No, “maybe” means you are agnostic.
I am an atheist. There is no “maybe.” I am certain beyond any measurable doubt, far beyond “maybe,” as sure as I am of anything, that there is no God. It’s ridiculous.
An agnostic atheist may well say “maybe” but that is a seperate position from that of their atheism.
Agnostic is not a position that exists somewhere in between accepting the existence of a god or not, I don’t even know how that would work when those two positions are a perfect negation of each other. It is a binary state.
Of course once you are in the state of not believing you may take a further position on likelihood or possibility or knowledge and those are far from binary.
To be without a postive belief in an theistic god literally means to be A-theistic. Just like A-moral, A-sexual, A-political.
An atheist does not necessarily make the firm claim that there is defintely not a god. You are stating that you are a hard atheist, a gnostic atheist. You claim to have knowledge that it is not true.
I am an atheist because I have no belief in a god, That is the starting point.
I also happen to be an agnostic as I think there is no way of knowing that a god doesn’t or can’t exist and I make no claim to that effect. So I in fact leave open the possibility.
So I’m a “maybe” but yet I do not accept the existence of god. Am I not both an Atheist and an Agnostic?
It amuses me to think that having decided to be an atheist, my Witness relatives and friends would be convinced that when I die, my death will bring me everlasting nothingness, and indeed, they would be exactly right.
Of course, everlasting life in a paradise Earth is waiting for them. But perhaps, I would be resurrected? I could learn the error of my ways, humble myself before Jehovah God, and rejoin them forever in this earthly paradise where everyone who has ever died has a second chance for a life of unending perfection?
Does any Witness ever think what this scenario of the resurrection would even mean? Think about it. Every child, every miscarried pregnancy, every aborted fetus brought back to life? Wouldn’t that be a joyful event for the resurrected parents? Think of the old days, all those dead infants and small children alive again, and their newly alive parents having to start all over with maybe a half a dozen kids or more? Praise Jah you people!
And all those carnivorous predators suddenly transformed into herbivores? Imagine the sweeping herds of crippled, sick, and old elk and bison with no predators to cull them. Imagine the vistas of starved animal carcasses rotting uneaten in the sun, as all those herbivores, prey and ex-predator alike, strip the vegetation bare in their miserable quest for a dwindling green leafy food supply.
Whenever I would bring up these subjects to my mother, her only response was that god would take care of all that.
It must be nice to be able not to think so hard.
No, I think he understood the comment just fine. Again, I’ve always found that Christians’ broad generalizations about atheists are superficial, based on confirmation bias, and usually wrong.
Velocity may have something, though, as to a lot of it possibly just being the region you’re from.
But in general, armchair Christians telling Atheists their notions on how we swing is usually not based in any sort of real-world reality.
Everlasting nothingness sounds good to me. Even when I’m not depressed, I’m so damn tired. I can’t help but look forward to an eternal slumber.
Just the opposite for me. The notion that this life is all we get has made my life immeasurably better.
There’s no heavenly scorecard; there’s no spiritual points system. I couldn’t possibly bear walking around with a weight like that on me.
I do my best to treat others with kindness, but I hold myself to my own standards in that regard - never anybody else’s and certainly not those of some old dusty book.
And I couldn’t care less about what anyone else may consider a “sin.” As long as I’m not hurting anyone, I’m not worried, because there are no consequences. It’s very freeing.
I was always told that animals don’t have souls, so they don’t go to heaven or hell, or resurrected, or anything like that.
Do JW’s believe they do?
Even if you are in heaven, everlasting life ain’t so hot. Imagine a Christian in Rome at about 200 CE. They get to look down and see their beloved city overrun and looted. They get to see their descendants slaughtered or worse.
Perhaps they are all happy happy joy joy, and don’t care about the pain of their descendants. Then they aren’t the same as their living selves. Maybe god censors earth from them. Not so great either.
We might be facing even worse futures. Give me eternal sleep, thanks.
No, they don’t. The animals in paradise would die as per usual, that’s why I used the word “carcasses”. But the Witnesses do believe that the lion will eat grass like the lamb, so animal predation will stop in the new world. In fact, a favorite illustration in Witness literature is a cute little girl shown feeding a wild lion a handful of hay. One of the biggest selling points of the faith is the notion that in the new world, people can keep lions and tigers as housecats. Somehow, Adam’s fall from grace not only brought sin upon his descendants, but also caused predator animals to become meat eaters. Not sure how that happened, but it did, according to their worldview.
I haven’t ever really believed in any sort of deity, but it really came to a head when my son died two years ago. At that point I pretty much lost it and called out any potential god as a “motherfucker”. It’s all such a huge fucking scam.
Very interesting @Two_Many_Cats2.
Thank you for insights and explanations. I appreciate it.
I’m an agnathist. I’m not sure if I believe in having an upper jaw which protrudes beyond the plane of the face.
The people you describe in the first paragraph are the kind I described in my earlier post about “big A atheists”, who in many cases will not hesitate to insult believers of any stripe, and then often wonder why people disdain them. It’s not your religious (non) beliefs, folks, it’s your personality.
Some people also describe themselves as “none”, meaning they just don’t have any specific religious beliefs. They may also believe in a nonspecific higher power that may or may not be God. I have seen the word “non-theist” elsewhere, so you didn’t make it up.
Chefguy, that kind of thing is not unusual at all; people who are bereaved will often renounce their faith if they had any, or on the other end of the spectrum, become devoutly or even fanatically religious or spiritual.
Over my sixty-some years I’ve gradually shifted from “atheism” toward “Atheism”. For most of my life I just ignored religion and the religious. But the older I get, the more it irks me that god is mentioned on my money, that my town erected a manger scene, or that people try to have religious nonsense be part of the school curriculum.
Thoughts and prayers.
I don’t care about the money or the mangers. What I resent is people acting like it’s their right to shove their beliefs in my face. Hey, believe what you want; just leave the rest of us the fuck out of it. And then there are the multitudes of religious scam artists, pedophiles and sexual predators who use religion as a front for their depravity. Just recently, a local preacher who has been doing TV ads and is the head of the local NAACP was accused of assaulting a number of women. Doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Exactly. I grew up in a very conservative Mormon family, knowing only other Mormons, in the insular world of Utah Mormons with it being more than a religion. It was a complete way of life, the all encompassing set of believes, social customs, foundation of all the unwritten rules for society and family, and the base for all ties.
I left Mormonism in my 20s, but there was a lot of unfinished business and it wasn’t until around 2005, that I stumbled onto some ex-Mormon forums and started to find out how many outright lies and fabrications there were, as well as the impossibilities of it.
The ex-Mormon forums were really helpful for a while because other people could understand the confusion and anger. While I was growing up, it was my core identity, and then to find that it was all based on stories made up by Joseph Smith was shocking, even though I had intellectually left the church years before.
I also listen to a number of ex-Mormon podcasts, and most of them would peter out after a few years as the podcaster would get past the anger or bewilderment. Likewise, the ex-Mormon forums have a regular turnover as people generally move past that phase.
Expressing the anger is important, which is why posting on forums for former members is better than boring your friends or family.
Many ex-Mormons wind up as atheists. If you have believed in a God with a capital “G”, it’s hard to switch to another brand and the process of deconstruction leads most former members to deconstruct any new religion they try. There are some who join UU because of its openness, but many just stop believing in anything.
I started off agnostic, which for me just meant that I was still worried what other people thought about me. I just don’t see how there would be some sort of god or gods who are meaningful in people’s lives so sometime ago I also decided the best label is atheist.
I’m Xian, and I agree with you.
I have seen this happen a lot through all my years. It is hard to shut off the questioning once it gets started.
Wait. Are you saying that as a Mormon, you were denied knowing the basic facts about your own religion? If true, that blows my mind.