to be sure of answers on the scale of “is there a god?”, science included
Philosophy asks some “why?” questions, but if you think it’s equipped to definitively answer all of them you don’t know much about philosophy.
Neither can science nor philosophy prove that unicorn’s don’t exist. Proving negatives isn’t a thing, you have to substantiate whatever claim it is you’re making.
That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It’s ignorant or plain wishful thinking to claim otherwise
What are you on about? Atheism is rejecting a ridiculous belief system. There is nothing for atheists to prove, they made no claims. Religion is the one making claims, so it’s on them to prove it. Atheism simply says “no thanks, the evidence you provide is insufficient and I don’t believe you”.
What are you on about? Atheism is rejecting a ridiculous belief system.
Y’all are arguing the same thing with these two sentences.
There is nothing for atheists to prove, they made no claims. Religion is the one making claims, so it’s on them to prove it. Atheism simply says “no thanks, the evidence you provide is insufficient and I don’t believe you”.
That sounds like trying to disprove a negative to me. Just because it’s an absurd negative doesn’t mean it’s not impossible to disprove it.
I don’t want to get into all the nitty gritty, but the weight against the big sky person is “we definitely don’t see it.” and the argument for the big sky person is “we definitely feel it.”
Y’all are both spending a lot of time arguing about the big sky person regardless of your stance.
*edit
actually, i just saw this comment, and i’m not gonna argue with that.
I mean if lying to yourself and others gives you comfort, then my point stands that you need help
unfeeling, uncaring world
Absolutely not, otherwise i would have written “she can go fuck herself”, but i didnt because people deserve better than being forced to believe in some century old mental mindgame of bullshit.
Just living until you die.
Thats correct, but life is amazing and full of cool stuff already. There is no need to limit your happiness with some archaic system of self oppression.
People who have grown up in a culture of religion assume that there’s nothing but pain in atheism, when actually it’s quite liberating. The intellectual honesty of atheism is simple, refreshing, and empowering. I for one have never been more at peace with myself.
It turns out that fearmongering about death (eg. most religious teachings of an afterlife) perpetuates the fear of death. Atheists must make peace with the reality of the universe and when they do the fear simply goes away.
You lack the charisma of a televangelist and the backing of a wealthy group to lobby against taxing your gains.
I mean if lying to yourself and others gives you comfort, then my point stands that you need help
Truth hurts and most people don’t like being in pain most of the time.
Absolutely not, otherwise i would have written “she can go fuck herself”, but i didnt because people deserve better than being forced to believe in some century old mental mindgame of bullshit.
You assume they are being forced and not do so willingly. Those looking for stability tend to cling to ideas that don’t change multiple times over the course of their life. An ancient religion is considerably more stable than the ever-changing discoveries of science.
Thats correct, but life is amazing and full of cool stuff already. There is no need to limit your happiness with some archaic system of self oppression.
Most people don’t get to see those. Each individual has a limited experience through life and we all tend to take for granted the idea that we all experience the same things in the same way. We don’t.
If you can’t understand why someone would cling to religion, at least try to understand that the same can be said about them regarding you.
You messaged me directly rather than responding in the thread, but messaging back is failing, so I will respond here.
There is no theory involving deities that fits the models of the universe we have based on observable evidence, and there is no evidence in support of any theory involving deities.
For anything else we would say that this thing doesn’t exist and leave it at that.
Agnosticism gets lost in the fallacy that since it’s logically impossible to prove non-existence we must hold open the possibility of existence without evidence.
So I’m an atheist because it is the default state to be, it makes no statement requiring evidence, and it doesn’t require fallacy.
There are lots of ways to approach meaning, and more broadly spirituality and community, without theism.
This is a weird take on atheism that reads like you’ve only seen atheists online creeping out of /r/atheism or some similar place. There’s no more reason that “why” should be answered by Christianity than by any number of philosophies that don’t require a god, and pegging someone as arrogant for ascribing to those beliefs is silly.
Nah, you live in an unfeeling, uncaring world. There is nothing, no great answer. Just living until you die.
I don’t agree with that other guy, but now you’re just wrestling with a straw man. Nobody says these things.
Nature and physics may not have the capacity to care about you, but you have friends, family, and pets that do whether God exists or not. And there’s plenty of questions that seem like we won’t get an answer for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find any meaning or joy in trying, or that you can’t tackle smaller questions that could build up to answering a greater one.
Just living until you die.
This part is particularly cartoonish. Nobody says life is just living until you die. That’s a debatably bigoted caricature that Christians invented.
We live the same lives theists do, and we have just as many meaningful experiences and relationships. We just don’t sacrifice enormous amounts of our time worshiping or thinking about something that can’t be shown to exist unless you take someone’s word for it.
That’s not what agnostic means. Agnostics believe “there is no way to know”, so you can have Agnostic Theists (we can’t know for sure, but I believe God exists) as well as Agnostic Atheists (we can’t know for sure, but I don’t believe God exists).
The opposite is gnosticism, and you can similarly have Gnostic Theists (God exists and I can prove it) and Gnostic Atheists (God doesn’t exist, and I can prove it).
Looks like I made a small mistake, but it just takes agnostic closer to atheist
The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe
No, they are agnostic theists, which means that they believe there is no way to know if god exists or not, but they believe in god anyway.
Agnosticism is about believing whether the existence of god is testable, not about whether god actually exists or not.
Obviously the vast majority of agnostics are also atheists, because it’s silly to believe in something for which there is no evidence. But there are some few who feel that god is out there even if we cannot know for sure.
Simpler: he’s saying that there are people who believe in something, but they don’t claim to know it.
For example. I brew some coffee at 14:00. Now it’s 18:00. I believe that my coffee is still warm, but I don’t know it - because I have no data to back up that knowledge. I can however generate said knowledge by grabbing a cup of coffee. (I just did it. It’s warm.)
What the agnostic theists do is like that. With a key difference: they cannot generate said knowledge, and they know it. They cannot grab that cup of coffee.
If for example we didn’t know how much time has passed, it would be impossible to estimate with any calculations the temperature - thus agnostic person would conclude there’s no way of knowing, thus believing the coffee is warm or cold is useless.
Read again that quote I posted earlier
The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data. Faith lays on believing without a proof. Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Expecting people to operate in a purely logic driven manner is a great road to disappointment, and one could argue that it also reveals a deep lack in understanding of your own self. People are not logical beings.
Life is not debate club. You can insist all you want that it’s not a logically compatible “belief system” (or however you want to label it). You can argue that there should be a different, more etymologically sound name for it.
But regardless of your objections, agnostic theists do exist, and “correct” or not that is what they are called.
Edit: I’m not even one of them, I just absolutely loathe this sort of behavior online, especially when discussions of theism and belief systems come up.
The belief is still there, even if you don’t know it nor claim knowledge. You believe that the coffee is cold or warm, inferring it from tiny scraps of info, or… even based on stupid grounds, like wishful belief. Because the belief is not necessarily grounded on rationality; some Christians even highlight this, with their idiotic credo quoniam sum stultus “credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because [it is] absurd”).
Read again that quote I posted earlier
That’s a fallacy known as “the etymological fallacy” - you’re trying to define a word based on its etymological origin (in this case, Huxley’s usage when coining it), instead of its usage.
And even if the reasoning wasn’t fallacious, look at the very Wikipedia page that you took this quote from, and you’ll also get the following:
Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology. On the whole, the “bosh” of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not.
He’s saying that lack of belief + claim of knowledge is more offensive for him than belief + lack of claim of knowledge. Effectively splitting both things (belief and knowledge), and acknowledging that they do not necessarily follow each other.
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data.
Your *knowledge. Or rather, what you claim to know. (“Opinions” are third can of worms by the way, as they are not epistemic in nature.)
Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Personally I opine agnostic theism to be ridiculous, as any sort of theism; as a rationalist I’d rather tweak my beliefs to be in conformity with my knowledge. And as I implied in another comment, I don’t see any good reason to put gods in a higher standard than the Tooth Fairy or centaurs, when it comes to claiming knowledge of absence, for practical purposes.
However that does not mean that agnostic theist is an oxymoron. It boils down to someone who believes in that superstition without claiming knowledge over it.
You live in a universe whose only source of joy, hope, inspiration, and meaning is sapient minds like yours. The entire observable cosmos has so far turned out to be nothing but dead rocks, dead dust, and dead gas, except for beings like you. Your very existence is an act of defiance worthy of pride. Stand tall, sophont. Create the future you wish to see, for YOUR KIND are the only ones who you’ve met who are capable of bringing it about!
![Victory? [elder cactus]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/244d43ec-eeec-4e9c-a97a-a7e978cc47a5.jpeg){kind=link}
"Hey, you know that belief system that attempts to answer the great unanswerable questions and gives you some shred of comfort? Nah, you live in an unfeeling, uncaring world. There is nothing, no great answer. Just living until you die.
Why are you crying?"
If you call yourself an atheist vs agnostic, I immediately just see an edgy teenager who wants to be confrontational. Not someone seeking actual answers or discussion. Most of the greatest scientific thinkers acknowledge that science is the answer to “how?”, but not “why?”. We simply don’t have that answer. Anyone claiming to is arrogant at best.
Just like nobody knows for certain if centaurs or the Tooth Fairy actually exist or not. Right.
…I can certainly relate to the idea that we cannot fully comprehend reality. No, seriously, I do; and I’m often ranting against assumers claiming to know shit that they cannot reliably know*.
But, at the end of the day, this shit is supposed to be practical, not some mental masturbation over the metaphysical fabric of the reality. You need to draw the line somewhere and say “nah, this is likely enough to be bullshit that we can safely say «it’s bullshit»”. Otherwise your “agnosticism” is simply a fancy name for solipsism.
*for example, implying that they know who says it (edgy teenager) and “intention” (to be confrontational), based on the label that one might use (atheist). That stinks assumption from a distance, like it or not.
So your arguments for agnosticism over atheism is that you don’t want to make religious people feel uncomfortable and science isn’t philosophy?
how on earth was that your takeaway from that comment?
neither science nor philosophy can provide objective truth in answer to the question “is there a god?”
it’s edgy teen territory to act like they can
That’s a loaded question. What type of god? You wanna define it before you ask if it exists.
And after you define it, you can also gather all the proof that it exists and you can present it to science and to philosophy. And they will look at all that proof and say “X”. Because they doubt.
But it’s still on you to prove your claim that there is a god, if you believe it. If you’re just on the sidelines asking because you’re not sure - there’s a simpler answer: yes, there is a god. It is me. And I need about 10% of your monthly income. Get in touch, I’ll send you some details where you can donate your share. In return, I will of course love you unconditionally until you slightly annoy me with your lifestyle (which I already know you will, I am omniscient and I literally made you this way, you have no choice in the matter), at which point you will know my vengeance, for I am the Lord. Throughout this period where I exact my retribution, the expectation is that you’ll shut up and take it, and never forget about that 10% you owe me. Otherwise I will literally put you through hell.
If you somehow doubt ANY of these claims, for reasons like “why would God contact me on the internet, or need my money, or hate me for how he made me”, or any of these silly questions, just remember - neither science nor philosophy can provide objective truth in answer to the question “is there a god?”. Just like they can’t provide objective truth to “is god that dude on lemmy?”
given that we’re very clearly talking in the context of a christian god here, I’m not sure what additional information you need
this is just that edgy teenager shit again
Nope. I’m God. Please remember, you have as much evidence I am not, as I have that god doesn’t exist.
And just for that “edgy teenager” comment, I’ll put a word in to make sure you’re tortured by the devil with the most jagged penis.
you’re still behaving as if i’m trying to convince you of the existence of a god, rather than you trying to convince me that one doesn’t exist
do you understand the difference?
My dude there’s a few billion of you that I’m looking into, I don’t have all day to listen to your half-assed “logic”, I am eternal, I’m beyond your comprehension. Enjoy the rusted-spear-devil-dick, I’m Audi.
Their first part is a short work of fiction about making a religious person feel bad.
Their second is saying that science doesn’t answer the question “why.”
Philosophy asks “why” at least it does here on Earth.
The first part is a response to “why would somebody be sad if their religion turned out to be false”, which for the record, if you need it explained to you why that might be, you’re really earning that “edgy teenager” label.
The second is saying that there’s literally no way to be sure of answers on the scale of “is there a god?”, science included
Philosophy asks some “why?” questions, but if you think it’s equipped to definitively answer all of them you don’t know much about philosophy.
Neither can science nor philosophy prove that unicorn’s don’t exist. Proving negatives isn’t a thing, you have to substantiate whatever claim it is you’re making.
That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It’s ignorant or plain wishful thinking to claim otherwise
Atheism is trying to prove a negative
What are you on about? Atheism is rejecting a ridiculous belief system. There is nothing for atheists to prove, they made no claims. Religion is the one making claims, so it’s on them to prove it. Atheism simply says “no thanks, the evidence you provide is insufficient and I don’t believe you”.
Y’all are arguing the same thing with these two sentences.
That sounds like trying to disprove a negative to me. Just because it’s an absurd negative doesn’t mean it’s not impossible to disprove it.
I don’t want to get into all the nitty gritty, but the weight against the big sky person is “we definitely don’t see it.” and the argument for the big sky person is “we definitely feel it.”
Y’all are both spending a lot of time arguing about the big sky person regardless of your stance.
*edit actually, i just saw this comment, and i’m not gonna argue with that.
Gnostic atheism is not the same as agnostic atheism. You’re talking about a subsect of atheism.
I can also try to do that, where is my money?
I mean if lying to yourself and others gives you comfort, then my point stands that you need help
Absolutely not, otherwise i would have written “she can go fuck herself”, but i didnt because people deserve better than being forced to believe in some century old mental mindgame of bullshit.
Thats correct, but life is amazing and full of cool stuff already. There is no need to limit your happiness with some archaic system of self oppression.
People who have grown up in a culture of religion assume that there’s nothing but pain in atheism, when actually it’s quite liberating. The intellectual honesty of atheism is simple, refreshing, and empowering. I for one have never been more at peace with myself.
It turns out that fearmongering about death (eg. most religious teachings of an afterlife) perpetuates the fear of death. Atheists must make peace with the reality of the universe and when they do the fear simply goes away.
You lack the charisma of a televangelist and the backing of a wealthy group to lobby against taxing your gains.
Truth hurts and most people don’t like being in pain most of the time.
You assume they are being forced and not do so willingly. Those looking for stability tend to cling to ideas that don’t change multiple times over the course of their life. An ancient religion is considerably more stable than the ever-changing discoveries of science.
Most people don’t get to see those. Each individual has a limited experience through life and we all tend to take for granted the idea that we all experience the same things in the same way. We don’t.
If you can’t understand why someone would cling to religion, at least try to understand that the same can be said about them regarding you.
“Lying” means they know it’s false. It seems like they’re unknowingly spreading misinformation, which is still bad but not morally wrong.
Unnecessarily harsh language isn’t very productive in discussions like this.
You messaged me directly rather than responding in the thread, but messaging back is failing, so I will respond here.
There is no theory involving deities that fits the models of the universe we have based on observable evidence, and there is no evidence in support of any theory involving deities.
For anything else we would say that this thing doesn’t exist and leave it at that.
Agnosticism gets lost in the fallacy that since it’s logically impossible to prove non-existence we must hold open the possibility of existence without evidence.
So I’m an atheist because it is the default state to be, it makes no statement requiring evidence, and it doesn’t require fallacy.
There are lots of ways to approach meaning, and more broadly spirituality and community, without theism.
This is a weird take on atheism that reads like you’ve only seen atheists online creeping out of /r/atheism or some similar place. There’s no more reason that “why” should be answered by Christianity than by any number of philosophies that don’t require a god, and pegging someone as arrogant for ascribing to those beliefs is silly.
deleted by creator
I don’t agree with that other guy, but now you’re just wrestling with a straw man. Nobody says these things.
Nature and physics may not have the capacity to care about you, but you have friends, family, and pets that do whether God exists or not. And there’s plenty of questions that seem like we won’t get an answer for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find any meaning or joy in trying, or that you can’t tackle smaller questions that could build up to answering a greater one.
This part is particularly cartoonish. Nobody says life is just living until you die. That’s a debatably bigoted caricature that Christians invented.
We live the same lives theists do, and we have just as many meaningful experiences and relationships. We just don’t sacrifice enormous amounts of our time worshiping or thinking about something that can’t be shown to exist unless you take someone’s word for it.
Agnosticism was coined because people were afraid of coming out as atheists, but it’s really the same thing.
Atheist thinks there’s no evidence for god so it doesn’t make sense to believe in one.
Agnostic thinks there’s no evidence for god, so it’s unlikely there’s one.
In both cases, the person is science first and would change their opinion if proof was presented but before that they don’t believe in god.
That’s not what agnostic means. Agnostics believe “there is no way to know”, so you can have Agnostic Theists (we can’t know for sure, but I believe God exists) as well as Agnostic Atheists (we can’t know for sure, but I don’t believe God exists).
The opposite is gnosticism, and you can similarly have Gnostic Theists (God exists and I can prove it) and Gnostic Atheists (God doesn’t exist, and I can prove it).
Looks like I made a small mistake, but it just takes agnostic closer to atheist
Most agnostics are atheists because the evidence always favors atheism. But there really are a handful of agnostic theists out there!
So what you’re saying is that there’s people who don’t believe that god(s) exist but they believe in it/them anyways?
Or they believe in some trash evidence for the existence of god
No, they are agnostic theists, which means that they believe there is no way to know if god exists or not, but they believe in god anyway.
Agnosticism is about believing whether the existence of god is testable, not about whether god actually exists or not.
Obviously the vast majority of agnostics are also atheists, because it’s silly to believe in something for which there is no evidence. But there are some few who feel that god is out there even if we cannot know for sure.
Simpler: he’s saying that there are people who believe in something, but they don’t claim to know it.
For example. I brew some coffee at 14:00. Now it’s 18:00. I believe that my coffee is still warm, but I don’t know it - because I have no data to back up that knowledge. I can however generate said knowledge by grabbing a cup of coffee. (I just did it. It’s warm.)
What the agnostic theists do is like that. With a key difference: they cannot generate said knowledge, and they know it. They cannot grab that cup of coffee.
If for example we didn’t know how much time has passed, it would be impossible to estimate with any calculations the temperature - thus agnostic person would conclude there’s no way of knowing, thus believing the coffee is warm or cold is useless.
Read again that quote I posted earlier
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data. Faith lays on believing without a proof. Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Expecting people to operate in a purely logic driven manner is a great road to disappointment, and one could argue that it also reveals a deep lack in understanding of your own self. People are not logical beings.
Life is not debate club. You can insist all you want that it’s not a logically compatible “belief system” (or however you want to label it). You can argue that there should be a different, more etymologically sound name for it.
But regardless of your objections, agnostic theists do exist, and “correct” or not that is what they are called.
Edit: I’m not even one of them, I just absolutely loathe this sort of behavior online, especially when discussions of theism and belief systems come up.
The belief is still there, even if you don’t know it nor claim knowledge. You believe that the coffee is cold or warm, inferring it from tiny scraps of info, or… even based on stupid grounds, like wishful belief. Because the belief is not necessarily grounded on rationality; some Christians even highlight this, with their idiotic
credo quoniam sum stultus“credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because [it is] absurd”).That’s a fallacy known as “the etymological fallacy” - you’re trying to define a word based on its etymological origin (in this case, Huxley’s usage when coining it), instead of its usage.
And even if the reasoning wasn’t fallacious, look at the very Wikipedia page that you took this quote from, and you’ll also get the following:
He’s saying that lack of belief + claim of knowledge is more offensive for him than belief + lack of claim of knowledge. Effectively splitting both things (belief and knowledge), and acknowledging that they do not necessarily follow each other.
Your *knowledge. Or rather, what you claim to know. (“Opinions” are third can of worms by the way, as they are not epistemic in nature.)
Personally I opine agnostic theism to be ridiculous, as any sort of theism; as a rationalist I’d rather tweak my beliefs to be in conformity with my knowledge. And as I implied in another comment, I don’t see any good reason to put gods in a higher standard than the Tooth Fairy or centaurs, when it comes to claiming knowledge of absence, for practical purposes.
However that does not mean that agnostic theist is an oxymoron. It boils down to someone who believes in that superstition without claiming knowledge over it.
How is that different to what he said it was?
You live in a universe whose only source of joy, hope, inspiration, and meaning is sapient minds like yours. The entire observable cosmos has so far turned out to be nothing but dead rocks, dead dust, and dead gas, except for beings like you. Your very existence is an act of defiance worthy of pride. Stand tall, sophont. Create the future you wish to see, for YOUR KIND are the only ones who you’ve met who are capable of bringing it about!