I’ve got some fairly strong religious / philosophical views, but I’m not sure what exactly these views make me – am I an atheist, some form of agnostic, a humanist, a secular humanist, what? If I list a few of my fundamental views, can you pigeonhole me?
I don’t believe that any god exists , don’t believe in any afterlife and don’t believe in any divine origin for man, nor any divine element of a human being (ie a soul).
I base the lack of religious beliefs above on a lack of proof - ie in the absence of proof of the divine, I believe only in earthly things.
I try to follow a philosophy summed up well by the teachings of Jesus (Love thy neighbour as thyself, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 25: 34-40, etc).
Although I don’t believe in Jesus (I don’t even think he seems likely as a historical figure), these beliefs seem ‘right’ to me, probably because I was brought up as a Christian. If forced to rationalise them, I’d say that all people have a duty to do good for each other, but I don’t have an objective definition of good.
I believe that all people are equal and that consenting, informed adults have the freedom to do anything which does not harm others. Therefore, all people should tolerate this, to the extent of not working against it.
I don’t believe that religion and government mix, and especially that governments should not attempt to enforce principles based upon religion solely because they are based on religion.
(I realise that many may disagree with my views, but that’s not the question here. Can we try to keep this in GQ territory?)
Hmm, nevermind. Seems like you have to pay to actually get the name of a religion that matches your answers. Otherwise they just give you some very vague info.
I’d say you’re an atheist based on the first two points alone. The rest get into your morality, which is generic Christian-inspired ‘do unto others’ stuff (so it seems to me), and your politics, which are progressive/libertarian (again, AFAICT).
Your views mesh pretty well with mine, judging solely from what you’ve posted here.
Exactly what I was thinking. With beliefs very close to yours, I call myself an atheist… but many non-atheists insist that I’m not an atheist, since I don’t know that there’s no divine being.
Presumably, therefore, you belive that it is not possible to be absolutely certain that any particular god does not exist.
That sounds like what I have heard called strong agnosticism that is to say: it is philosophically necessary to withold judjement as to whether any gods exist. This is different from weak agnosticism which would describe the position that says it is philosophically permissable to withold such judgement.
In discussions with others, it seems to me that strong agnosticism is a very common position and that most of its proponents call themselves atheists. This is reasonable because it follows from strong agnosticism that all gods are equally (un)likely to exist including all those that we have not thought of and therefore the probability of any particular god existing is indistinguishable from zero.
Looks like I have quite a spiritual smorgasbord to choose from! With all these choices, I’ll try to ascribe to the one that comes with the most perks - decoder rings etc.
From the last test there I’m between Skeptic and Spiritual Dabbler or something.
I don’t think I’m purely an atheist - the description of strong agnostic in Gaius’ post seems to fit me better - I don’t deny that god / gods exist at all, but am forced to withhold judgement and assume they don’t.
This is why non-atheists will tell you you aren’t an atheist if you choose to call yourself an atheist.
[pause to allow readers a moment to parse that terrible sentence]
I don’t deny the existance of deities, either. Neither do I believe in them. Technically speaking, I’m both some sort of agnostic and an atheist. I do not hold a belief in any god or gods, therefore I’m a (weak or soft or negative) atheist. But agnostic doesn’t describe much. There are literally an infinite amount of things that I don’t deny exist, from leprechauns to deities to flargoblifoozles. I have no evidence that any of those things exist, so I don’t believe in them, but I can’t say for certain that any of them are nonexistant.
By the way, I asked once if there’s really such a thing as a strong atheist (someone who is certain no deities exist), and was surprised to find that such creatures actually do exist. To many of us in the “weak” atheist camp, it seems to be just as much a matter of faith to be certain that there are no deities as to be certain that one description of a deity in particular is describing an actual being. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the thread in a search, presumably because I posted it too long ago…
Strong atheists are not “certain” no deities exist. Even the wikiarticle you linked to cuts down this strawman:
Strong (positive) atheists like myself merely assert our position, like any other belief such as “I believe that the accused is guilty/Santa Claus is nonexistent/Chelsea will win the Premiership” etc.
One might even call me an “ultra-strong” atheist in that there is no evidence which you could even hypothetically present to me which would convince me of God’s existence before, say, some kind of technological deception. That is still not certainty in God’s nonexistence, since I still admit I might be wrong.
I apologize for my choice of words. I didn’t mean to say… well, what I said
I still disagree with the position, but you’re right that I characterized it unfairly. When I get a minute, I’ll start a Great Debates thread to see if you can convince me that your position is superior. I used to call myself an agnostic until Dopers convinced me that I was actually a weak atheist (well, also an agnostic, but as I said above I don’t think agnostic really describes much about anyone), so maybe I’m not done with my conversion yet… but I doubt it
Isn’t that just strong atheism + strong agnosticism (“I believe that no deities exist, but I don’t think it’s possible to prove or disprove their existance”)? Of course, I just said that agnosticism didn’t really describe anything, so maybe it’s time for me to end this post before I say something really silly
No worries Jon - I’ll gladly contribute to your GD.
I’m afraid I’ve never understood how agnosticism is supposed to be exclusive to atheism or theism. If we can never really know anything for certain, surely everyone’s an agnostic regardless of what their guesses are regarding the existence of the divine?
No, see, hard atheists claims that gods do not exist, based on all the evidence shown. Zeus, allah, thor, yahweh, etc. all have “evidence” pointing towards them, but I have examined the cases, and determined for myself that all the “evidence” presented doesn’t hold up. As SentientMeat has said, it is impossible to prove that some guy does exist, but it is also pointless. He certainly isn’t the god of all the religions presented so far, and he is indistinguishable from random chance. Why is there even such a useless concept of god? Because for each reason II present for their being no god, someone can say, “He’s hiding.”
Anyway, I am without any such need for such a god, so I am without (or rather, the prefix, “a”) theism (a.k.a. belief in god).
Oh, for crap’s sake. I knew the ‘hard’/‘soft’ BS would get vectored in here.
I’ve never heard anyone in the real world even mention ‘hard atheist’ or ‘soft atheist’. There are atheists and agnostics.
[ul]
[li]atheist: Someone who does not believe in the evidence presented for the existence of any deity or other supernatural entity or entities.[/li][li]agnostic: Someone who has faith that we cannot know whether a deity exists or not.[/li][/ul]You can agree or disagree with those definitions, but you are not going to change them.
If you want to make pointless gradiations, be my guest. But don’t stretch perfectly good words beyond all reason.
