The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not of the Stuff - the Man!
But, in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set guage they make us, -
For no laid course prepare -
And presently o’ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
To merciless to bear.
Your argument might make sense (perfect sense, best as I can tell) if you’re describing the agnostic.
Are you?
Because you’ve done a fine job of describing why the agnosticdoesn’t believe in God.
You didn’t address the atheist, who **does believe ** that no God exists.
If scientific proof is to be the only arbiter, it is only the agnostic that is in the unassailable position.
The moment the agnostic has taken the affirmative position that God doesn’t exist, he has not only left science and agnosticism-----which by necessity is silent on the matter------ he is proffering his own subjective beliefs.
So call a spade a spade. My interest is in the blindness that results from it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read things like, “I can factually prove…” from people who can do nothing of the sort. (and over issues that no one could factually prove!)
That moral certainty; that unswerving trust in one’s convictions and subjective beliefs in the absence of [scientific] proof is the hallmark of faith.
I asked because it seems to me that if a person who read the whole bible----800,000 words or so depending on the translation-----it would be more evident in your posts in this thread.
Many self-professed atheists do not positively believe that no God exists, they consider atheism to be a-theism, that is, lack of theism, rather than athe-ism, that is, the -ism that there is no theistic god.
As an agnostic, I used to not agree with that opinion, but who are you or I tell tell them they don’t really have the opinions they say they have? It would be as accurate as saying prosperity theologians and warmongers are not True Christians.
You are confusing belief with knowledge. I believe that no god exists, given the way the universe looks god-free and the fact that human religions look like they were invented by humans, with holy books containing only the knowledge available to people at the time (or wrong guesses.) That doesn’t require scientific proof, and few atheists in my experience would claim they know no god exists. The real god might be very evident on some other planet, for all we know.
I may believe Chakari will win race 3, and even put money on her, but that doesn’t mean I know it. My belief in both these cases is provisional. If you’ve got some reason for me to change my opinion, you are welcome to post it, but I’ve been asking this for 35 years on computer message boards, and haven’t seen anything except reasons to be more convinced my belief is correct.
BTW, I’ve read the entire Bible also, cover to cover. Every atheist should. Boring for the most part, but I did enjoy the naughty bits.
Again you spout rubbish. Atheism is not believing that god exists. It is the default state for humanity. Until evidence is presented the Atheist has no reason to believe in god.
Under your framework is someone who doesn’t believe in Santa a Santatheist? Is it a statement of belief to not believe in Vampires? Is it a statement of dogmatic adherence to not believe in dragons?
That’s foolish. I cannot say objectively that there is no god. I can certainly say I don’t believe in a god, since there is zero evidence for him. I can tell you god doesn’t exist because he defies our known laws and there is no evidence justifying believing in something so stupid. Just as I can certainly say that zombies don’t exist.
To suggest that it requires faith in the religious sense is pure rubbish. Religion requires blindly believing something affirmative with no evidence for it. Atheism requires skeptically examining the evidence (of which there is none) for god and finding it to be safe to say that there is no god.
To assume that Theism and Atheism are direct and equal opposites is intellectually lazy.
Theism = God exists. I don’t need proof, I know.
Atheism = There is no evidence for God. I don’t believe he exists. So if you ask me, I’ll say there is no god.
Santatheism = There is no Santa Claus.
An agnosticis NOT someone who is *uncertain *about God’s existence. An agnostic is someone who is *certain *that the question of God’s existence is unanswerable. It’s an epistomological stance, not an ontological one.
If you don’t believe in God, you’re an atheist, full stop. This is true even if you’re not absolutely certain, or if you remain open to reassessing your belief in the light of future evidence.
I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God. Now, I freely admit that I can’t PROVE that God doesn’t exist. However I can’t PROVE lots of things. For example, I can’t PROVE that I’m not merely a brain in a jar experiencing an elaborate simulation either. However, since I don’t have any evidence that I’m a brain in a jar, I live my life as though reality is real and not a simulation. But I do remain open to reassessing my position if sufficient evidence appeared.
If you like you can define that as “faith”, but that seem like a silly thing to do. If you define “faith” in those terms, then there are an infinite number of different bizarre beliefs that you and I disbelieve every day through “faith”. It seems more useful to reserve “faith” for cases when someone holds a positive belief in something for which they have no evidence.
I find more and more that in order to be a believer you must always place your god in a win-win scenario. No matter what the outcome of a scenario is god did the right thing. Every good outcome is met with “Praise the Lord” and “he answers our prayers” while every tragedy and undesired outcome is met with “he works in mysterious ways” or “it was for a reason and some other good will come out of it”.
In a believers mind god can never lose nor is he ever wrong. He is ultimately responsible for every outcome and every outcome is the right one and he should be praised for it.
To be a believer you have to be an apologist. Always making excuses for your god when tragedy strikes.
I personally can’t bring myself to blame or give credit to a magical force who seems to act at random while he leaves his followers to make up explanations for him.
This is patently untrue, and is something we have covered on these forums many a time.
There are 4 distinct types of agnosticism/atheism:
Soft Agnostic - Doesn’t know if god exists, doesn’t know if we can even know whether god exists.
Hard Agnostic - Doesn’t know if god exists, believes that noone can never know whether god exists.
Soft Atheist - Acknowledges the possibility that a god exists, but that all current evidence points to the fact that god does not exist. aka: The lack of belief in god.
Hard Atheist - All the available evidence indicates without a doubt that God does not exist. aka: The belief in no god.
If you don’t believe in God (regardless of your level of certainty), you’re an atheist.
If you don’t believe the question is answerable (regardless of your level of certainty), you’re an agnostic.
The former is a belief about existence – ontology.
The latter is a belief about knowledge – epistemology.
(Apologies if my emphasis on “certain” in my previous post made it seem as though I was arguing that all agnostics are “hard agnostics”. I was merely trying to point out that the agnostic position involves conviction about the possibility of knowledge of a thing, rather than conviction about the existence of a thing.)
A soft atheist simply lacks belief in the existence of any god. There is no requirement to say anything about the possibility of god existing. The two parts of your sentence are not equivalent.
A hard atheist actively believes that no god exists. There is no “without a doubt” implied, since that implies knowledge which is not what either hard or soft atheism is about. Since it is a statement of belief, evidence, such as it is, may or may not justify a belief, but someone is equally a hard atheist even if he has never considered the evidence.