I don't like being an antagonist. They rarely win. Good triumphs over evil!

My outlook is that if something has neither been proven nor disproven, then you can't reasonably form an opinion of one or the other.

Nothing in the realm of science has been proven positively and without a doubt. Everything we know we only know to a degree. We don't know everything about everything. We don't know everything about anything! As a person of science, I'm compelled to follow the existence of things that have demonstrable, testable, observable, and reproducible evidence, and are measurably accurate.

I would say that agnostics are in a couple of different categories. They're either unconvinced in either direction or they are but are not ready to admit it either way. This isn't arrogance, it's self-preservation. Atheists get a hugely bad reputation simple by their own admission. Theistic people are generally distrustful of Atheists despite their being close to the most moral group of people in the categories of religion.

So you have absolutely no opinion on say, Amelia Earhart's plane crashing because she secretly and without public knowledge stopped midway through her journey and overloaded her plane with a troop of circus clowns?

You have no opinion as to whether that's a viable explanation for her disappearance?

There is a unicorn in my room, but it is invisible if you are looking at it or try to film it. All methods of detection fail, but I know in my heart it is there.

Do you deny the existence of my unicorn?

I'm an atheist, but a good friend of mine is a hard core agnostic, and we've talked about it a bunch. He says that he is unwilling to discount the existence of "something beyond our understanding," but that he doesn't accept any organized religion.

I've tried telling him that agnosticism is just lazy atheism, but he doesn't buy it. ^_~

How can you be a hard core agnostic? That just seems antithetical to the whole "I dunno" aspect.

I know, right? This guy is -really- dedicated to the concept, though. He's like some kind of crazy, militant middle-of-the-road advocate for all issues.

Anyway, I thought I'd share where he's coming from, since I don't fit the subject myself.

South Park did an episode on devout agnostics~

Probably fair to say we're beyond the mental capacities of ants.
They cannot fathom our appearance or degree of omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence.
Do they build shrines to appease those mysterious forces that periodically obliterate their homes? Does folklore exist?
Probably not.

Likewise for us, we very well could be an ant-sized form of live compared to something else out there, perhaps the reason we haven't found "life" is because we're defining it very narrowly in our own vision. Perhaps something much bigger, much more powerful, equally indifferent, who knows, has been around long before us. Would that meet our general definition of a "god"? (not THE god, A god)

Very well could be, but the scientific among us are hubristic enough to assume we're the pinnacle of evolution, there's nothing else there, we're the most brilliant of brilliance ever to grace the universe, and if there's something there we haven't found, it must not exist. The faithful among us are hubristic enough to think they have a pinpoint on what form that force could take, and to what degree of omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, etc. We have no way of comprehending, but they declare that their faction is The One Way. Bullshit.

I don't think there's a contradiction in allowing for something we cannot grasp, and not swallowing the Kool-Aid of those who think they can define it. Tempted to sign on to the catchy platitude that agnosticism is lazy atheism, but "a-theism", "without-god", doesn't really peg it. I think a better rephrase would be "Atheists are as zealous in their faith as religious folk, they just put their faith in no." I'm OK with not knowing, if some people are uncomfortable with that, if it eases their mind to be assured of the answer (god or no), I say let them, I just get sick of the fighting on both sides.

I choose to think there's someone watching us, I don't know that, I don't pretend to, I have no idea what his game is, but I'd like to think he's as classy as your basic human being. I don't construct some set of rules to serve him that I think will get me off his naughty list, I just live as good as I can and hope that's good enough for him as well as for me. He's more my diary than anything, I had a shit day, I can talk to him about it, he's a remarkably good listener, and can share the weight of that suckitude so I don't have to bear it all.

Granted, it got weird with that last paragraph, for all I know, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the form, but as that's just another construction of the human brain, probably not, so I'll go with my instincts, I trust them more than anyone else's.

There has never been any instance where a society's belief in the supernatural has improved our understanding of anything. This doesn't mean that a God doesn't exist, but it does mean that if such a being did exist, it has no influence on us and we can't say anything remotely positive about its existence, because it lies solely outside of our perceptible reality. I'm not going to waste my time with the unreal. I'll stick with the real.

Well like i said, any ridiculous absurdity with no supporting evidence "could" be real just like god could and have equal evidence but agnostics i don't think can honestly to themselves say that most of them are just outright ridiculous.

Why does divinity get special treatment?

Precedence.

Well what's always made agnosticism seem ridiculous is the special treatment the existence of divinity is given as something they will not form an opinion on when it's frankly just as wild and fantastical as any complete absurdity anybody could dream up, that absurdity having equal evidence to support it's existence, the belief in which is called "Faith" for that very reason.

Believe me, I completely agree. No evidence equals no weight.

I'm agnostic, I'd LIKE to believe to believe there is something after death, but I haven't seen thorough enough evidence one way or another to come to a conclusion, there's also the whole thing about, "which religion is the right one?" how do we know they aren't all wrong or right?

There's to much erroneous data and facts, and holes to make a valid conclusion, it's like saying innocent or guilty on a jury when you haven't been given any evidence other than "we think they did this at this place and time."

I think the only way to know is when you get there, and I've accepted those consequences.

There's also a whole metaphysics aspect, and more scientific theories about what happens when we die, since we are beings of energy, and energy never vanishes, it only changes, then there's the whole quantum physics thing that throws a greased monkey wrench into everything we think we know about the universe.

So yeah, to much unverifiable data to make a solid conclusion, I say do what makes ya happy, just dont be preachy and yell at people cause they dont think the same way.

personally, I hate religion because it seems to generate so much hate, when the religion at it's core is supposed to be about love and caring for your fellow man, but people seem to have a hard time with that :\

but if I had to say what I think is the most likely, I lean towards reincarnation, mainly cause I like the idea of of, and the cycling of energy.

^ I agree

^ I agree with ya. If anything I think you just summed up why I'm agnostic.

Well i don't think theres ANY atheist that wouldn't prefer to live forever in eternal paradise and happiness thanks to a benevolent creator somewhere in space or heaven or whatever.

That idea however to atheists seems ridiculous. Theres an infinite number of ideas that would seem completely ridiculous to agnostics i think, do you not form an opinion on those? Or do you think it's far more likely that divinity exists than say giant afro wearing space dicks floating around in earths orbit that exist on a visual spectrum that will never be detectable by man made science? To me to have that opinion is sortof not being an agnostic.

Or do you have no opinion on the space dicks either?

Well... Let me put it this way...

Being agnostic to me is more about acknowledging the fact that, we don't know. Just like so many other things in this universe, I think there are actually a lot of people on all sides, that while they may claim to be Christian, aethiest, etc, etc. are actually more agnostic, since they're always trying to prove that they're right, where someone that truly is one of those things don't feel they need to prove anything, to them it is simply fact in their mind.

Once you claim to know something, you no longer look for answers, and that's what being agnostic for me is about, looking for answers, as opposed to not wanting to decide.

I'm a science oriented person, for all I know heaven could exist, but in a different dimension, a parallel reality, or anything like that, but it's just as possible nothing like that exist, or even something that nobody could have even conceived, or even giant Afro wearing space dicks.

To me, the fact of the matter is there are just so many things we don't know, all our collective knowledge is probably a speck of sand in a giant desert of things that are still left for us to learn.


Sorry if I kinda talked in circle, it's not exactly easy for me to explain :/ especially when I'm tired and half paying attention.

TL;DR: for me, being agnostic is about looking for answers.

Faithed: Active BELIEF in God despite any proof that would suggest it doesn't exist.
Athiest: Active DISBELIEF in God despite any proof that would suggest it does exist.
Agnostic: Active or passive need for more information to make an informed decision.

The "lazy" agnostic just doesn't want to make a decision or doesn't care enough to make a decision.
The "active" agnistic is not able to formulate (dis)belief in regard to a subject because there is not enough evidence to suggest either camp of thought is right.

As a philosophical-minded and active agnostic I cannot say that I believe or disbelieve because neither side can create an argument that is convincing enough, so I keep an open mind to all possibilities.

Atheist isn't an active disbelief anymore than abstinence is an active sex act or good health is an active absence of disease.

As for evidence of the existence of God, there isn't any.

Yeah, again though, is that something reserved specifically for belief in divinity? Or does that share equal weight with "Insert any unverifiable idea now matter how fucking ridiculous and improbable here."?

My point in making this journal was that dismissing absurdities at a certain point comes down to common sense "no that's ridiculous" type of common sense. Why is divinity given special treatment and in giving it special treatment, isn't that forming an opinion on it's probability with equal amounts of evidence to lead to both?

A better explanation can be found here:

http://www.atheist-community.org/fa.....heist_agnostic

And do you think, if the dominant species on our planet were some other animal (such as a Lemur), that Sky God would look like that animal, instead? A monkey-shaped all powerful creator of the universe is just as absurd a concept as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Do you believe the FSM is plausible? I'm guessing not. Why is the FSM more ridiculous than a deity that looks like one species of primate on our planet? Here's a hint: They are all ridiculous ideas.

I'm more in the "I really don't care because it has no impact on my daily life" camp since it's not something that can you can prove or disprove. I've been told this is called apatheism, but I'd call myself an atheist before anything else because calling yourself an agnostic has always seemed like a cop out.

But really, I don't care. I think this technically makes me an agnostic, but it's more like an admission to not pretending to know the unknowable. I sure do hate how most religions carry themselves though, hoo boy. I definitely have opinions there.

Ok to me it just sounds like you're an atheist but it's not a big issue to you so you don't waste much time thinking about it. I'm an atheist, and neither do i can assure you.

what about my generic examples like the fsm and the mint chip ice cream universe though? Those can't be proved or disproved yet i think would be written off by anybody on the planet as totally ridiculous the moment you hear them.

Do you not have an opinion as to whether say, the inspiration for the formula for Drano was divinely and telepathically gifted across space and time by means unknown to us to the chemists that created it by an omniscient sea cucumber that dwells in an undetectable galactic tide pool in the horse head nebula?

Will you never be able to write that off till more evidence comes in?

I'm agnostic as well and yes there are a couple of logical thoughs you make that makes you lean towards agnosticism, mostly the most principal being the one you pointed out, the lack of evidence. There are a lot of theories in metaphysics that involves ghosts, dreams, afterlife, and so on, but most of this doesn't really have any scientific background or mathematical/biological serious approach, but my favorite example is the string theory, because it is a fantastic theory that is mathematicaly perfect and we can't really prove it or verify, so the scientific community stays very skeptical about it, I mean, they haven't really accepted it and consider the whole theory and its conssquences just "philosophy", until we can prove it right, which will take a long time.
I don't know if I was clear enough, but you can't really trash something and forget about it just because you can't prove it (neither right or wrong) , so that's the agnostic point of view. This happens every time in science, someone's theory is right but makes no sense, or can't be tested, so people keeps just waiting unitl you can test it to make their decisions.

Agnosticism isn't a 'middle ground' between believe and not believing. It is specifically the belief that it is impossible to figure out if there is a God or not.

For this reason most agnostics are atheists too, and almost all atheists are agnostics. Even some religious people are also agnostic.

Myself, I'm an atheist and an agnostic.

The general use of 'agnostic' needs a new word, perhams 'Apatheism', I agree with the last sentiments of your comment, but only from personal experience.

This post is the correct answer.

Frankly, that's really just bullshit splitting hairs imo. What you're saying IS offering no opinion one way or the other. You believe it's impossible and therefore do not have an opinion on it.

I never said it was a middle ground, i merely said you offer no opinion on it. The whole no opinion thing is the thing that seems absurd to me. And why is the question of god deserving of the special "It is impossible to know" status whereas infinite absurdities for which you could never know for sure are not deserving of it?

Recognising religious people often make 'unfalsifiable/unpredictive' claims =/= having no opinion.

In fact in my view having unpredictive hypothesies is an almost automatic disqualification [just like you point out]. I appreciate you never mentioned a middle ground fallacy.

In the same way I am agnostic about Gods, I am agnostic about fairies and imps, I suppose.

I think we probably both suspect why unfalisfiability is seen as 'profound' for religion, when it's silly in any other circles; emotional investment.

I should clarify, you belive it's impossible to know one way or the other is what i meant to say.

I'm agnostic. Whether a god or gods exist or not completely does not affect the way I live my life. I'd like to believe that there is a loving god and that when I die I'll wind up in Heaven and all the horrible cruel people in the world get what's coming to them, but when I see the massive hypocrisy, cruelty, and greed of organized religions (plural) I really can't accept as a belief any of the current religions.

See, hearing this it sounds like you do lean towards divinity existing but aren't sure. You can believe in divinity but not accept any current organized religions view on it that's generally just what falls under the category of "unaffiliated"

Agnostic is "unaffiliated."

I've heard the expression somewhere on the net to the tune of "agnostics are people who lack the balls to be atheists", but you pretty much hit on why it appeals. Hard to ponder into something with little proof or evidence. I consider myself a pantheist, about the polar opposite of atheism, personally.

Since i truly do believe that whether you admit it or not and no matter how purely logical you try to be you do form an opinion and make a mental judgement call on anything that goes through your head, that really is at it's core what agnosticism is i feel because if i think of agnosticism, that's the judgement call my brain makes on it given the facts leaning towards and away from the existence of god. If theres a position of disbelief and a position of the fantastical with no evidence going either way, it seems odd to me to go towards the fantastical.

As for pantheist, without even looking that up that pretty much sounds like the religion i was personally raised to believe and in the spiritual pectrum it's one of the better viewpoints to have imo.

For me, it stems from something Carl Sagan said - "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself". That struck me as deeply profound at the time and helped me put my own view points into better perspective. The desire for life and existence justifying itself and then progressing to a point for it to understand itself. I don't believe there is one god separate from everything watching and orchestrating, but that everything is an aspect of the whole. I liked another one from (I believe) Hindu texts stating, "God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in man."

Curiously, Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" touches on this in a way as well; great read towards the last half of the book. "Thou art god." Still defining what it means to me, much more to think about, Spinoza to look into.

Cheers~

I'm not agnostic, but I know quite a few people who are.. from conversations that I've had with them, most of them either do or are willing to believe in a higher power but just don't want to follow any of the crap being shoveled by the organized religions today, or have serious ethical differences with the religious organizations.

To me that doesn't sound like an agnostic, it sounds like unaffiliated believer in the likelihood of divinity. only 1.3% of americans are atheist, about 14% would fall under unaffiliated believer in "something divine"

I'm kinda agnostic, though "reluctant atheist" may be a better term. To me, it seems that the question of weather a God exists is an impossible question to answer, since no one can seem to agree on what exactly a God is.

Ok, but what about every absurdity imaginable that has no evidence but can't be disproved? do those carry equal weight?

Here's the difference. If somebody's looking to prove or disprove, say, unicorns.. you at least know what you're looking for: magical horses with a single horn on their heads.

If you're trying to prove or disprove God(s), depending on whose definition you go with, that could mean something as unquantifiable as a nebulous creator that exists entirely outside of space and time, to something as mundane as a bunch of guys living on top of a mountain in Greece. Without a definition, the question is nonsensical.

Well there is a definition of the word god and theres definitions of the word divinity that are both specific and pretty broad and specifically what i mentioned in my journal. I honestly fail to see how it's nonsensical. I think the additions of "existing outside time and space" are more tacked on just to discount any direct observation as an obvious means of discounting them outright.

The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is the same as the difference between .99999999 and 1.

Basically, agnostic is a fancy way of saying "I don't know". Some people can't stand the thought that when they die, that might be it.

But to answer your question, i'm agnostic only because "I don't know". I feel like the belief concept is like hedging your bets that you'll live in a special place for all eternity. If I'm wrong and St. Peter says, "Well, you didn't believe so you're going to hell", what will I care? I'll be dead.

See, to me this sounds like the whole "But what if i'm wrong and he hears me? D:" thing. Which is a valid viewpoint but at the same time seems that you've devoted some sort of opinion to the likelihood of it being true.

I do think when you're surrounded by a lifetime of chatter about a common belief with eternal ramifications but with no evidence, it can be hard to dismiss it outright even if it seems illogical? Am i wrong?

For me agnosticism was probably mix of honest "I don't know, world is really strange when you think of it." and "I'd feel sad to be an atheist.". Not sure if the latter is a good reason per se, but it would be lying to say that emotions had no play in this for me - and probably for some other people too.

Over time the ideas of conventional gods have started to seem more and more absurd and illogical (though nothing requires the universe to work so), so that I've become effectively pretty atheist for anything omnipotent and/or personified.

I guess I'm an ignosticish sort of: With a suitable definition of god, I could probably give it, whatever it is, the benefit of doubt. That said, I tend to label myself modal realist nowadays, which doesn't really solve the issue of god, but make it less meaningful.

Writing this makes actually really feel for the lazy agnostics.

Up till the 3rd sentence i was about to say this is the most honest answer i think i've ever gotten from an agnostic XD But it's still a good honest answer of course.

I guess my question is do other illogical things that can't be proved or disproved hold equal sway to that? There always seems to be (and i believe whether they admit it or not, that line is there) where something illogical with no evidence to prove or disprove can be just completely written off as ridiculous and i wonder why that line is drawn before or after divinity? I can only assume that's a culture issue.

For me it's just an extension of the scientific mindset.

We know the universe the universe was birthed from a quantum singularity that underwent hyperinflation, we can observe the aftereffects of this Big Bang, but we have no data what occurred "before" that.

So we can't say whether or not a living being that may or may not have been intelligent created the universe. Some say it's categorically unknowable, others that it's potentially knowable ("strong" and "weak" [or empirical] agnosticism, respectively).

So would that mindset extend to ANYTHING somebody could dream up that is unknowable though? That's sortof what i'm wondering with the scientific type agnostic.

The existence of a god generally seems to get special treatment, but at the same time it seems foolish to not discount completely absurd sounding things yet at the same time, why is it not absurd to think that an invisible and undetectable conscious being created everything yet hides from us at every turn for no apparent reason?

So would that mindset extend to ANYTHING somebody could dream up that is unknowable though?
Only if the concept in question could be defined as a deity.

The existence of a god generally seems to get special treatment, but at the same time it seems foolish to not discount completely absurd sounding things yet at the same time, why is it not absurd to think that an invisible and undetectable conscious being created everything yet hides from us at every turn for no apparent reason?
If you got no data points whatsoever, making statements about the internal mental states of a deity is hard.

The creator deity in question could be like Samael of Gnosticism, a being that is explicitly not omniscient and therefore botched up the universe what allowed evil and suffering to exist.

It could be like the God imagined by the deists, a being that created the universe as a sort of clockwork, not interfering in its workings out of principle.

Complete lack of data gives you no indications what is absurd and what isn't.

That is one theory, but it is not the only theory.

Some theories state that redshift does not indicate velocity or distance, requiring no Big Bang, no black holes and no dark matter, suggesting the Universe could have no beginning, no end, and no spatial limit.

It's worth noting that the Big Bang was proposed by a Catholic priest and most research is funded by the church. It's a comfortable idea for them. They have a vested interest in a Universe that was created. If you don't research the Big Bang, you don't get much funding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathol.....f_the_Universe

See Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton.....27s_suggestion
http://electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/hubble/index.html

Question everything mass media tells you.

I'm not a physicist, only a layman, but I have to stick to the judgment of the international scientific community, and agree on it in consensus due to the buttload of evidence (red shift, but more importantly background radiation).

That said, however, like the article notes Lemaître's work derived from the findings of persons pretty uninterested in religion (Einstein, the astronomers of the day) and was not mandated by dogma.

There's no Catholic or [insert denomination here] conspiracy to make whatever theory fits their dogma best the prevailing one.

I am agnostic, I would be atheist but (and this is a little hard to explain for me) I don't want to believe that there is nothing after this life just the void of death. I had a brother that died and it's kinda hard for me to say "oh he's dead and thats it for him" I just want to believe he's now somewhere better. Of course I don't believe this crap of some bearded guy with a bunch of angels or any of the wild stories that are in the bible like Noah's ark or Jesus walking on water and Moses parting the seas so the Jews can walk across the ocean. I just don't want to think there's nothing after this I guess, it kinda saddens me when I do think that. As for the religious people and atheist I don't really acknowledge either of their arguments about the subject, but I will not go on trying to prove both of them are wrong. They (everyone) has every right to believe what they want to believe, it's not up to me or ther others to tell them they are wrong even when one side sounds rediculous than the other, and we should just let adults or young adults make their own descions on the subject and let it be done with, I know I would hate it if someone tried to force their beliefs on me.

That is an unusually honest answer from an agnostic even though to me it really does seem like you're and agnostic, a hopeful agnostic which is fine. It's an understandable position to take.

I'm a functional atheist but consider myself agnostic. Probably because I was a biology major. In some ways I consider evolution to be my religion insomuch as how it can answer a lot of the questions religion answers for religious people. Except that leaves open a huge gap--how did these natural processes begin? The reason I don't say there isn't a god is because we don't know how the universe was created and what it came from. That's probably the only reason I'm agnostic.

It seems kindof odd to me to be an agnostic based on that when the age of science is so young yet has already told us just about everything we need to know about the natural world. It seems natural to to me at least to think it's only a matter of time before that is figured out as well.

On the origin of life as we know it i would probably take most biologists stance which seems to be "We don't know, we're working on it. We have some good ideas we will try to prove.".

As for the religion aspect if one of the accepted definitions of religion is "A belief as taught or discussed." then i guess that would work. Yet at the same time, science/biology is based on evidence and observation so it seems more an issue of seeing and knowing as opposed to just belief.

I kind of draw the line at what was going on before the creation of the universe because, at least for the time being, it's something we can't even really develop theories on. Totally beyond our understanding. If at some point we get closer to that, I'd probably be less agnostic or not at all.

Atheism is weird, to me, because it seems to require faith just as much as religion. Both are beliefs that can't be proven, in a way.

Actually last i looked theres some pretty solid hypothesis on how the universe began, they're just unfortunately through our current understanding of mathematics and physics generally untestable.

And i really fail to see how it takes any faith to not believe in something of which there is no evidence? Forgive me for bringing up the FSM again but i discount that outright because it's ridiculous and i don't think anybody would argue that's a faith issue.

Yet at the same time, from an atheistic standpoint, the whole concept of god and the FSM are in fairly equal standing since we would believe both were dreamed up by "some guy/s" and the fact one has been a cultural tradition doesn't really give it a shred more validity in our eyes.

I mean, as of now if you compare god to the FSM

Both have prophets

Both have scriptural novels (The bibles/The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti monster)

Both try to explain the world around us

Both have their own idea of the after life "Gates of st peter/clouds vs beer volcano/stripper factory)

Both try to explain the origin of our existence (genesis vs the FSM got really drunk and created the universe)

I just fail to see how it's a faith issue to discount outrightly anything fantastical/supernatural for which no evidence exists? And i fail to see why the line is drawn at absurdities like the FSM as opposed to god in the traditional abrahamic sense or otherwise.

Not sure about the right word for it, just I don't see the need of any god in my life.

The problem is, a theist always has a specific God in mind. They will be unhappy, for example, if they are a Christian and you indicate that you believe in Zeus. ALL theists are ATHEISTS when it com t Gods other than their own. A Hindu believes in many Gods, Christians believe in one God, and I believe in no Gods; thus I am only slightly more atheistic then a Christian.

Yeah but that's still a black and white issue, the question was divinity it general. Sounds like you and me are in the same camp of atheism.

The Tao you can describe is not the true Tao.

Being agnostic/gnostic and being atheist/theist are completely seperate things. It is possible to be any combination of the four.

Using myself as an example, I am an atheist. I have seen no need for any higher controlling power for the world and the universe to be the way they are. I look at the religious explanations for everything, and I find them very unsatisfying and hard to believe, whereas for me the scientific explanations for everything just seem to all fall together and make sense.

However, I'm also agnostic, because I don't feel I can say with absolute certainty that what I believe is correct. Based on my life, I don't see any need for there to be a deity, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one that I'm simply missing out on somehow. Perhaps they control things in a way far too subtle for any person to ever directly notice, or maybe a deity simply started the whole process off and is letting it run it's course without intervention. There are lots of possible situations and I can't claim to know for certain that any of them are right. It's fully possible and logically consistant that there's a deity out there who runs things in a way I just can't notice.

I can not prove there is no god, so I will not say there is definitely no god. But, I certainly don't think there is one. The difference is subtle, but simple- if you ask me if there is a god, I will tell you I don't know. If you ask me if I -think- there's a god, I will emphatically tell you, no.

I am an agnostic, but also an atheist. Being agnostic does not mean one has no opinion, it's more being unwilling to claim a truth you simply don't have access to.

I agree here.

Agreed. Personally I susbstitute 'maybe a deity started the whole thing off,' with 'perhaps- as a result of panspermia- life on earth emerged as the result of a previous civilisation'. If this were the case, which is entirely possible but improbably, then would this previous civilisation take the role of our deities? That's one interesting ambiguity.

The whole god business reminds me of russel's teapot: somewhere beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes there is a tea pot floating in space. It's impossible to prove that wrong, which is why positions of skepticism are usually taken as defaults in debates with no or little evidencial means of sorting things out.

I could not agree more !

There are interesting points in every religion. But they have developped because of ignorance.
Now we are in an era of knowledge, or at least the research of that knowledge. We do not know everything, and we will never. So there will always be a place for doubt. There may be (a) god(s), there may not. To tell one of this is true is exactly the same as telling the other is. For no one can now it (yet?) and no one can prove it.
The only thing that we know is that everything we can observe today doesn't need (a) god(s) to work. That doesn't mean there are/is no god(s).
The Bible says "God created man in his own image". I don't know about that, but one thing is certain is that We created God(s) in our own image.

Great scientists said one day while working on quantic theory:
"-I'm convinced that He doesn't throw dice!"
"-Einstein, don't tell God what to do."

You're still not making a judgement call based on not having evidence, that is without splitting hairs, refusing to make an opinion. I'm sorry but it just seems absurd to say otherwise.

My follow up question was for people that take this approach is there a line drawn at ANY un verifiable abusurdity that anybody could think up? And does it not seem completely logical to take a hard line on many absurdities that are unverifiable? If so, why does divinity get special treatment when the whole idea of it is completely fantastical?

Does it? I take this approach on all kinds of things, many of which have nothing at all to do with religion. An example could be alien life. There are millions and billions of galaxies each which have billions of stars and many of those stars have dozens of planets. This has been going on for literally billions of years. It seems unlikely to me that in all of that time, with all of that space, we are the only planet to have ever created life of any kind. The odds just seem too long.

However, we have absolutely zero actual scientific proof of life from other planets. I don't think for a second that of all the billions of galaxies with their billions of stars that we're the only place to have ever come up with any life at all, but I've no proof one way or another. So again, if you asked me for certain, I would tell you I don't know, but if you asked me my opinion, I'd have to say that yeah, I believe it's probably happened somewhere.

The biggest different is reasonable doubt, I guess. People can make asbolutely absurd claims that can't be disproven left right and centre, but if they're completely insane claims that make no sense, you can pretty much shrug them off. The idea that a deity of some sort started the universe machine in motion 13.7 billion years ago and let it run it's course from there doesn't sound too ridiculous to me, though. I don't believe it for a second, but I don't see any reason why the idea couldn't be possible, either. Most of the BS claims made out there can be proven false through scientific study. Fortune tellers, tarot cards, psychics, you name it. I'm not sure how science could prove a creator one way or another, though.

Now, I should clarify that if you asked me if specific religions were true or false, I could definitely make a claim. The bible for example has been proven scientifically false pretty much from cover to cover. I have no qualms claiming that christianity specifically is full of it. But just because the religions are bonkers doesn't mean that there's no deity of any kind out there. If there was, and it didn't want to be known, I highly doubt we'd ever be able to come up with anything even close to it.

I guess I just fail to understand how not claiming absolutes when you don't have the evidence to claim an absolute is the same as not having any opinion. I've got a very strong opinion on the matter, my opinion is that this is all we've got so we best make the best of it while we're here. But opinions are personal, not truth claims. And just because I believe it, doesn't mean I can claims it as an absolute truth.

...did I answer your question at all there? Truth be told I think I'm talking a little bit over my head here, heh. I tend to get lost and sidetracked pretty easily in deep conversations.

I consider myself an agnostic atheist. I feel comfortable ruling out certain options (including pretty much all existing religions), but some definitions of God are so fuzzy that I do not know how to process them. If someone says they believe in a higher power, my honest response is that I do not know what this means well enough to form an opinion on it. As to apathy, it depends on the conception. It is hard to be apathetic with regard to the God of the Old Testament (who strikes me as an extreme tyrant), but I am not particularly concerned about the existence or nonexistence of an impersonal God who does not really affect us in any way.

It's just how my brain functions. I'm Asperger's Autistic and am a bit... off compared to most people. I seem to be the only one who took the message of "Don't drink, don't smoke, don't be an asshole to other people" that was the foundation of all the cartoons I watched growing up. I had to learn how social interaction between people works, so I was a bit naive for most of my life. In order not to be walked all over by other people, whom I learned seldom have my best interests at heart, I started applying scientific criteria to how other people interacted with me, and with each other.

Eventually I learned that the position most people of a religious nature have is "Who I worship and in what fashion I do so is the right and proper one." And their thoughts about the rest of the world range from "somewhat misguided" to "knowing that my religion is true and purposefully acting against it."

My mother (and thus her children) changed religious affiliations around the time I graduated high school. We went from mainstream Lutheran to quasi-baptist fundamentalist. Well, my mother and siblings did, I didn't. Because it struck me as a bit weird that you can be dead-set certain about "This is the one true religion! I believe this!" and then a few days, months, years, decades down the road you go "No, it's this one for sure!"

There exists no true criteria to be able to figure out which religion is 'right.' The primary factors that decide one's religious leanings are essentially a product of upbringing. The majority of children are raised to believe in the religion that their primary caregiver identifies and practices as, and most of them generally retain that faith throughout their lives to varying degrees.

So there can't be an objectively 'true' religion, otherwise that would be the only one. As people would look into it and go "Well, this makes sense. I don't see any problems here, we'll go with this one!" And there would be singing and rainbows and hand-holding and so on and so forth.

We most definitely don't have that.

What I got from my religious upbringing, and my cartoons, came out to roughly the same message of "Don't be a dick, to yourself or to anyone else if you can help it."

And if the message comes out to be the same, than why does it really matter what ways you dress it up in? Just as long as you keep to the tenants of non-dickishness, dress it up however you like. Just as long as the dress you've chosen doesn't have doesn't have ribbon-tentacles lashing out at other people around you, or will harvest energon from all the world's disco balls, or drip slime onto people.

So... I guess my reasoning boils down to "If several bajillion other people cannot come to a consensus on this matter, I sure as heck am not going to be able to do anything meaningful in regards to discerning the rightness or wrongness of each particular set of religious beliefs. So I'm just going to stay away from that because I find it boring, just like I don't expect everyone I meet to share my enthusiasm for watching professional wrestling.

I'm not going to enjoy listening to three hundred some people around me simultaneously speaking in utter nonsense (speaking in tongues), and a goodly portion of those three hundred people would not enjoy sitting for several hours watching two grown men in their underpants pretending to hit each other (watching the WWE.)"

Though I have noticed that my mom's language concerning certain political events sounds very similar to my grandmother's language concerning certain bad guy wrestlers.

TL:DR; VK says do whatever you like as long as you're not an ass to other people. Unless you cheer for John Cena. Then you are clearly an infidel and should burn in the depths of WCW Saturday Night for all eternity.

An Agnostic isn't somebody who doesn't have an opinion. It is somebody who, regardless of the opinion they have, if any, knows that you cannot posit proof for or against divinity.

Not really. "Neither believes nor disbelieves" is offering no opinion on belief. That's what i'm asking.

But it's not that. You can be an Agnostic Christian or a Gnostic Atheist.

I kind of sum it up as "An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Just because we don't have evidence of giant ants wearing top hats living inside of every person's cabinets doesn't mean they don't exist?

Only thing is there would be evidence against the ant's existence every time someone opens a cabinet. God(s) there's not evidence either way.

Why do you hold God(s) to a different standard?

A deity is by far the more incredible claim -- in the Christian conception, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and otherwise perfect; in other conceptions, oftentimes nearly all of those things. There's a generally accepted (though not without contention) credo in the sciences and philosopher of asking for greater evidence in proportion to the incredulity of the claim, and I think that's what's happening here.

Thank you. This is pretty much how i see it.

With agnostics, the subject of divinity takes special treatment i find. I honestly think if an agnostic refuses to state his opinion on whether he has a firm stance as to whether it's possible that undetectable and invisible oompa loompas (actual oompa loompas from the chocolate factory book) secretly follow us all around controlling our fates without us being aware of it, he's being disingenuous.

If he would outright dismiss that as ridiculous but not divinity, that would indicate some sort of opinion when the evidence for or against both is completely equal.

So then my question is why does the divinity issue get special treatment?

I find it very hard to put my finger on this. But if not counting for the fact that maybe agnosticism is just feel-happy atheism, I think the difference is that invisible oompa-loompas make aesthetically no sense when answering the question agnosticism is about: there's no sensibility, no beauty and no universality.

And it really matters, because (some?) agnostics are trying make an universal case about something metaphysical, as elegant and simple as possible... Someone could call it the maybe-god of the gaps, but what it is trying to be is an answer to something that it's more or less beyond empirical evidence.

This might-be-god has aesthetic explanotary power, it's the explanation (here a possible explanation) on why existence is how it is. One can of course formulate a god in many ways. To me all personal deities really do seem like invisible oompa-loompas from chocolate factory - something that doen't appeal to my sense of beauty.

Then again, sometimes invisible oompa-loompas make sense to people, and they choose the oompa-loompas that appeal to their sense of aesthetics. I guess that's all there is to justifying it.

It sure is the justification I have for my metaphysical views of reality, they simply appeal to my ideals of beauty, simplicity and sensibility, and are (unfortunately) rather unverifiable and useless in predictive power.

I hope there was any sense to this insane rabble ;_;

Thank you. This is pretty much how i see it.

With agnostics, the subject of divinity takes special treatment i find. I honestly think if an agnostic refuses to state his opinion on whether he has a firm stance as to whether it's possible that undetectable and invisible oompa loompas (actual oompa loompas from the chocolate factory book) secretly follow us all around controlling our fates without us being aware of it, he's being disingenuous.

If he would outright dismiss that as ridiculous but not divinity, that would indicate some sort of opinion when the evidence for or against both is completely equal.

So then my question is why does the divinity issue get special treatment?

Indeed, in addition to that what is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

See when I was wee I got to do this fantastic thing. I got to read all these different books about mythology and creation myths because they were interesting and different. And my family was never hard bent on being good christians. We practice the holidays, sure, but it's less about celebrating jesus, etc, as much as it is a reason to enjoy time together as a family. So I was never really raised with the whole "This is God, you should believe in him and follow his rules, he loves you so long as you accept him, etc etc" spiel.

And just as I grew up I never really found one side all that compelling. The world has thousands of religions and stories and figures. Who is to say who is 'right'? The cult that happened to have the most military might and managed to spread their dogma? Is that proof of divine mandate or simply brute force and social engineering? Even examining the 'big' religions you can see they're all pretty similar and at the least have the same origins/roots but took different paths. And you know, there's always the 'it's ALL wrong and it doesn't exist' option.

Since I was never forced into choosing one I've seen a lot of them. I just can't see myself accepting any -one- belief when there's so many out there. It's not a fear of being wrong per se so much as.. well, what makes one more 'right' than the other? Do I pick and choose based on what matches my personal feelings? Do I go with the one that has the better deal? Etc. Y'know at any point I'm putting personal bias into this choice and if there's one -right- one then my personal feelings aren't the correct way in picking it because it could be entirely contrary to my personal feelings. Then again I'm not sure what could convince me of which is 'right'.

So, yeah. They all seem as equally valid to me, even the atheistic 'it's all science' etc approach. So why not give them the benefit of the doubt? I think there's more to this world than science can explain.

I am agnostic, very sympathetic to Atheists. Why? Because I was raised in a conservative xtian environment and while there may be some good people in that particular contingent of the population, everything I've observed has indicated that at it's core it is a group of bigots, assholes and angry fundamentalists who purposely use their religious texts out of social context and twist them to suit their views and methods. They desperately want everyone else to adopt their view of things and become just like them or they will fuck up the whole world at least trying to make it so. I put them on the same level as a fundamentalist of any other religion.

I'll also state that I meet way more Atheists who act like the Jesus-character written about in the Bible than the actual, self-identified Christians who claim to follow Jesus.

I've long since crossed into gnostic theism, something I'll admit here and now just to rankle local atheists (nya, nya ;P), however I can understand the agnostic mind-frame just as much as I can understand that of atheists, even though I agree with neither. In my mind, agnostics have adopted the truly scientific response to the question of God, which is thus: Not enough data, therefore we can only postulate. And it's true; science has neither proved nor disproved the existence of God or any sort of overall intelligence responsible for the Universe's being here. We know that the Universe is quite capable of self-regulation to a truly mind boggling degree and is far more complex we ever previously imagined it to be, but I think it would be a lie to say that it's removed the need for God. Even evolution says nothing, ultimately, about whether or not (a) God(s) exist(s), it just shows that life on Earth did not show up fully formed as described in Genesis.

After all, evolution is just a mechanism that works with pre-existing life. It is not a creative agent that can itself create life, and where that life came from evolution cannot answer. Abiogenisis is one solution, however that in itself poses the question of how such a mechanism came to be. This isn't God of the Gaps, this is just the point of creation being pushed back further. If you like, we've just found out that a car is made in a factory by specialised robots. Now we're asking where the factory and those robots came from.

As such, as a rule, science can be at best be described as agnostic and at worst non-theist. It's not that it doesn't "believe" in God, it just doesn't consider the question at all, either because it can't or because it doesn't want to.

Agnosticism is a bit more flexible than theism or atheism in that it can lean towards either or none. Some agnostics may say that they don't really know that there isn't a god (hard or gnostic atheism), but assume there isn't (soft or agnostic atheism). The same can be said in reverse. Some don't really know that there is a god (hard or gnostic theism), but assume for the sake of convenience that there is (soft or agnostic theism). However, unlike some, I don't write off agnostics as being too timid to come to a major decision either way. I believe that many truly believe that the question cannot be honestly answered and that both theism and atheism are decisions of faith, not reason. Rather than rely on that faith, they wait until better evidence can be acquired. For example, a scientific theory that elegantly and seamlessly explains the Universe without needing divine interference, or a direct revelation from our Creator(s).

As such, it irritates the Hell out of me when I see certain atheists declare things along the lines of "Agnostics are just atheists without the balls to admit it". Not only is it highly arrogant, but quite frankly you can just as easily reverse it and say "Agnostics are just theists without the balls to admit it" and it would just as untrue. They're the third position and should be treated and respected as such.

Of course we also could consider the existance of magic dragons ghosts and the loch ness monster.
None have any data to suggest they exist, but 'absense of evidence is not evidence of absense,', so is the scientific answer to admit ignorance?
Not necessarily; the most accurate scientific description is 'our current understanding points to no, but as ever we're always willing to change that view,'.

Well magic dragons and the Loch Ness monster are corporeal entities; one way or another we'd find physical evidence of their presence. In the case of the former, mysteriously disappearing lifestock, strange tracks and peculiar readings on things such as sonar and radar. In the latter, we'd find a bloody big aquatic dinosaur in the middle of a not-so-large Scottish lake. Ghosts are somewhat trickier, given that there's plenty of testimonials regarding their existence throughout history and in every culture yet no concrete evidence (which is annoying). Personally, I'm disinclined to believe in them, although I'm open to the idea and would probably change my mind should I encounter one myself.

I've experienced God myself, see His presence in history (largely in St Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ) and generally regard Him as the most elegant and simplistic solution to the question of the Universe. I'm 100% certain that there is, in one form or another, an intelligence behind our reality. Whether that intelligence is as it's described in the Bible is another matter entirely and that for me is when faith comes in. That's not to say I never have moments of doubt, of course -- everyone doubts from time to time in every matter.

I'm sure even the infamous Richard Dawkins has had moments when he's stopped, stared into space and thought that dark thought: "What if I'm wrong?"

*scottish loch

I can list 'unfalsifiable entities' if it will satisfy you; souls, auras, guyas, and the invisible man. Every murder where they don't find the culprit? Turns out it was the invisisble man. ;3
Or perhaps the heavens are kept in motion by a race of tiny invisible pan-dimensional bacteria [much like the force in star wars], which pull the stars and planets around in their graceful orbits as a byproduct of their biological processes.


I think seeing human qualities in the universe, such as innate intelligence, emotional will or masculine gender say more about us and the human condition than the reality we actually live in. People anthropomorphise their view of the world, which is evident by the fact when subjects are shown films of shapes moving in random patterns, and are asked to describe them, they describe them in human terms most often. 'the triangle was bullying the hexagon until one of his friends showed up to chase him away,'.

People, as a rule of thumb, see humanity in non human things, so falsely attribute human emotional presence. This makes sense because we mostly interract with people, so it's useful to have that software in our heads, but perhaps it also explains various ontological arguments, such as the watch maker, and the fact most children cannot distinguish whether spoons and tigers were 'built for a purpose,'- young children tend to answer that both are.

*Now you're just being picky. :P The two are completely interchangeable anyway; loch is just the Scottish Gaelic word for lake.

I could point out that scientists do believe that the heavens are kept in motion by tiny invisible pan-dimensional things -- they call them particles. :P It seems they have a particle for just about everything, very few of which have been directly observed, if any. Only their effects. Something seems to make me think that they even believe that's a particle responsible for time, which personally boggles my mind but I guess they know what they're talking about.

I won't deny your point that humanity probably sees too much of themselves in the things around them, and that if God doesn't exist it might explain why the idea came up in the first place. I don't agree, because it trivialises just how big and complex an idea like God is, but I'll concede your point. Perhaps I should also point out that God is frequently described by Abrahamic scholars as not being at all like humans. As such, our tendency to anthropomorphise other things may not actually be untrue, just applied in a way that's different to the one you were gearing at.

So there you have it, find a measurable way to prove the existance of something to a five sigma probability and you're gold, even if your hypothesis is counter intuitive.

How can the god of abraham not be like humans to a significant extent? They are characterised by human concepts of whim, power, wrath etcetera and like pretty much every culture's god[s] bare the mentality of the culture which worship them.
You could argue that prophetic humans who this god took an interest in psychologically projected human qualities and cultures onto them, but then we're straying into razor territory. Is it more complicated to suggest a mechanism of psychological projection that involves nothing more than the established natural world or one which asks for the existance of a poorly defined deity ontop of this?
With reference to my first sentence, sceptisim is fully justified in the light of occam's razor until substantial hard proof, not historical interpretation or floral ontological argument, shows up.

Again, I'll concede here as I have no evidence, to say nothing of no argument, that can offer anything worth bringing to this conversation. Personally I do think that science offers just as much tantalising suggestions as to the existence of God, as I've expressed in my comments below, as well as history and personal experience, however just because I accept them as evidence doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else will.

If you like, and putting it very crudely, I see two faces and you see a vase. We're looking at the same thing, but with different mindsets and this colours our interpretations of it as a result.

Indeed, processing ontological arguments is actually rather pointless as this is a debate about agnosticism.

You mentioned before you yourself were gnostic, well I think we've actually come across grounds to call ourselves both agnostic [although I already did].
If you appreciate that the way you interpret the existance of deities is subjective and not intrinsically valid this means you cannot discount Gods as unfalsifiable, therefore your approach however confident is also agnostic.

If there comes such a time that a hypothesis can be generated that actually propones the existance of an 'intelligent' mega-creature which specifically designed our universe so that molecules on the surface of a planet orbiting a main sequency yellow star, with detectable predictions, then we may take gnostic views.

Personally i don't find it arrogant to think that agnostics are atheists/theists without the balls to pull the trigger. When i think of agnostic like with EVERYTHING, given what i observe and everything that has come together to form my personal world view, i form an opinion on it, everybody does this. To claim that you don't about anything to me i honestly believe somebody is being disingenuous, especially about such a black and white issue as the existence of the supernatural. To me it seems impossible to believe that an entirely scientific and evidence minded person could make the leap to consider something fantastical that has no evidence, i think they do make a judgement call on it but merely don't say so because they WANT to express it in the purely logical way. Yet at the same time that would mean you can't discount ANY utterly absurd and unprovable/disprovable thing that anybody can dream up and that itself is really illogical. (note i'm not saying belief in god is absurd, i'm talking about shit like the FSM)

As far as evolution not explaining the origin of life, the age of science is so young and has told us so much already, it seems hard me to think somebody would believe that it won't eventually figure out how it all began here. At the same time i don't think the fact we know how life evolved to complex forms or the natural process that started life will be explained through natural means should discount the existence of a god for those that choose to believe it.

Eh, I guess it's just that I read it as saying "Your actually opinions and thoughts are irrelevant; you're really on my side even if won't admit it". In general I try to assume that when people take a position they mean it and have good reasons for taking it, rather than try to second guess them.

And of course, a theist would argue that we do have evidence for the existence of God -- the biggest one being the fact that we're here at all. Cosmology has demonstrated that that in itself is remarkable to degrees that can't even be measured. Further examination of the sheer complexities of science can also lend credence to the idea that there was an intelligent source. Then there's things such as the Bible, personal religious experiences, miracles and the accounts of saints. Clearly God isn't that fantastical to believe in, and to demonstrate that all I need to do is ask this question.

How many people have, as adults, come to sincerely believe in things like the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Now how many people have, as adults, come to sincerely believe in (a) God?

I'd also like to point out that I never said science can never figure out the question of life, just that it hasn't yet. I'm also of the opinion that science won't discover anything that would seriously shatter religious belief, and certainly not theism/deism. To me, the conflict thesis has long since been disproven and the time has long since passed that science and religion should, if they can't be partners, leave each other to their own individual works. Let science enrich the mind and religion enrich the soul.

A theist would have made fallacious points in such a scenario.

Complexity does not necessitate intelligent design, neither does mere existance. Such arguments can be used to prop up any supernatural who we attribute 'creator' status to, but only on the premise we assume the universe is anthropomorphic.

People have various experiences of religious or spiritual natures...many for islam or sihkism or religions without god such as buddhism. Powerful religious-type experiences are also frequent amongst the mentally derranged, they're called hallucinations, and modern psychology indicated we all hallucinate to an extent. In light of occam's razor, what is simpler- that grand stories are the result of hallucination, a phenomenon we already know and describe in similar situations- or that the many contradictorary religious experiences of these people are credible? Hmmm.

Science has already discredited several religious institutions, though every time this happens religion finds a new gap of ignorance to hide in. For instance people used to believe the heavens were divine perfect spheres that rotated about the fermanent of the earth because of their religious doctrines. Copernicus showed they were wrong with his book 'revolutions of the planets' and this is where the phrase 'revolution' originated from. Religious people then decided these observations probed 'intelligent order', but Newton proves this wrong when he described the motion in terms of natural forces...now religious people say the natural forces were created by a magic god...but stephen hawking has all but dismantled that too now.

It is the equivalent of saying dragons exist because you can write 'here be dragons' on an uncharted corner of a map, and simply moving the location of your dragon to new unchartered territory everytime a cartogropher shows up.

So, in a universe where even the slightest change in fundamental forces, such as gravity, radioactive decay or the amount of matter vs. antimatter, could have completely screwed the Universe over within the first 1000000th of a second of its existence, we're to just shrug our shoulders and think "Lucky us". Wow, scientific analysis ain't what it used to be.

Also comparing religious experience with mental disorder is fallacious, for this main reason: religious experiences are generally one off and can occur in people who have never before or since been diagnosed as being mentally ill. In addition, and equally important, religious experiences tend to be very specific, whereas mere hallucinations are a little more erratic. There's a clear line between someone seeing a vision of Mary the Virgin, for example, extending her hands towards you and saying "Do not be afraid, for I am alive with Christ and I am praying for you" and then seeing Mary the Virgin smoking a cigar and saying "The whiskey is good up there". I will concede to your point that a variety of religions have had similar experiences, although as I said, all I know is that there is a Creator (or Creators) and that's all. It could even be that our universe was created by an all-powerful civilisation that inhabited a previous universe for all I know, if we hold the view that the universe is cyclical in its nature. Further details, such as whether that God is the same God as described in Anglican Christianity, is a matter of personal faith.

I'd also like to point out that Copernicus didn't discredit any religious institution; the idea of the Universe being made of "perfect spheres in perfect orbits around the Earth" was not a strictly Christian view -- it was an Aristotelian and Ptolemaic one. The Roman Catholic Church was merely siding with over 2000 years of philosophical/scientific tradition. As such, it's incorrect to say that Galileo was a case of religion vs. science; it was a case of one scientific view challenging an older and more established one. Galileo himself was ardently Catholic. Likewise Sir Isaac Newton certainly never disproved the idea of intelligent order. How do I know this? Because Newton himself was a major Christian thinker and frequently regarded the Bible as a font of knowledge regarding the Universe. Someone else might see this, sure, but Newton certainly regarded his discoveries as being further affirmation as to the sheer power. elegance and creativity of God.

Finally, it's debatable whether Hawkins has dismantled the idea of God either. If he has, we probably would have noticed by now. If anything, I'd go so far as to say he's clutching at straws simply because he doesn't want to make room for even the idle possibility of God. It seems, in certain circles of scientists, any theory that explains the universe is acceptable, just not any that involves the G-word. Even if they beg just as many questions (if not more) than the God Hypothesis. The multiverse theory for example. To use Occam's Razor, developed by a Christian friar, by the way, it's a sheer violation because it needlessly multiplies entities. It's especially problematic when it's pointed out that such other universes are not falsifiable. You can't detect them in any meaningful way, nor interact with them. Therefore, it's even less scientific than God is, whose effects can at least be observed. Also, how did this set of universes come to be and the rules that govern them? Again, God is not discounted; He's just shifted back. Along with a load of other problems and questions.

There is no conflict between science and religion. There is only a conflict between materialism -- that is, the philosophy that matter is all there is to the universe -- and spiritualism -- the belief that there is more to the universe than mere matter.

It is impossible for us to have resulted from a universe in which fundamental constants or relationships were not conducive to life. Therefore the fact we exist in one which is conducive to life sheds no further light on the subject. A polar bear lives in an arctic environment not because the conditions were specifically designed for the organism, but because the organism has emerged and adapted to make the best of the conditions available.

In other hypothetical universes we may expect life forms entirely different to out own, which rely on very different fundamental constants, I wonder whether they might too ponder if their universes were built just for them or if they emerged and adapted to their universes.

Hallucination is being recognised as a systematic malfunction of the mind, it's the likely reason many people believe they've seen ghosts or aliens or gods or pixies, because the brain is designed to extrapolate patterns and may falsely represent incoherent data as a manifestation of a previous idea. Hallucination in addition has similar triggers to religious experience, such as extreme stress, and many behaviours that used to be seen as religious conviction- such as believing you're a prophet to an invisible overlord, are now recognised as paranoid schizophrenia or delusions of grandeur. [in fact women suffering from mental anguish as a result of domestic abuse often attribute god-like qualities to the men they fear, believing they can see them wherever they are even if said individuals are dead] My mother worked in a mental ward where 3 separate individuals thought they were the second coming of jesus, what distinction there ever was between thinking a burning bush was giving you holy commands and suffering mental incapacitation has rightly dissolved. People who see things that aren't there need medical help, not religious reverence.

Sir Isaac newton was imprisoned by the church for saying there were 6 colours in the rainbow [an unholy number and the reason we now have 'indigo' rather than just blue/violet]. Giordo bruno was burnt at the stake for suggesting there was life on other worlds, etcetera. The traditional views held by religious institutions have been eroded by fact, despite the most violent efforts of these institutions, as time has marched on. From their beliefs about the solar system to the age of the earth to the emergence of life. At some point we're going to have to sit down and say 'the religious institutions of the past have been grossly wrong. Magic does not exist, whether or not we posit a universal creator these institutions are not credible in the slightest in their descriptions of the universe'.

If you're asking questions about multiverse theory, quantum theory and membrane theory out of genuine curiosity then researching them yourself will provide the best answer rather than challenging me to explain them on the web. Furthermore there is no 'discounting of God' to be done- or we end up with a god of the gaps, how about scepticism of the existance of gods and magic is justified until such a time that it is proven otherwise? No 'here be dragons' on unchartered maps. It's hilarious you suggest god is more scientific than several physics and maths theories, when they are extrapolations of observation and rule in the language of mathematical reasoning, whereas the god hypothesis is a piece of poetry hinged to provide doubtful believers with the comfort of confidence in their afterlives. x3
If you wish to understand occam's razor, you are allowed to propose complexity if you have sound reason to, and for instance proposing particles explore all possible routes rather than just one is such an example of a complex proposition which stood up to testing. The Higg's particle is another eventhough it took half a century to build a machine capable of the test.

There is conflict between scientific philosophy and religious philosophy, for you see 'science changes its views based on what's observed, faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved'. Scrutiny is the mantra of science, by which fact is arrived at, fantasy is the mantra of religion.

Allow me to use an analogy. A man is found guilty of a crime he did not commit and is sentenced to hang. Pleading that he needs to live so he continue to support his family, the judge agrees to let him go -- if his youngest daughter of six years can shoot through the rope that hangs him at a hundred paces. The girl is no marksman, is short sighted and can barely hold the gun she is to fire. Nevertheless, upon her first shot, she cuts clean through the rope and drops her father safely to the floor.

The chances of the Universe being capable of supporting life (as we know it anyway) is even less than that scenario. We can postulate about what life might be like in a universe in other conditions, but as you state yourself it's best to deal with what we actually know, not with what might have been. To say otherwise would be like accepting alternate history novels as part of an actual history exam.

Question 1. What might the world have been like had Alexander the Great gone west, not east?

Again, the multiverse theory, to me, falls short of Occam's Razor. It's needlessly complex and needlessly multiplies entities when just one will do. We have no way of proving or disproving whether other universes exist, even less than we can God. To me it's easier to fall back to an intelligent source that we can actually verify, even if we haven't completely yet, than a set of an infinite number of universes that we can't in any way interact with or detect. You may as well declare that there are invisible, insubstantial, absolutely silent pink unicorns inhabiting Central Park; you can more easily identify those than you can other universes.

I've never heard of Isaac Newton being arrested and I can't find any references to it either, as such I'd to ask where you heard this. If anything, the fact that he is Sir Isaac Newton suggests the opposite.

Giordano Bruno, meanwhile, wasn't really a scientist. It's arguable that his Copernican views were, to him, more a revelation of divine mysteries than a scientific finding. Again, he fell prey to Aristotelian supremacy at the time and by making enemies of the wrong people. Plus, it was also because he challenged religious matters, such as the nature of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and Transubstantiation, than anything else. It's also important to remember that Europe was in the middle of the Reformation at the time; it wasn't exactly a good period to be challenging the intellectual authority of the Church. I will admit that his perceptions of there being numerous worlds contributed to his death, although I'll remind you that the idea of other worlds was not new and when the existence of them became more than mere speculation, the Catholic Church soon accepted the idea.

It actually already has plans ready on how to deal with alien civilisations, such as determining whether or not their fallen, whether or not they're covered by Christ and whether or not the Church needs to evangelise them.

Finally, I'd like to point something very crucial that often gets overlooked: it's entirely possible to be a theist without necessarily being religious. Likewise, it's entirely possible to be religious without being a theist (Buddhists and Jainists do it all the time). A theist just believes that cause of the universe was some sort of highly powerful intelligence, otherwise it makes no claims as to its nature or purpose. My theism and my Christian religion are interconnected, but if I woke up tomorrow and found out that the Bible was a huge 1st century hoax, then while my Christian religion would of course be shattered my theism wouldn't necessarily be. Jesus Christ was disproven, by the Creator wasn't. As such, to argue that theism is just a result of fears of death is not true.

I could easily use that same type of logic and declare that atheism is just a result of arrogance; an atheist can't stand the idea that he owes his existence to and is accountable someone he can't avoid.

Such analogies are not capable of describing reality in any form other than poetry. The simple fact is if the universe we happen to live in was not capable of supporting life we wouldn't be here to comment on the probability, and for a majority of this very universe's duration life as we know it won't be possible; the period of star formation in our universe will be short compared to its overall expected duration. So what light can actually be shed on the situation in a meaningful way? Very little, and certainly not grounds to assume the existance of intelligent mega-fauna that give birth to universes they have designed so that self replication molecules can exist on the occaisional space rock orbiting a main sequence yellow star.

Unless you actually have read the maths papers of the multiverse theory and understand how it has been derived your personal opinions on it are rather moot. There are ways to test for multiverse, among which sifting through the background radiation to search for symptomatic patterns is a favoured test, this will require new radio telescopes but it's one way in which the theory is predictive whilst 'intelligent design' is simply poetry about girls shooting through ropes at a hundred paces. Actual theories require maths based on extrapolation of measurement and known laws to form predictions about the state of the world, not poetry.

My Physics teacher told me this, although I am having trouble confirming it, so it may not be true.
Let's make it clear that the views of religious institutions, historically being enforced through violence and taking centuries to catch up [the church only recently apologised for imprisoning galileo], are cultural expressions of inertia, baring almost no traction on the nature of the universe and the pursuit of knowledge.

I'm aware of the difference between theism and religion, although theism actually does necessitate being religious because it specifies 'belief in the gods of doctrines', what you're thinking of is deism. Theism makes no inherrent claims about the cause of the universe, if there even is proponed to be one by the theist in question, and neither does deism intrinsically do so. This is simply a property of the intelligent design argument- a final gap where Gods can be claimed to hide.

You show me empirical observation confirming a mathematically sound prediction of an intelligent creator as a necessity for our universe and I'll change my mind, until then this is russel's teapot and rhetoric about poorly understood probabilities in the gaps of human knowledge will not merit substitution of hyper-powerful mega creatures in place of actual curiosity, that would be a fallacy of premature closure.

So when Richard Dawkins describes evolution as being like climbing up the shallow side of a mountain, he's being scientific. When physicists use the familiar orbital patterns to describe the structures of atoms, they're being scientific. When I use an analogy to describe the chances of the Universe developing in such a way that life can form and become intelligent, I'm resorting to mere poetry (and it isn't poetry -- it's prose). Here's hard numbers for you then; a mathematician once calculated the chances of the Universe forming as it did now without outside interference. The probability he came up with was 0.0*1%, * representing so many zeroes that, even if you were to take every particle in the observable universe and convert them into a zero, you still wouldn't have enough to complete the figure. He then described an equivalent scenario being like a marksman trying to hit a coin on the other side of the galaxy. That's what I was trying to demonstrate with my analogy; a practically impossible event nevertheless coming to pass.

Doesn't it bother you that, with those odds, the universe somehow turned out in such a way that not only can life survive within it, but actually flourish? Perhaps you're content to look at the world and just accept it how it is, but I'm not.

I don't suppose you could recommend any papers regarding the M-Theory then and inform me of how I might be able to read them? That said, while I admit I cannot offer any meaningful opinion of them, I still stand by my view that they're non-scientific simply because they're even less falsifiable than God is. Until I can actually be convinced otherwise, alternate universes are just as much an intellectual cop out to me as God is to you, and should only have a place in DC and Marvel comics and His Dark Materials, not science.

Also the exact definition of what a religion is can be controversial, especially since it's one of those definitions that seems to change to suit the needs of whoever is using it. Myself, I reject your definition because it excludes non-theistic religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, and because, as I said, it's quite possible to believe in gods without actually identifying with any particular religion. Not all theists are religious, not all religions are theist.

So you'll admit, then, that religion itself generally offers no resistance to science, only cultural attitudes of the time? I won't deny there have been occasions when religious authorities have been resistant to scientific revelations, however they've just as frequently been highly supportive of scientific progress as well. Just look at the Golden Age of Islam or the Catholic Church's founding of universities and preservation of ancient philosophical texts. Like any other relationship, that of science and religion is highly nuanced.

It seems neither of us can reach an agreement, although in truth I don't think either of us expected us to reach an agreement. People far more intelligent and far more informed than we have wrestled with the God question and never come to a satisfying answer, so I guess expecting that we two nameless bums can succeed where they haven't is pretty silly.

When physicists and evolutionary biologists submit papers written in technical terminology featuring sources and data sets etcetera they are being scientific. That's what I trust in science, because I can and do find and read scientific papers to see what they show.

Probability is only a valid concept when we actually understand the scenario in which it is being described. It's fair to say that the advent of our own universe is a time so poorly understood in comparrison to bullet ballistics that trying to draw comparrisons between the two is largely pointless.

An example of this misuse of probability was proponed to me by another creationist, who said 'the chance of molecules interracting to form a protein strand is incredibly small,'. He then calculated the chance of atoms randomly bumping into eachother to form a protein to show it was small.
What he was missing was that atoms' motion is not random, it's determined by natural laws which make the probability of protein formation good and in fact make the probability of organic chemistry so favourable that nebulae in space contain organic chemistry.

Similarly trying to describe the probability of a universe emerging, in such ignorance, is moot. We might posit that non-existance is a potential for any combination of laws, and therefore conclude that every possible universe has to exist, for instance, or we may find that our universe is just a deterministic event in a far larger cosmos that never even had a beginning.

I admit I know little about the probability of our universe, although since most of our universe is empty space and energised plasma life cannot be said to 'flourish' in it, the universe's star bearing period will actually be relatively short, so it's not an entirely friendly place for life like us. I'll admit I don't know much about the universe, but I'm determined to find out properlly rather than substitute the things I can't comprehend with 'must've been a super intelligent god creature'. [which begs the question of how super intelligent god creatures came to be- somewhere down the line we admit the advent of existance from non existance- something described in M theory]

I recommend reading the simplified version of Membrane theory for a rudimentary understanding on wikipedia and subscribing to new scientist magazine, which whilst not being peer reviewed posts its sources to original papers. 'Minute physics' on youtube has some good simplified explanations of multiverse as an extrapolation of quantum mechanics and Potholer54, a user who worked as a scientific journalist, has several good videos debating the history of the universe which all provide their sources.

You can't really get less falsifiable than 'unfalsifiable', maths theories like multiverse are predictions based on maths we already know works, and they do provide some predictive power, which requires building experiments to find out if this is true. There are further examples; string theory and membrane theory, which rely on the existance of higher dimensions, could be vindicated by a predictive test in the LHC, if tiny black holes can be made at low energies the gamma spectrum they produce will confirm the existance of a fourth spacial dimension. Any proposed predictive tests for God? ...well, prayers don't seem to work, prophetic power is claimed by various different religiouns of contrary nature, personal experience would have us believing in ghosts...so far Gods have failed all predictive tests their believers have put forward, which is likely why unfalisifable gods are the only versions left over.

Religions are by definition: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; "he lost his faith but not his morality" [sourced from google define], typified by ritual and doctrine.

This definition does NOT exclude buddhism or jainism, which both have supernatural beliefs, rituals and doctrines.

Let's make this clear: ALL THEISTS ARE RELIGIOUS [because theism specifically references belief in gods of doctrine]. SOME RELIGIONISTS ARE THEISTS. NOT ALL DEISTS ARE RELIGIOUS.

Religion philosophically is rather the opposite of science. Typified by faith, which is belief for reason other than epistemological. Science is typified by pure epistemological belief of varying degrees of confidence. Do you see how these are mutually exclusive philosophies? If somebody is accepting strong beliefs without epistemological justification then it's not scientific.
This doesn't mean the relationship in he real world reflects that all the time, but it shows a discrepency in the style of logic each implements respectively.

Of course we'll never succeed, even if there was a proof that Gods didn't exist tomorrow- which is unreasonable to expect because it's a negative claim like the russel teapot- people would generally still cling to their beliefs for emotional reasons. On other sites people have literally accused me of being 'a test of their faith', as if ignoring what I had to say justified their spot in heaven.
The epistemology of Gods may settle if they are ever made falsifiable, but belief in them will likely remain a thorny subject for the duration of human civilisation.

I wouldn't describe you as a test of faith, largely because it implies, as you have done, that you were somehow sent. Really, I think God has better things to do than prod me with sticks, whether physical or intellectual, to see whether or not I fall over. If anything, this exchange has been most enjoyable. It's not often I am forced to examine my beliefs like this on the internet.

Usually by now I'd have recieved a message along the lines of "You're just some retarded Bible-thumper! Why do you hate science?"

As to whether religion is based entirely on faith I shall say this; sincere believers of Christianity are not as such just because it suits them. Most people believe in God because they've seen evidence that compels them to think that God exists and that He exists as the Gospels describe. For some, this is the Bible, for others it is witnessing what they believe to have been a religious experience and, for others, it's through many years of philosophical reasoning and deduction. It is incorrect to say that faith is knowing despite of evidence to the contrary; that's being stubborn. Faith is coming to a conclusion when evidence only takes you so far or is ambiguous. This is why atheism is also sometimes described as a faith. It's one thing to say there's insufficient evidence to say God it exists, it's another entirely to say that God therefore cannot exist.

There's insufficient evidence to say that this person was murdered. Therefore there was no murder.

There's insufficient evidence to say that Troy existed. Therefore Troy did not exist.

There's insufficient evidence to say that aliens exist. Therefore we are alone.

See the difference? Atheism is as much a leap of faith as theism is.* Does that mean, then, that atheism is a religion? Of course not.

Myself, I draw my faith in Christianity from the sheer complexity of the universe, personal religious experience and historical analysis of the Bible, specifically the Gospels. I don't believe in God despite of evidence, I believe in God because of evidence. I am not the only one to have done so. Perhaps I'm describing something different to faith as you see it** or you don't believe that to be evidence enough, but it works perfectly well for me. Short of destroying my taste for scientific advance, I find it enhanced. I know the universe is intelligible, I know that it is stable and I know that because I can understand it, it must be perfectly fine for me to try and understand it. Likewise, if I come across evidence that contradicts something I've come to believe in the Bible and I cannot work around it, I'd be more inclined to change how I read the Bible than how I see that evidence.

I am not a Muslim. The Bible is not the direct word of God, except in such instances when God or Christ is described to have spoken, and it is not to be taken literally word by word. It was never compiled to be a scientific account and should not be read like one. It's divinely inspired, but not divinely written or dictated.

Likewise, the more I examine just how well ordered, vast and complex our universe is, the more my religious sense of awe is amplified. If science is awesome, imagine how awesome the God responsible for it is. Simply put: I am honestly excited by what scientists can achieve. Not just in terms of raw data, but also by what can be done when that data is applied. Science can become a religious act, one of utmost sanctity, for by pursuing it, we are examining the handiwork of God and coming to a fuller, more intrinsic understand of His mind.

Of course, you can object. We've already established we're not going to agree. At this stage I'm just expressing my thoughts on the topic and how I react to these things.

*At this point, I think I will add an A- to my title of gnostic theist. I believe very strongly, but you're right. I do not know for certain. Just because I believe very strongly that aliens civilisations exist does not mean they do. Why should God be any different? Although I'll probably still bring out the gnostic label just to annoy materialists. It's fun seeing the expression of abject objection on their faces. :P

**Let's face it; I'm obviously not infallible.

I'd disagree and say most people believe in their gods because of cultural surroundings they grew up in. Religion is largely inherited, which is why there are strong geographic trends in religion as well as social ones. If you grew up in southern Norway in 800AD it's likely you would believe in Thor, if you grew up in north western India it's likely you'd believe in Allah, if you grew up in ancient Rome it's likely you'd worship roman deities, etcetera. All these people claim to see evidence for their contradicting beliefs, is it perhaps possible they're exercising confirmation biases in favour of their cultural values?

Atheism isn't the claim that god 'cannot exist', it's a lack of belief in gods. People who aren't persuaded that there must be god[s] are atheists, which is why most agnostics are actually also atheists. Atheism isn't a leap of faith comparable to theism, as denouncing the existance of fairies is hardly faithful in comparrison to concluding they must exist, that their leader is called gwynog and she communicates to people through texts inscribed in the bark of trees beyond the big mountains and one day 5000 years ago gwynog had her own daughter brutally murdered to make penance for your wretchedness.

I too am in awe at the proverbial magic of the cosmos, but I think it can be dismantled into natural laws that describe it from an initially entirely ignorant or even counter intuitive viewpoint, rather than attributed to a creator with human emotions.

Now...the difference between that and Christianity, is that we actually have numerous fragments of copies of the Gospel that have been written within the century of Christ's execution, and numerous Roman and Jewish sources that attest that there was indeed a man in Palestine around the 1st century CE who was crucified for being a rabble-rouser. It's also very specific about the time and place. Jesus operated in Galilee, headed south towards Jerusalem, where he was crucified and buried.

That said, I will agree that had I been born in any non-Christian culture I probably wouldn't be a Christian right now, no. That's hardly a controversial thing to admit. Equally you can be accused of the same thing; you're only an atheist because you were born into a culture that is broadly secular and has free exchange of information and ideas. Had you been born in north-west India, you'd be a Muslim, not an atheist. We both know, of course, that no one is bound by cultural upbringing. At any point during my secondary school or university years I could have dropped my Christian identity and, honestly? I don't think anyone would have cared in the slightest. If anything, I'd probably have been going along with the majority of my peers in secondary school. I didn't however. I instead found myself affirming Christianity.

Speaking of believing in Faerie Queens, how about believing in invisible particles that can only be seen by special men in white coats who speak in languages lay people don't speak about things lay people don't understand and insist that they can answer all of life's questions? People who are listened to without question by the masses just because it's assumed that they know what they're talking about? Sound familiar? Perhaps it's fair to say that materialist atheists only believe in the things they do because a man in a white coat told them that they were true.

You know I've spoken with muslims who make the same claims of corrobating evidence in cultural records for Mohammed. In general I suspect the more any religion is studied by someone the more corrobating evidence they find- this is called a confirmation bias and you can find corrobating evidence for almost any claim which has a rich cultural tapestry...even say the loch ness monster, which has thousands of confirmed sightings over several centuries in very specific detail. [ironically many creationists try to convince me nessy is real and a plesiosaur in order to prove dinosaurs lived alongside man, never mind that plesiosaurs aren't dinosaurs] What needs to be appreciated is falsifiability instead. For instance do people actually rise from the dead or is this a fiction or possibly even a trick, for instance an opiat drug or a twin brother? There are examples of people 'coming back from the dead' using these tricks, so it's not entirely unreasonable to suspect that the medically impossible is well, medically impossible, and alternative explanations are likely true.

Indeed, what I'm pointing out by this is confirmation bias and the nature of the spread of religious ideology- which is mostly by default inheritance or culture, rather than free exchange of information, which is usually associated with more seccular regions. The great thing about freedom of information and scrutiny is that regardless of its spread it happens to yield more helpful answers, such as combustion engines, heliocentric solar systems and particle accelerators.

I believe in invisible particles because I happen to understand how their existance is derived through brownian motion, understand a limited amount of scientific terminology and understand that science actually doesn't insist it can answer all the questions in the world- and has in fact proven some are unasnwerable.
If a man in a white coat suggests something that is dubious, everybody in the scientific community is free to scrutinise it, which is why I wasn't among the glut of psuedo-intellectuals who assumed neutrinos travel faster than light when those readings appeared from cern/paso detectors, because after scrutinising the issue I became aware that neutrinos from supernovae don't arrive ahead of the star's glow, so had reason to be suspicious of the detectors' results, which eventually turned out to be systematic errors.

Of course I could always believe instead that the scientific community is a massive conspiracy designed to keep me in the dark for unknown ends. x3

Thousands of sightings you say? I'm aware of only a handful, most of which were made in the 20th century. The story of St Columbus driving a monster away is believed to have been a fanciful modern invention that arose after the Loch Ness monster grew popular, or else it may even have been the source of the modern "sightings". Trust me, there isn't anything within the Ness other than fish, rotting vegetation and over-enthusiastic crypt-zoologists.

Also, opiate drug? Twin brother? This isn't a soap opera. This is history. Plus that's Wild Mass Guessing. Let's stick instead with what we do actually know, stripping from the Gospels all religious narrative and using knowledge of events as seen by historians. We know a man called Yeshua bar Yosef, a Jewish community leader from a village called Nazareth within the region of Galilee, was an active religious figure for a period of about three years within the Roman-occupied province of Judea, round about 30-33 CE. We also know that he was, at the behest of the authorities of the Temple in Jerusalem, executed by the Romans for sedition, presumably after they got worried about his preaching and an incident within the Temple (described in the Gospels as Jesus driving out the money-lenders).

Let me make this plain. He was executed by the Romans. Roman executioners were very good at their jobs, generally because it they weren't good at their jobs, they'd be executed themselves. That's also not taking into account the flogging that Jesus would have received beforehand, flogging so severe that his back would have been ripped to shreds. Then he was made to carry his cross through Jerusalem to the hill where he was to be crucified. Oh, and he was stabbed to make sure he was definitely dead. Clear fluid gushed from his side where his lung had been punctured, indicating that there was a build of fluid in Jesus' lungs that caused him to literally drown. That's pretty dead to me. So what sort of opiate drug do you think he was taking?

Likewise there's no references at all to Jesus having a twin brother. We know he had brothers as well as sisters, but a twin would have been unusual enough to have been noted. How would they have been switched? In the Garden of Gethsemane is a good bet, I suppose, but still someone must have noticed. Plus, don't you think someone might have pointed this out? Like the Jewish or Roman authorities who would have wanted to quash the rumours that a man they had executed was walking around again? They went as far as declaring that the grave was robbed, for example. Something like an identical twin brother would have been the ideal way to pass it off and it would have been easy to prove. Ask for the twins to show up in the same room.

Then we've got the fact that the Apostles were willing to die for their religion, something that would not have occurred if there was some conspiracy surrounding the resurrection. Indeed, most of the Apostles and early saints met grizzly ends precisely because they refused to renounce their faith in Christ. Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but I don't buy the conspiracy theory surrounding Christ, which incidentally is why I'm skeptical of Islam, which claims that Jesus "swooned". If it believes that Jesus was executed at all.

So, help me out again Occam; what's more likely? A highly complicated conspiracy theory in which a group of men decided to pull off the greatest hoax of all time, something that would be impossible to replicate even now and something that they were apparently willing to die horribly for, for no apparent motive that we can discern, or that a man called Yeshua bar Yosef was indeed executed? Whether he actually rose again is a good question, and stripping myself off all Christian bias, I couldn't begin to guess how it might have occurred, short of dismissing it as a rumour that got out of hand. But again, for a rumour, people were pretty damn serious about it. Even a hallucination seems unlikely, as it was apparently shared by groups of people at the same time and apparently they could speak with and touch it.

In regards to your next point, surely if that was true we would never convert from our religions? What I'm trying to say is, there's a lot more to religion than just cultural saturation. Otherwise, all religious conversion would be forceful. This isn't true. Christianity flourished even while being heavily persecuted, and Islam spread into Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa along trade routes. Like all simplistic models, the "Inheritence Theory" doesn't really stand up to close scrutiny. People find out about religion through exchange of information and that causes conversion. Likewise if all it takes is free-exchange of information to break this, why isn't Christianity crashing down even now? I can go into any bookstore and pick up The God Delusion for about £8 after all. That's not going to make me, or any serious believer for that matter, to embrace the Will of Darwin.

So tell me, were you always an atheist? If not, how did you come to be an atheist? This is genuine curiosity by the way; hearing accounts of how atheists come to be allow me to reflect on flaws in Christian thinking. Plus, I have a theory that precious few people become atheists because science has lead them to it. Rather, they become atheists first and use materialist science to justify their beliefs.

As for the Global Scientist Conspiracy...you never know. Knowledge is power, as they say. XP

This is elegantly stated and your points are excellent! I'm actually shocked to see a response so erudite and correct.

What keeps me from pulling the trigger are these two things;

1. I'm a pretty emotional, instinctual person, and can be very irrational. I've had experiences which could be viewed as very spiritual, very religious, but I'm skeptical of course. Similarly atheism is a little too pat an answer for me - that of course there's no God, nothing in the universe out there beyond people just endlessly fucking other people over, that hoping something might actually be there for me is a bit much, yadda yadda yadda. I'm fairly atheistic but I do not want to declare myself an atheist from this resentful, irrational, biased place.

2. I'd also like to think that the existence of the divine is actually a pretty extraneous topic. Am I being a decent human being? Can I look at religious tradition to make myself more happy and emotionally stable? Can I look at the universe for numinous feelings and inspiration without needing to have a god there? It's like the Buddha's notorious evasion about the topic of what gods were out there. I have some stuff which is a lot more pertinent to my existence without having to decide once and for all my opinion on the spiritual nature of the universe.

I'm actually not entirely sure if I count as agnostic. I mean, I do fall into that category, but the way you describe it someone has to be completely neutral on their stance on God's existence to be agnostic, and I'm exactly the opposite. Of the two camps you described I guess I fit into the second one more? I dunno.

I have two theories on the matter, which I refer to as the Titans theory and the Ultimate Parent theory. My Titans theory is somewhat similar to how Azeroth was supposed to be created by the Titans as a sort of petri dish, but they didn't stick around long after. I'd say that the creator made our planet, put life into motion, and then went on his merry way to allow things to just move along as they may without its intervention. Maybe it pops by once in a while to check out the progress, but it doesn't involve itself in our affairs.

The other theory comes from my personal opinions about what a parent should be. Let's assume that the statements regarding God being our "father" are correct. Well, what parent wants his children to constantly rely on him day in and day out? Sure, he might be happy to offer help if the situation looks grim for them, but if they need him to do every little thing for them, then he's failed as a parent to teach them independence. So he sits back, tries to teach his children what they need to know, and then backs off, only for some to stubbornly refuse to leae the nest regardless. I'd imagine that a deity attempting to be the ultimate father would love to have his creations become atheists or agnostics, because that means he's finally succeeded in giving them independence from him.

In either case, though, you'll probably note that I'm assuming some form of creator figure or deity exists. I know it's not a logical idea that some all-powerful entity just zapped everything into existence, but it's a lot easier to believe than in there not even being a beginning. I ask questions. One of the first things I asked my Christian mother as a child was who created God, which she answered with "God created himself." And that struck me as impossible circular logic. How can you create yourself if you didn't exist to be able to create yourself? On the same front, though, what did happen? How could a random spark just create dependence on ones surroundings? How can non-sentient matter begin to need to absorb other matter to process within itself to sustain its own existence in its current form? These are hard questions to answer, and I doubt I'd understand the answers if they are indeed out there. So I choose to believe in something sentient that sparked life. It does return us to the question of how that sentience came to be, though, which just brings me right back to the "Who created God?" question. Honestly, the simplest answer to that IMO, and the one that my ideas seem to prove, would be that mankind created God so he could put order to the universe's timeline.

Well, anyway. Respect it or not. You can think I'm wise to accept the possibility that there may or may not be a creator, or you can think I'm a pussy for not being brave enough to choose one solid stance. Either way, that's just how I see things.

I think its more like: " I don't have an opinion "= "its a sensitive subject that I'd rather not discuss " more often than pure apathy. But I dunno!

I'm not an agnostic, but I am an apatheist which I regard as more similar to agnosticism than atheism is. I used to be an atheist, but then I realize that I shouldn't outstep my boundaries and state things with absolution because I realize that thinking outside of your scope is a worthless endeavor. I'm more concerned with my friends and my accomplishments and goals than religion or its inverses.

I go by atheist-agnostic. I don't believe in god, and don't see how one could exist, but I wouldn't plug my ears and go "lalala" if someone gave me hard evidence.

I wouldn't accept anything that didn't make sense, though.

To me, that's atheist lol. I don't believe in god because it's a very fantastical and out there thing to believe in and i have seen nothing that would make me think such a thing could be much like i have seen nothing that could make me believe in FSM which i don't believe in cuz it's just ridiculous.

I can assure you though, if god, yahweh, allah, invisible fate guiding oompa loompas or the FSM appeared to me in the flesh/semolina and did something to conclusively prove they exist beyond any doubt, then yeah of course i would believe in them. I think probably any atheist would. I don't think that's really agnostic though.

For atheism, I'm running off of my brother's definition, which is a complete lack of belief towards a god, and actively shooting down any belief that there is one. But he has a knack for using words in strange ways, heh.

I am an agnostic, in the sense that I have studied (in depth -- Religious Studies is my major) the arguments for and against the existence of a deity, and I find them wholly unconvincing. Moreover, while I assure you I am thoroughly open to the possibility of such, I have never myself had a revelatory experience, wherein I perceive the divine directly. So, until (unless) I have further information, I suspend judgment.

And I do this on the whole range of "supernatural" or otherwise nondisprovable things -- ghosties and Amelia Earhart included. If I relish anything, it's intellectual consistency. I liked Tolgron's response in this matter.

That's fine. I honestly think it's disingenuous to say you didn't make a snap judgement call, whether you liked it or not formulate an opinion as to whether the universe as we know it is merely 1 fraction of an egg molecule in a giant cosmic custard pie in the swedish chef's cosmic kitchen.

I mean, is that a possibility to you? Could the swedish chef's appearance on the muppets be the prophetic sign of the ultimate truth?

Of course it's a possibility! I meant no indication that it's not -- and if we accept certain viewpoints, since all the universe exists to honor God, surely the Swedish Chef fulfills that as well. However, possibility and probability are two radically different concepts, and that's where I draw the line. It is possible that Elvis rides around the far side of the universe in a pink spaceship and singing in bars, but there is a greater probability that a higher power exists, if only because Occam's Razor would seem to preclude the former. (It is true, of course, that philosophers of religion debate whether Occam's Razor precludes the existence of God; I haven't stewed on their arguments long enough to make a judgment yet.) Note I don't say it's likely that higher power exists or does not, and that's where my agnosticism lies; I don't know the mix, is all.

I seek to be as genuine as possible! As for the snap judgment...well...certainly I made a judgment (or a series of them), but as I recall it wasn't snap. I pleaded with a God I couldn't find to show himself, and over a period of years, my belief ebbed and decayed. Finally I decided I couldn't bring myself to profess a belief I didn't have anymore. But I also couldn't deny that God can exist and simply hasn't reached me yet (nor I him, I mean). This is more aptly what my agnosticism is -- a struggle to define what I experience, often through a prism of reason, but not always.

Religious Studies is your major? Religious Studies is my major! Let's be friends forever

Hahaha! Sounds good to me.

Pleased I'm not coming across as a blathering idiot. That's always a comfort. :P

I don't know, I encounter a lot of agnostics on a daily basis (I'm a Religious Studies student, so this poop comes up a lot), and in my experience it really is a case of finding neither case for the existence or non-existence of God convincing enough to make a decision that they're happy with, so they choose to suspend their ultimate judgement on the matter until they're either better informed or conclusive proof can come down on one side or the other, which doesn't appear to be any time soon. "I'm not sure" is a legitimate answer distinct from both yes and no, and it can lean more towards one or the other. My mother is agnostic leaning more towards yes, and a friend of mine is agnostic leaning more towards no.

It's hard to be a theist or atheist trying to understand agnosticism, since it's all pretty clear in our heads - we can't quite picture what it's like to not be able to make a decision on the matter. Personally I say leave the agnostics to their agnosticism, and if they want to join the debate at any point then make sure there's a seat available for them, just don't try and tell them which side of the table to sit on.

Some try to tell me that I am agnostic when I am more likely atheist. I think it comforts believers to believe someone is NOT saying "There is no god." but "I see no evidence for god." But that is bit of trickery for themselves. I don't believe in a good many things, but if I encounter them I will change my mind. This does not make me a "Ghost Agnostic" or a "Unicorn Agnostic" or such.. it makes me not a thick-headed imbecile is all. If, when confronted with irrefutable (this is key) evidence of X, and one does NOT change the belief "There is no X" there's something wrong completely unrelated to whether or not X exists.

Well for me it was a variety of thing personal experience and related stories. I and my mom were raised Catholic. My mom as a little girl grew up before Vatican II, she passing by a merchants barrel of green beans grabbed a few and walked off and started snapping them, she then relaized she stole and felt that Catholic guilt, but she couldnt understand why according to what she had learned she would go to hell for stealing and playing with green beans, she didnt think it right. Then after Vatican II suddently Limbo was no longer in fashon, nor abstaining from meat during Friedays which before then was considered a mortal sin if broken and cast into hell or limbo. She couldnt understand why if what she had learned was now irrelvant, what happened to those souls who had died believing in the mortal sins and issues that were relvant to them . She never got a satisfactory answer from the priest so she began to question things.

I guess this was sort of transmitted to me growing up. When I was in Church I saw it as a chore, I mean I never paid attention to the sermons, same thing, no relvance to me as a kid, it seemed aimed to adults, anyway. and the collection plate always seems, like the main event. CCE class, a kind of church study for kids, never made an impression on me, when my mom once asked my brother and I what I learned apparently what I told her was gossipy, rumor and BS form the female teachers, and nothing to do with the Bible. The last thing that made me relaize the it wasnt really relevant to me, was going to CCE the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, all the teaxher said is we will pray about this and th epeople who died. That was it, no discussion about morality or a deeper meaning to why it happened, or good and evil. No opportunity to teach a moral lesson. Over the years after I stopped going to Church and CCE after that, and heard and saw various things about the Catholic Church, its scandals, its coverups, it kind of lost moral credibility with me, But then looksing at things like Joel Osteen, and other churches, born agains it seeems all about feel good and collect money, and the money thing I as a kid assumed it was about helping the poor, after all that is what they tell you in Church, but as I came to realize its about paying the Church's mortgage note. On the other side of the coin imagine being screamed at by hellfire and brimstone preacher, then paying for the privelge by donations. If there was a relgion that said I teach a lesson, no money, donations or offering required or expected, but will be refused, that would be the place for me. Plus if there was a God why would they standby while there is slaughter, corruption, etc, so there are doubts, but I suppose Iam spirtual and hedge bets, if it was what I was raised as. I suppose with me I have a very dim view of modern American religion. The idea of being a missionary seems a waste of life too, at least from what I have read about it. Even missionaries struggle with faith Iam told. There are so many contradictions in the Bible, how are we to know what is true or what is not, Or the cherry picking people do in the bible. Its very confusing and illogical. Thing like someone dying horribly and the people or priest say God's plan. Wrong thing to say to a grieving person. Pray in public or dont pray in public? Many questions never answered satisfactorily

Lastly, from what Iam told God is an internal expeirence, "the presence of God" I have read is like a tingly, trembly, foot asleep type feeling in your body, when thinking about it. My uncle is a born again, he always asks me have you gone to Church, or Let's say a blessing. It seems more like showing off to me rather than a deep faith. Once as a kid he got me to say a prayer for Jesus to enter my hert, I did it, sincereley, but never felt anything. But apparently he has a real emotional experience when thinking or praying to God. For me, whether in Church or not, praying or medatating or not, I have never, as of yet felt anything there. So until like undenaible proof, something like LEft behind rapture, or God revealing himself to all, (via South Park episiode style) I have yet to really have faith or belief in any relgion, but by force of habit belive some spirtual force is there(like Deism, Unmoved Mover), but havent felt it yet.

I don't believe in God, but I do somewhat believe in a guardian spirit. Sometimes there's incredible coincidences or luck which I would attribute to miracles (after all, the fact I survived my premature birth when the doctors said I wasn't going to make it has to count for something). But I don't see the miracles as a sign from God, and I forget about them a few seconds later. It's just sort of a "thank my lucky stars" thing, I have to thank something when things turn out my way. Most likely that belief formed because my mother's a big fan of the psychic Sylvia Browne, and the stuff Sylvia was talking about seemed possible (or it was her nonchalant "yeah that's what's really going on" attitude). So I do believe in spirits and ghosts (in as much that I won't sleep in an old creaky house at night or stand at some site where a bunch of people died), but in the majority of cases I won't be thinking about it.

I'm too apathetic about religion to care whether I'm right or wrong, but in no way would I go around telling other people how it is. Let other people believe what they want. True that I can get angry easily at religion, but that's only when I think it's being used as a weapon. That doesn't make me think bad of the religion, it makes me think bad of the people using it that way. I don't think any religion was ever (or should be) intended to condemn other people. Yes, it's hard to balance being good to everyone when there's some spectacular cases of insensitivity and ignorance, but again, religion should not decide matters of what happens to someone. Leave that to a society and laws, hoping that they're sane.

I like your point about apathetic agnostics. The idea that God's existence is unimportant or not something worth thinking about is absurd and foolish. Our understanding of reality itself changes dramatically depending on the existence or nonexistence of God. God has implications in all areas of human life.

It should be noted here that the proper definition of "agnosticism" in philosophy is the position that the existence of God is something that is unknowable, NOT the position that one does not know whether God exists. The term is so commonly misused that it has all but lost its original meaning. So since the term is so frequently used for the position of being uncertain about God's existence, that understanding has become a part of the definition.

The use of the term "agnosticism" in this sense is also somewhat of a misnomer. I think any intellectually humble believer/theist will readily admit that they don't know God exists with absolute certainty. Likewise any intellectually humble atheist would also admit that they do not know with certainty that God does not exist. Wisdom always brings doubt along with it. So technically both positions could be agnostic in the way the term is being used here.

Now, if someone espouses the traditional and proper meaning of "agnosticism" in that the existence of God cannot be known, I would be critical of that position since it ignores extant evidence for God's existence. It also seems like intellectual laziness and a cop-out. Such a position is also inherently nonsensical since God, as defined by theistic philosophy, must be a being that is knowable to human beings. The theistic God is perfectly loving and good. Thus God's nature entails his willful interaction with the created beings whom he loves and cares about which further means that God is knowable, provided that he exists. In other words, to say that the existence of God (or at least the theistic concept of God) is unknowable, even if he exists, is logically invalid. Either God does not exist, or God exists and is knowable. It is not possible for God to exist and not be knowable on some level.

Athiests are against the idea of a god most times, not just a 'lack of belief', but a 'belief there is not one'.

I do not believe in god with a capital G, or Alah, or any specific prophet or diety, but the fact that around the world for several centuries, there have been reoccuring themes of right and wrong, and belief in some higher power, I leave my belief open to the fact there might be something.

That higher power may be apathetic however, instead of caring or vengeful.. perhaps it really doesn't care about us, but it might still exist. Or perhaps a group of them.

So I am an Agnostic, out of the posibility of something, and a willingness to believe if something were to show me some proof of one.

Athiests are against the idea of a god most times, not just a 'lack of belief', but a 'belief there is not one'.

Incorrect, (a)theism is a binary question: You either believe in the existence of one or more gods or you do not.

Being open to start believing in the existence of a god does not make you any less of an atheist, it just means you have one of the required traits for intellectual honesty.


Now, many atheists will say that {specific description of a god} definitely does not exist, (for various gods), because those particular gods are either self-disproving or are disproved by actual evidence. This is not the same as claiming to have disproved all possible gods, (there are many potential non-interventionist gods which could neither be detected nor disproved).

Haha you pretty much nailed it man. Made me go and listen to these vids again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQOxvTKKpOg which sums the whole thing up perfectly. Just ignore the pictures and listen to the audio. Then again I take it you may have already heard this. :)

Sorry, if someone else said this, but the odds are low:
People can't be just 'agnostic'. You can be an agnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, an agnostic deist, an agnostic spiritualist, or whatever.

Essentially, the word just means 'not knowing'.
An agnostic atheist is a 'non-knowing, non-religious' person. Some of the people above were agnostic deists, who believed there was a god (or more gods) but had no proof.

You can take that as a baseline, and then apply all the other crazy concepts humans can make up. What does it mean to 'know' something? What does it mean to 'not' know something in that way? Right? Humans, English, and all that kind of stuff. Everything means different things to different people.

If I'm playing with words, I could call myself an antideist pseudotheist. I'm pretty sure gods don't exist, but I practice a religion (and go to church) for my own reasons (namely, to keep my parents happy).

Huh, you know what? A-theism has nothing to do with gods. People who expressely believe that God doesn't exist is an antideist. People who are against organized religion (smart!) would be antitheists. People who just don't have a religion, even if they're spiritual or even if they believe specifically in the judeo-christian god, would be atheists.



tl;dr THE MOMENT A WORD REACHES POPULAR CULTURE IT BECOMES A BUZZWORD AND MEANS WHATEVER THE FUCK THE PEOPLE USING IT WANT IT TO MEAN. Basically.

There are two simple reasons why many atheists refuse to call themselves that and instead call themselves agnostic:

First, (and this is especially true in the US), there is a stigma in calling yourself an atheist. In some areas calling yourself an atheist can even be dangerous,

Second is the classic misunderstanding that assumes that being atheist means you feel absolute certainty. It confuses the position of "I believe there is no god," for the more accurate one of "I do not believe there is a god."[1] Logically you must either be a theist or an atheist, with the only question being the inherently yes/no one of "do you actually believe one or more gods exist?"


[1] The difference between the two is one of active v. passive disbelief. e.g. I actively disbelieve that there is a Bengal tiger laying on my desk but only passively disbelieve that there is a TTC bus stopped in front of the Guild Inn as I type this.

I think I was born an atheist, and stayed that way, despite both my parents being religious. I grew up at a time when "atheist" and "communist" were the two worst things you could call somebody (how things come full circle.) so there was a strong cultural imperative to swear belief in fantastical things. I just never could. I never had any belief in the mystical nature of the unobserved. Simply because I did not know how something came about did not automatically give it any supernatural basis. So I never "believed" in the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I would not say that I do not believe in A god as much as I believe that the entire concept of gods as supernatural entities lies outside the possibilities of space and time. If such creatures of vast powers exist, then they exist within the province of space/time and the natural universe. If we do not understand how they fit into our reality, we just have some more to learn about the nature of reality. Suggesting that any being exists outside the laws of the universe is a meaningless construction of English. By definition, it's an impossibility. Occult, yes (in the sense of "hidden,") supernatural, no.

That leads to the definition of "god" which is almost as meaningless, because it has been given so many meanings. Until one defines what "god" means, there is no way to say whether or not one even believes in its existence, never MIND whether or not it is possible for it to exist. As far as specific examples go, none of the ones that humans have imagined are even remotely plausible and almost are are self-contradictory. The more we learn about the nature of time and space, the less plausible they become. "Agnostic" in the sense of not believing that it is possible to know whether gods exist is dependent on how one defines "gods." Without a functional definition, there is no way of knowing if "agnostic" is a viable position--one has to be agnostic about being agnostic. If a workable definition for "gods" is established with the attributes of any of the proposed gods of historical writing, then those descriptions preclude their existence in comprehensible space/time. One is no longer "agnostic" about "agnostic" -- it becomes knowable: gods do not exist, as "existence" is defined. The definitions of "gods" and the definitions of "existence" are mutually exclusive. Gods only fit in the spaces currently occupied by ignorance. Those spaces get smaller all the time, but even in ignorance, it does not require faith to make positive assertions about what does NOT occupy those spaces.