I completely agree with that too. I remember the moment it struck me. I was still in HS at the time I was in the band at our town’s Veteran’s Day Parade, after which there are a few speeches and a prayer led by some preacher of some sort. Anyway, we were all standing there in our ranks and files and we had our heads bowed (I do it out of respect for everyone else…and it would reflect poorly on the band if I didn’t, I think as well) and the preacher was leading the assembled people in a prayer and I almost laughed when I thought how ridiculous that scene would have been to someone who was unfamiliar with the concept of god and prayer.
I mean, it’s one step short of schizophrenia, almost…
That doesn’t mean that I’ll never know, or that humanity will never know. We might, we might not. We might figure it out tomorrow, or it might be 15,000 years from now.
But, whatever the case, I do not feel the need to credit what is in all likelyhood a natural event to be an action of any supernatural being. Including the middle-eastern deity named “Yahweh.”
It was actually St. Thomas Aquinas, not St. Anselm or Descartes; the usual rebuttal for this “proof” is that if the greatest possible being must exist because existing is better (and thus part of greatness) than not existing, then the greatest possible doughnut, or island, or pair of breasts, or whatever, must also exist- and they don’t.
“If I knew where the universe came from I wouldn’t be talking to you chumps…”
Ok maybe you shouldn’t put it in such an asshole way. But if it were me I’d just tell’em that I don’t HAVE all the answers nor do I feel the need to explain to myself or anybody the aswers to all lifes mysteries…
Coincidentally I started to think about the origin of the universe and existence last night as I was drifting off to sleep listening to the radio, and they were talking about Hubble having discovered a 13 billion-year-old proto galaxy, and eventually they were hoping to see something from just after the big bang, and it gave me a complete “wow I’ve just taken acid for the first time” style freakout and woke me back up again, feeling very strange and perplexed. Does that answer your question?
To me, agnosticism seems to be little more than wishy-washy athiesm, almost as if they’re trying to appease the religious majority by saying “it’s not that I believe god doesn’t exist…”
Agnosticism says that god may exist, and then sits back and tries to be pulled either way. This approach is obviously ridiculous if applied to other theses.
For instance:
Proposition: Last night, the President’s thoughts were taken over by a mysterious Brain Slug. The slug lives inside his head, but cannot be detected by our technology.
To this, I would say - I don’t believe that. Come back when you can show me some proof. Just like I do not believe in the existence of god unless it is proven.
To this, I can imagine an agnostic would have to say - Well, I’m not sure if the Brain Slug exists or not. If you can prove that it does, I’ll believe you, but, equally, I won’t believe that it doesn’t until I see proof.
I don’t see the point in a philosophy that assumes, for everyday purposes, that the President’s thoughts could possibly be controlled by a Brain Slug.
Ooh. I’ve got a rebuttal to this in my paper. Question: can God imagine a being greater than God? If so, he’s bounded by something (namely, logic) and can’t be the greatest thingie. If so, than there’s something greater than God that can be imagined. Can that imagine something greater than itself? Repeat ad infinitum.
Actually, agnosticism (both weak and strong) are sub-branches of atheism. Weak atheism is simply the concession that one does not know if God exists or not, and strong atheism posits that it is impossible for anyone to meaningfully know if God exists or not. Both imply a lack of belief in God.
Err… I always thought strong Atheism was “There is no god”. Not a “lack of belief in” god, but rather a “belief in lack of” god.
Anyway, what should I call myself now, if “strong atheism” is such a wishy-washy notion?
Well, I got Anselm and Ambrose confused–my bad. And given that St. Anselm died in 1109, more than a hundred years before St. Thomas Aquinas’s birth in 1225, Anselm gets priority of discovery. Certainly the online sources I checked
I was raised in a non-religious family, so I really didn’t think about the “god” question much. It always seemed a little silly to me. I remember in elementary school ommitting the “god” line from the pledge of allegiance, and I remember in high school thinking “There’s no more reason to think there’s a god than to think that we’re all controlled by a giant space squid made of green jello.” But as far as I can tell I’ve been an atheist all my life, so I don’t really have a moment-of-realization story.
The argument of “You don’t know where the universe came from, thus it must be created by god” is a fallacious argument. It’s pretty much saying “We don’t know the answer to this question, therefore I’ve made up an answer, and you must accept it as correct.” That’s fine for primitive cultures, but for a member of a modern society with access to science, it’s just sad.
As far as agnosticism, I used to be on the fence whether I was agnostic, (heh) but I’ve since decided to label myself a strong (but not inflexible) atheist. I’ve been told by some that if I ever saw the proof of god/magic/mysticism it’d blow my mind, but I doubt that. All my life I’ve looked at what the facts are and based my understanding of the world on those facts, so if actual proof appeared, that’d be incoporated into my worldview quickly and easily.
My thoughts and reasoning have already have pretty much been covered by other posters, but I wanted to add that just because I don’t happen to know how the universe came about doesn’t compel me to ascribe our origins to a god of any kind. I think there are questions whose answers are not knowable (at this time, anyway) but it doesn’t distress me enough to make me run off to church.
I Like that, robertliguori. And I guess you’d have to then posit that anything god imagines is far greater than anything we can imagine, which would mean all those things are greater than god. Or something.
I don’t know that your answer is logical. But I would say their question doesn’t help their case anyway, because god doesn’t answer it. It just shifts the issue to “Where did god come from?” That requires at least as much explaining.
God was created by man, to explain the unexplainable. Worked fine up until the 1700s or so, then science started explaining things more rationally.
IMHO, the best evidence that there is no God is that there are so many different religions, all claiming that their god (or gods, as the case may be) is the One True God(s). They can’t all be right.
That reminds me of something someone said in my 11th grade chem class. He was talking to the teacher and he said “You know what’s funny about watching church-league sports? You know that both teams prayed to god to win…”
Where did the Universe come from? I have no idea. Where did God come from? God always existed and the was nothing before that. OK, the Universe always existed and there was nothing before that.
I’ve always been an atheist and I’ve thought about the existence of a Diety quite a bit. It never ceases to astound me how many people believe in God, particularly how many very intelligent people.
i’m not sure where i heard this trickle of logic -
God is asked to make a stone that even he can’t pick up.
As God can do anything, he can certainly do this, and so he does.
He is then asked to pick up the stone. As God can do anything he can certainly do this also…
But back to the OP. So far, so good with the atheist or not category i think.
“There is no God” = “I do not believe in God” = Atheist.
“There’s a possibility God exists, and there’s a possibility he doesn’t” = Agnostic.
“I’m an atheist who is certainly not inflexible [on the issue of God]” = Agnostic.
As to the universe, we know that it does exist, as far as leaving existentialism out of all this - Christ, don’t want to go there! It’s there because it can’t not be there… now wouldn’t that argue on the side of there being a God? He’s there because he can’t not be there. It’s only logical. Where did the universe come from? God. Who created God? God. Does infinity exist? Yes… erm, because God says so. Ah, fuck it. I just really hope I’m not the born again Jesee Chrisee because if I am I’m a sure big disappointment so far.
