Saying I don’t know is the Most compatible with science regarding the beginning of the universe. Saying you are agnostic about the universe starting with a god of some kind is (for the hundredth time) not scientific, its idiotic. It’s idiotic because there is no evidence for the claim. You are accepting nonsense as a possible truth because we can’t know. This opens the door to being agnostic about every single claim made with no evidence behind it. (its almost like I have made this point before somewhere)
Burden of proof. It falls squarely on the shoulders of Christians and they have failed to meet even the lightest measure of evidence. (Hindus, Muslims, Greek, Roman, Norse also fail) This notion that we must reserve judgment its a serious fallacy in thinking. Yes technically it is possible that the bible is at some level a true account of a supernatural douchenozzle who likes telling everyone how much he loves them but will send them to eternal torment if they don’t love him back…but the odds of that are exactly the same for every store ever told, and every book ever written that makes any claim along those lines. again with the Harry Potter reference. Spiderman, Raven, Flying Spaghetti Monster, are all just as likely to be true as the Bible is. The odds you are talking about are beyond astronomical.
Doctors everywhere in the last 200 years and through tremendous medical discoveries have made flaws under their most closely watched patients. Dying is harder than it may seem, And The Resurrection of Christ could very well, Especially with the sum pf time it consumed, have just been enough time for this high spirited man to recover from the injuries they laid to him. His heartbeat could have faded really shallow as he was indeed, barely alive. there is scientific proof that explains much of what may have been interpreted from the earth and then from the bible- like a type of bacteria that turns the oceans red once a season. And Drugs that can make the people of that time see all they had. The water into wine could be everything from them serving the first barrel of water, and then switching the other two out. excellently planned magician tricks or possibly just the works of a man who believes his own mystics- for every man is a legion in his own mind.The bible has been edited by many major kings who came into power to control the crowd as they wanted to. they took out what they felt to, and kept the rest- and example, the King James Bible.
You’re using common definitions for atheism and agnosticism, but ones that aren’t very good for serious discussion.
An atheist is one who does not believe in god(s). Not one who believes the opposite. Presumably that’s what you mean by “true hardcore”, but next time leave out “true” since a true atheist simply doesn’t believe.
The common definition of agnostic is not taking a side, and your comment applies, but as it turns out there are a number of different attitudes that this term is used for (for example, see wiki), and your point only applies to a minority of them.
So, we have to be careful what we say about atheists and agnostics. It’s usually an overgeneralization. Your statements are true for some definitions of those words.
The definition of most atheists on this board is “insufficient evidence, therefore I assume the null hypothesis” is perfectly consistent with science. The most common definition of agnostic here is the original: one who believes that the existence of god is unknowable, which is a philosophical stance that rejects the possibility of spiritual or mystical knowledge. It’s epistemological, implying that science can’t be used to prove or disprove the existence of a creator.
I disagree with your claim of idiocy. There’s another possibility: humility, the acceptance that we could be wrong about anything.
I agree there’s no good evidence. If I had to guess, I’d say there was no god (as in “personal creator”). I interpret that as “there is no evidence for god”, not “god does not exist, and anyone who things god does exist is an idiot.”
I accept the null hypothesis, but I’m not at all certain that it’s correct. I’ve been dead wrong on much simpler questions.
I consider the probability that there is a god like the one depicted in any popular religious text to be roughly zero. I believe that those are myths, and I have reasons to feel that way: the number of different contradictory ones, for example. But that isn’t sufficient to say that there was no personal creator to our universe. I admit that the latter possibility raises a lot more questions than it answers. Does it count if that creator existed in a universe that wasn’t created by a personal creator, but did create our universe?
Who says we must reserve judgment?
This is the old “tooth fairy” argument: we have zero evidence that the tooth fairy exists, just as we have for god, so we should decide the same way for both cases. This is incorrect simply because the tooth fairy is an acknowledge fiction, as are Harry Potter et. al. We KNOW they’re fictions, because the authors admit they made the stuff up, just as every parent who hides a tooth under a pillow knows he or she is perpetrating a fiction.
You can feel confident that all religions are bunk. I don’t dispute that. I tend to agree. But I don’t equate confidence with knowledge or certainty. I’m far more certain about mathematical tautologies than I am about the origin of reality, and even then, I sometimes get mathematical tautologies wrong.
When I read the Bible or other religious texts, I have a hard time believing that anyone with a brain can believe this tripe. Yup, that’s my gut reaction, and I can back it up with a lot of good rhetoric.
However, I know a lot of people who do believe it, who are intelligent, knowledgeable, erudite, thoughtful, and people who can correct a lot of my own reasoning; people I can learn a lot from. People who can run circles around me in any subject, are way over my IQ level, who’ve read more, studied harder, and think more clearly (in areas other than religion, to my mind).
So obviously, my hypothesis (only idiots could believe this crap) is incorrect. I confess I don’t quite understand why it’s wrong, but it’s clearly wrong.
My apologies if someone already posted this, but one time I saw a Jesuit astronomer on TV. He said something along the lines of, “God created the universe, so by studying the universe we learn more about God.”
I look at it as a trite saying with no depth. Just once I’d like an interviewer follow up with, “Please tell us exactly what we learned about God when (fill in astronomical event) was discovered by scientists recently.”
Every claim for agnosticism is a call for the reservation of judgment on a ridiculously, vanishingly smidgen of a tiny chance that the claim might possibly be true in the face of a total lack of evidence to back it up or even hint at its possibility.
Soooo what about cases where the author claims it is true? Do you afford the same level of agnosticism towards the Raven as creator myths? Or do you reserve that for christianity exclusively? If a 5 year old tells you he knows how the universe came to be and he is being honest with you does his claim now become one in which you accept the possibility of being truth?
I freely admit the possibility that there is a chance that the universe was started by some intelligent being, I look at those odds as something akin to having a star explode in a super nova, and some thousands of years later the atoms form into a fleet of fully functional 747’s. I don’t take the claim that a supernova led to the formation of the divine fleet of 747’s as truth or even the possibility of truth not because its impossible, but because without evidence to support such a silly claim you have no reason to accept it. The odds against bronze age humans figuring out the beginning of the universe when they weren’t even aware that there were other solar systems/galaxies is immeasurably small. The only reason it gets any respect is because there are billions who buy into their own personal version of this belief.
Oh, but there is always a cliff left behind it, even when the most fundamental of its falsifiable truth claims are knocked down. That’s just how religion works.
Now, it is not for me to say which aspects are fundamental to any given religion, or which bits and pieces are the most central and important. Different religious authorities might, at different times, stress different aspects as fundamental to the faith - and the masses might or might not agree, to varying degrees.
But an overwhelming majority of the world’s Christians would certainly agree that the resurrection is absolutely fundamental to the faith. Even so, were we ever to falsify it (not gonna happen, what with the two thousand years that have passed and all; but for the sake of the discussion, let’s say “time machine full o’ scientists” and leave it at that), I’d imagine that the Christians of the world would simply or not-so-simply retreat into a metaphysical or symbolical interpretation, i.e. either something like “ah but it was Christ’s spirit that arose, not his body!”, or else “OK, it didn’t actually happen - but the story means something!”
And so, the faith would adapt, abide and survive, in one form or another.
I certainly hope that the ressurection isn’t all that important, cause its as false as can be. Note that there are other newer versions than that one that also leave out the resurrection as well. It is a much newer fairy tale than the bible itself.
Fair enough, most of what you’ve said here is what I was trying to point out myself only you’ve done a much better job of it; thank you for that. True is indeed not the word I should be using for what I’ve termed hardcore atheists, but most of the people I know who openly call themselves atheist in person in my life are what we’re calling hardcore - they take the non-existence of God in any form as an act of faith.
Part of the problem, I think, is that there’s a range of perspectives on atheism agnosticism and deism and on the strength of the level of conviction among them. If a person says “I’m pretty sure there’s no omniscient conscious God, and I’m mostly sure but not totally that there’s no creator being of any type, and so I’ll work on that premise unless something shows up to disprove this hypothesis” they’re quite scientific in their analysis, (in the sense of being compatible with science) but depending on the individual, many people would claim that person as Agnostic, others as Atheist, and some as just indecisive.
If the same person says “I’ve decided I think it’s 51% likely that there’s some kind of creator being and 49% likely that there is no such” they can be called a Deist. But until someone says I’m 100% sure of X - X being anything - they’re still able to be compatible with science.
And thank you for the comment on idiocy versus humility. I find it much more foolish to say one is 100% sure of anything, whether it be existence or non-existence of a God, than it is to say I’m reserving judgement. The ancient greek proposal of the shadows on the wall makes the solid point that we can’t even tell we’re not in the real world when we’re dreaming. All our conclusions are based on our senses and the information they receive, and to decide that anyone who believes something different than you do is an idiot is the height of arrogance and foolish in and of itself. I think, therefore I am. Anything else is conjecture.
Huh. As I see it, the only thing different from this proposal and what actually happened is that it took billions, not thousands of years for a fleet of fully functional 747s to come into being. Sure, there were independent life forms that helped shape that, but those life forms were part of that whole forming of atoms that happened as part of that whole process. I’d say science has it pretty down that it’s totally accurate to say that the big bang led to the existence of a fleet of 747s.
The only problem with the agnostic idea is when you give equal weight to the evidence and lack of evidence. If you find 99 pieces of evidence that prove one side of a theory, and 1 piece that proves the other, and you say I’m reserving judgement and I still think it’s JUST as likely that one or the other is in play, you’re not being very rational. It’s like the difference between “Beyond a reasonable doubt” and “preponderance of the evidence” in US legal terms.
If I’m forced to say, based on a preponderance of evidence, do I think it’s more likely or not that a creator being exists that generated the universe as a conscious choice, I really struggle with it. I don’t have good evidence either way, just a lack of evidence for either. I DEFINITELY have a reasonable doubt in both directions, so I’m going to decide for the defense, whichever that might be. IF the question is whether the Christian God mythology is mostly true with a omniscient all powerful God who sent his son to Earth to die on a cross to symbolize original sin… I’m past reasonable doubt. So I’ll call myself a Deist for the moment. But if more evidence shows up for any other perspective, I’ll consider it.
Agreement… Many years ago, some of the brightest, smartest, cleverest, and wittiest people I’ve ever known (and I know most of them still, and that opinion hasn’t changed) invited me to a prayer circle where they all relived past lives.
It was a load of tripe. They all remembered being princes and nobles – not a dirt farmer in the place. They remembered having all met together before – despite describing historical epochs centuries apart.
It was the first time in my life that “obvious” had met “obvious” in a head-on train crash. Obviously intelligent people…believing obvious horse-shit. It floored me. I was literally stunned, and didn’t recover my bearings for about a weak. I absolutely could not figure it out.
Belief is just belief. It doesn’t (always) obey rules of logic.
No, it’s an attempt to give some gravitas to a derivative of what the content was. Namely, your belief that Yaweh is the only god there is and that he created everything.
Changing “God created everything” to “God is the fundamental ground for existence” is just trying to make it sound more profound, more scientific.
Alas, the choice of words makes it giberish. Existence is not a structure. let alone built on something fundamental.
That’s strange. I’ve never met an atheist IRL or on the web that thinks it takes faith to not have belief in the existence of a god. If you meant believing that a God doesn’t exist takes faith, that’s hardly something I’d expect coming from the mouth of a “hardcore” atheist.
I’ve never seen a definition of deist that has anything to do with how much conviction one has.
No, it’s not “conjecture.” If you think all of your statements except for “I think, therefore I am” are conjecture, why bother?
I disagree. If someone says “I’m an agnostic” that doesn’t mean it’s a call for anything. (Furthermore, if I said I’m an agnostic, I’d mean that spiritual or mystical assertions are unknowable: you can’t prove them true or false. Since that’s the original and most specific meaning of the term.)
I’d be skeptical.
Good point.
Unfortunately, it seems to be pretty common. I also have trouble with the idea of people actually worshipping a deity that would consign anyone to eternal torment for a finite life of sin. Hopefully, nobody with a math background would! (yeah right)
I agree. Oddly enough, it seems to me more like an emotion in some ways. I remember desperately wanting to believe, but I could no more make myself believe than I could will myself to fall in love with someone.
