The beerman was ahead of me in suggesting you investigate Humanism (I urge that the capital “H” matters.)
I find it much more positive to define myself in terms of what I DO believe, rather than in terms of what I reject.
It has been said that Humanism is for people who love life.
—There are a lot of things that she wanted to do in her life that she did not. She seems to be ok with this, because she really feels that she is going on to some afterlife.—
Well, maybe she is: who knows (whether you think she is or not has nothing, strictly, to do with atheism, despite the conventional association). But regardless of whether she is or not, it’s certainly possible that she is also happy with the life she has lived in this life. Whether you get another life after death or not, you still only have one crack at the one you have now.
—My concern is that I don’t seem to be buying that, and yet (because of early imprinting) seem to still behave as if I will still always have time to do the things that I want to do. As if there is some immortal part of myself not bound by time.—
I think this, regardless of whether we are immortal, is a part of being a subject: we can only think about things personally: wherever we look, even into eternity, we are always there, at least as observers. It’s pretty darn hard to divorce oneself from oneself (though Buddhists and Zen masters seem to be able to do it).
—So my concern with this issue, on that level, is not so much that I am worried that I will become an immoral creature. I guess that it has more to do with how I use my time here, if that is all that I am going to get.—
Again: regardless of whether you get any other chances, everything you do now is what you will have done now, for all eternity.
Nietzsche offered an interesting perspective: imagine that this exact life is lived over again. And again. And again. Not a different life: this life. Everything you do, you will do again and again forever, without any change. You will be forced to repeat your same acts forever. So, Nietzsche seems to suggest: you’d better make sure you are in love with your eternity.
Now, obviously there is no reason to think that this is the actual state of affairs, or even what real difference it would make (since you’d think the same things over again, so wouldn’t realize). But it does convey an emotional significance that I think is very telling. If you think of your life, and life’s acts, as your personal inscription upon eternity, then it certainly makes you think twice about how you spend every moment of it, even the seemingly trivial ones. I mean, even for something as trivial as burshing your teeth: why not strive to make it the best and most profound tooth brushing you can?
Another perspective is to ignore the “break” of death that the afterlife seems to more trivial, and just think about moments. Just like it might be true that there is an afterlife, it is almost certainly true that your life will continue after this moment. That is, you face the same situation RIGHT NOW (on a smaller scale) that you would face if you had an afterlife. That is: you have a future: more chances to do things.
But look at how silly the thinking “well, I have an afterlife, so no need to worry about doing all the things I want to do” becomes when applied to future moments. Thinking like that would justify never doing ANYTHING. But of course, we DO want to do things with our lives, regardless of whether we might have time for it later. I mean, what possible reason could you possibly have for NOT doing the things you think need doing right now, or want to do?
I think a lot of people confuse themselves by telling themselves that they want to live their dreams, when really what they want to do is dream (which is perfectly okay too: and healthy to admit it). If they wanted to live their dreams, then they’d get to it right now: the very fact that they aren’t suggests that they really have other things they consider worth doing right now instead, but for some reason don’t want to admit are more important.
Well, he proved that every primitive recursive predicate is representable in any omega-consistent extension of finite axiom arithmetic. Not every propostion is unprovable under Godel’s incompleteness (if it were, then his own proof would be worthless.)
There are also many logics and many mathematics. There is classical logic, intuitionist logic, and several forms of modal logic (including Temporal, Action, and Deontic). There is even a modal logic (Doxastic) for analyzing belief systems that would accomodate your F(Lib) nicely. There are also paraconsistent logics that defy traditional notions of contradiction. And there are several major theories of truth.
—Not every propostion is unprovable under Godel’s incompleteness (if it were, then his own proof would be worthless.)—
Right: but isn’t the point, minus the jargon, that the basic premises of a logic cannot be themselves proven by that logical system? I don’t think I said anything about “every proposition”: just the axioms that a logic requires.
>Sigh<, Is this going to turn in to another dense jargon ridden thread? I would like to respectfully request that the topic take another approach. It is not that what is being written here is not interesting, but it seems to be that language is being used here to cloud, rather than to reveal.
That said, I wanted to touch on some of the points that Apos is raising. Specifically, you seem to have thought these issues through (while I am more on the front end of working through this stuff), and so I would like to pick your brain of a few finer points.
First I guess is that I seem to have been defining Atheist/Agnostic in a different way than you. To note, I was using the terms in the more popularly understood sense of “believes that there is no god” vs.” isn’t sure if there is a god”. If (as I understand you to say) the more correct definition is “does not believe that there is a god vs. does not claim to know that there is a god” than I stand corrected.
But, I would like to bring this conversation to a more personal level. Specifically, I was raised to believe that there is a god. This is a directly traceable source of that part of my life. And I am sure that there are people that have been raised to believe that there is no god. What interests me is those folks that were raised one way, and then concluded something different. Specifically, the thought process involved.
I’m afraid that I can only provide nebulous examples (partly because I’m not well-versed enough in history to be able to pick out examples and partly because I am not an atheist myself); I believe there have been cases where social justice was errr… de-emphasised because of some kind of reasoning that everything would be evened up in the afterlife (“Work and pray, live on hay, you’ll get pie in the sky when you die”) - it seems easy to misapply the Christian message to individual piety and humility as a licence to opress willing, pious, humble individuals.
The point, minus the jargon, is that a consistent system cannot be complete, and a complete system cannot be consistent.
I was raised as a God fearing Freewill Baptist and became an Atheist when I went off to college. My thoughts were that God could not be both good and omnipotent/omniscient since there was ample evidence that evil existed.
Also, on the morality/ethics thing; some quite remarkable social structures have arisen out of nothing much more than organised self-interest (Mutual Societies, for example).
Is this true? (that many theists are agnostics). This doesn’t quite make sense to me.
Most people I know who believe in God recognize that they “know” He exists through their faith alone. Is there any other way to “know” He exists? In other words, on what basis could one be a gnostic?
FWIW, I’ve long struggled with this agnostic/atheist question, and I find this discussion interesting.
If ever there was a Truth stated about human behavior, this is one of them. Well said.
I think I’d broaden that just to say that the evidence I have accepted is not presentable to third parties.
Mangetout- I like that comment.
(but that probably amounts to the same thing)
Yes, but it SOUNDS better!
So let me get this straight - Being an agnostic means you don’t know if God exists or not, you have not made up your mind one way or the other and you are searching for the truth.
Atheism is affirming that there is no God, yet to know that for sure wouldn’t you have to know the universe in it’s entirety and to posess all knowledge before making that kind of statement?
So really an atheist is just as uncertain that there is no God as an agnostic is, but the only difference being since he/she believes there is no God, he/she is not searching for him.
I was raised in the Assembly of God church. Pentacostal biblical literalists. Commonly and disparagingly referred to as “fundies”.
I first became questioning when I began to consider the existance of evil in the world. The classic paradox is stated something like this: If God is all-powerful and evil exists, then God is not all-compassionate; and if God is all-compassionate and evil exists, then God is not all powerful. Yet I was being taught that “God is Love” and “God is all powerful” and clearly, evil exists. Something was clearly amiss.
The next puzzlement came as my interest in science led me to knowledge that contradicted the bible. At least, my denomination’s literal interpretation of the bible. Things like dinosaurs and evolution.
In essence, there were too many contradictions between the biblical “facts” that I was being taught, and the scientific “facts” that I ended up truly believing. Therefore, I rejected it all. Threw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
And I went to the University of Wisconsin in the early 70s, a liberal environment to say the least. I rebelled against institutional authority as vehemently as I protested the war in Vietnam.
It doesn’t help of course that when I was a teenager our pastor was fired for having sex with many women in the church, and Jimmy Bakker was sent to prison for bilking money out of little old ladies (I won’t tell you how close I’m related to Jimmy cuz it might provide more information than I’m willing to share), and now of course the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. All this tends to make me cynical about religious folk.
I don’t know if any of this is helpful. I think each and every one of us has a journey of self-discovery to make.
I particularly learn from tomndebb’s and Mangetout’s and Polycarp’s voices of reason…even though I don’t necessarily agree with what they say, it is a refreshing change from the dogmatism I was raised on.
I confess to being as confused as dreamer, and in addition, I didn’t think that agnostics were searching for God either. (?)
Sometimes. Or it can mean that you believe that the question is fundamentally unanswerable. That we can’t know whether there is or isn’t a god.
Technically, yes. See my point above about leprechauns, etc.
That’s right. I’m not searching for Bigfoot, either.
But lots of people are searching for God. And for Bigfoot too, for that matter. If they find any evidence, I’m sure they’ll let us know, and we can revise our belief structures accordingly.
—First I guess is that I seem to have been defining Atheist/Agnostic in a different way than you. To note, I was using the terms in the more popularly understood sense of “believes that there is no god” vs.” isn’t sure if there is a god”.—
This usage, in my opinion, confuses knowledge vs. belief.
Agnosticism is not, by my definition, a midway point between atheism and theism: it concerns a different aspect of one’s approach to god claims.
While atheists are often understood by many as believing that there is no god, many avowed atheists define it differently. Even for those that don’t, they still seem willing to label a person who says “I don’t believe in god” as being an “atheist,” despite the fact that the original statement does NOT mean the same thing as “I believe there is no god” (the supposed meaning of “atheism”)
It is also inconsistent with the original usage of the term (a = without, theism = god belief, as in words like amoral or asymetrical), and how many famous atheists and freethinkers have used the term.
One major problem is that theologians in the 16th century popularized the idea that not believing in (their) god required an active denial of god (since everyone, according to them, KNOWS that god exists). This ignored the very real position of simply being unconvinced in the first place, and their voices quite litterally drowning out all debate on the issue, it became convention (especially since in many eras, saying that one does not believe in god was a deadly mistake, both socially, legally, and sometimes even litterally). “Atheism,” as a term, has a lot of baggage like that.
Interestingly enough, the people most vehement proponents of the “atheism is a belief in no gods” idea were not theists (many of whom had come over to simply noting that atheists were non-believers, and others who had since developed newer theologies in which it again made more sense to speak of atheism as simply being non-belief) but “evangelical” agnostics, who felt that defining atheism in the original sense would take some of the wind out of their claimed position (since many of them would then be atheists, gasp!)
Some people will refer to “strong” atheism vs. “weak” atheism. This also helps clarify the rather nagging problem of “I believe there is no god” raising the question “which god are you talking about: all of them?” That is, one can be a “strong” atheist in regards to some god claims, and a “weak” atheist for all others (or only some others).
Regardless, if “atheism” is to include all avowed “atheists,” then the more inclusive definition is better: because it encompasses “weak” atheists but also contains “strong” atheists, who simply, in addition to not believing in god, also believe there is no god. That also helps clarify the difference between not having a belief, and having a belief that is contrary to another belief (in this case, theism).
—If (as I understand you to say) the more correct definition is “does not believe that there is a god vs. does not claim to know that there is a god” than I stand corrected.—
Well, these are definitions. Sometimes people use the words differently, and particulary on this issue, there is a fair amount of controversy, and I would suggest no necessarily right usage (words are, after all, just tools for communication, and they mean what they are defined as meaning, which can change from era to era, as well as context to context).
To make things easier, “non-theist” is one option for an alternate word to use, it not having the same baggage and certainly fewer negative connotation. It means everything I mean by “atheist” and I use the terms interchangeably, or just “non-theist” if someone refuses to use “atheist” as I do.
—Alger: Is this true? (that many theists are agnostics). This doesn’t quite make sense to me.—
It’s certainly true if we are to believe the word of many theists (which I would suggest we should, since they seem to simply be reporting honestly on their thinking).
Also note that it’s a common thing for people to say that someone believes something purely on faith (that is, without evidence or knowledge): even atheists. (I would certainly say that some anti-theists certainly seem to have positions that seem founded on what can only be called faith)
—Most people I know who believe in God recognize that they “know” He exists through their faith alone.—
This is often a different sort of know. They mean that they know god personally via faith (they believe in god’s active prescence in their life). This is not the usual sense of “know” in which one can provide the arguements behind the knowledge: it’s entirely subjective. But regardless of whether you agree with their use of terminology, plenty of theists do indeed exist who are fully avowed agnostics as well.
—Is there any other way to “know” He exists? In other words, on what basis could one be a gnostic?—
Regardless of whether you agree with it, Lib has offered one example of such an arguement by which it is suggested one could know that god exists. Plenty of other famous theist arguements are floating around: again whether or not you agree that they are convincing, their proponents certainly do claim that they provide knowledge of god’s existence, and thus do indeed claim to have gnosis.
[nitpick]Any complete system that is capable of describing a system that includes the peano axioms[/nitpick]
For example, I think the statement calculus is complete.
Err, uhh, what? Now I’m all confuzzled. I was sure you were a theist (you seemed pretty sure of those proofs of the existence of god). I take it you have since changed your mind from atheism then?
I used to be a fairly firm athiest - I wasn’t militant about it, but I was thoroughly convinced that there was no god. Then I started doing too much maths… instant brain trauma. 
I came to the conclusion that you can’t prove that anything exists, so what we believe exists exists, whether we can percieve it or not.
So, if I don’t believe in god then to me he doesn’t exist. However, if someone else simultaneously does believe in god, then god exists to them. This is not a contradiction.
Hence, I get to decide whether god exists or not as far as I’m concerned. My answer? I don’t care. I choose to leave it an undecided (and I believe undecidable) proposition. So now I’m an agnostic, almost by default.
RE morality, I don’t believe in an objective morality either. Does that stop me from being a moral person? Nope - It merely means I choose my own morality. This is great IMO. I’ve adopted a sort of “Do unto others” policy, although my preferred phrasing is “Be nice to people.”
Simple, yet effective.
To summarize my views, which many others have stated, here and in many other threads:
A search for truth is neither indicated nor contraindicated by agnosticism, atheism, or theism. Moral behavior is neither indicated nor contraindicated by any of these “isms” (presented here in alphabetical order).
Agnostics don’t know whether gods exist. “Weak” ones leave it at that, while “strong” ones claim that it’s impossible to know. Some search for truth, some don’t. Some are good people, some aren’t. Some are theists, in that without knowing, they exert faith in a god–maybe as an insurance policy, I don’t know. Some are atheists, in that without knowing, they feel no compulsion to believe.
Atheists don’t believe that gods exist. “Weak” ones leave it at that, while “strong” ones claim that gods definitely don’t exist. Some search for truth, some don’t. Some are good people, some aren’t.
Theists believe that gods exist, at least one of them. I’m sure there are many classifications of theists too, but that isn’t really the topic. (I might venture to say that an agnostic who exerts faith in a god could be called a “weak” theist, while someone who feels sure that gods exist could be called a “strong” one, but I’ve never heard those definitions before.) Some theists search for truth, some don’t. Some are good people, some aren’t.