Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

It would have been more instructive if you'd narrowed this down to adult life. Most kids believe in a god, because they're taught to.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure about my answer to the first question. I've only ever been a Christian or an atheist, but my Christianity has evolved and changed substantially over time, even though it has the same name, so I don't know whether it can terribly accurately described as a single belief system.

[andrewducker]

You're dating yourself there. We're now beyond the tipping point where most parents don't believe in God.

I was never taught to believe in God as a child...

[matgb]

Possibly--but I got myself transferred from the local CofE to a further away secular school when was 7, in large part because I couldn't stick the religiosity.

Ergo, from the age of 7, I know I've not believed, before that doesn't really count.

[andrewducker]

Does it feel like you'd be able to be a member of the same sect, or would you have to convert from one to another? Because the former would seem like a single belief _to me_, while the latter would feel like two separate beliefs.

[cdave]

My parents were both lapsed, and didn't bring me up as Christian, but didn't not if that makes sense. I went to CofE schools, and the occasional cousin's christening, so pretty much beleived in Christ by default until I was an adult.

I think Steve's poll would be interesting.

[cdave]

Oh, and where you place a strong agnostic on question 3?

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I;d be with the person that says we should narrow this to adulthood.

And youu need to classify supernatural beliefs. I said yes - cos as a kid, though not religious I had all sorts of weird ideas about how the world/universe worked - and I bet most of those who happily ticked 'never believed' did too. They were fined into something workable/consistent as I got older.

About 12 I went all the way from "nothing really exists" to "and it doesn't matter (just keep [mostly]acting like it does)" in one afternoon. Not really changed that basis since then.

You been reading Supersense by any chance?? if not, I recommend it.

[andrewducker]

That's why I worded it the way I did :->

Do you adhere to a supernatural belief system?

Becuase, in my experience, agnostics do not. They don't declare them impossible (as strong atheists do), but nor do they adhere to one.

[cdave]

True. I beleive:

A supernatural belief system is illogical, but not impossible.
AND
An atheist belief system is illogical, but not impossible.

[andrewducker]

I'd go with that.

I believe that it is possible that some being outside of all we understand (and possibly all we can understand) created our universe and interferes with it as they wish.

But without proof I find it unreasonable to actively believe this.
And without proof I find it unreasonable to declare it impossible.

Therefore I stay strongly agnostic - but generally act (day-to-day) as if I were atheistic.

[cdave]

That's Agnostic. Strong Agnostism (as I follow it) is the beleif that proof is probably impossible too.

[andrewducker]

Negative proof is definitely impossible. We can only prove that we have not found the magic password to turn off the holodeck _yet_, not that we are not living in The Matrix.

That do you?

[cdave]

Almost. Even if we _did_ find the password and turned off the holodeck, how would you know that it was not just the programmers in the Matrix messing about with you.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Well, I've been both Roman and Anglo-Catholic, but I don't really feel as though the difference there is that significant; For the last few years I received in both, and would continue to do so if I ever went back to the church. Far more significant (to me) than what church I belong to is my conception of God is/means, and that's what changed, depite remaining in the A-C church until recently.

I think the likelihood is that if I go back my concept will be closer to deist than it has been in the past, but catholicism is in some way "home" for me.

[andrewducker]

Well, we'd know that our original world had a God, but we wouldn't know if they were The God.

The problem being a need for a definition of "God"...

[andrewducker]

Which is, presumably the difference between "Church as originator of Truth" and "Church as social club for people that believe similar things."

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I would call this position atheist, not an agnostic.

You don't believe that the answer is impossible, and you don't believe that we *don't* know. You find it unreasonable to believe in the supernatural: that makes you not an agnostic.

At the same time, unless I've missed something, you do not believe in any god(s). Or in fairies or in psychics or in alien abductions or the tooth fairy or any other religious-but-too-unpopular-to-get-protection belief.

This makes you "not a theist".
Which is to say, "an atheist".

You're not a "God cannot exist" atheist, but that doesn't matter. Nothing about your beliefs in the possibility of gods changes your current lack of belief in any of them.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The problem being a need for a definition of "God"...

I like "culturally postulated supernatural being", myself. It lets you include anima and the Buddha without including psychics and UFOs, which conveniently matches up with the most-common definition of "religion".

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly. I was born in the Middle Ages 1960, after all.

But my initial point remains valid, I would argue.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Not exactly no. A lot of what makes catholicism 'home' is the ritual, which is really neither of those things, although a bit of it is providing a route to truth which suits my way of travelling. Another thing is the "Weeelllll, it's ineffable, innit" approach that a lot of scholarly catholics take, which fits reasonably well with a more deist perspective.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Cheers.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I would call this position atheist, not an agnostic.

Your second clause doesn't really follow from your first. Most atheists and a great many theists are also agnostic.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I guess I'd say I'm agnostic (as there's really no way to positively prove or disprove the existence of something outside of what we can perceive) but with strong atheistic tendancies (Invisible Sky Guy doesn't strike me as being terribly likely, or as a useful model for finding out how the universe works for that matter).

I did "hang" with a United Church lunch group for a year in junior high and found the social aspect pleasant but the theology dull and self-contradictory... and spent only a few services at Anglican churches before the parents (Mom's United, Dad nominally Anglican but seems uncomfortable with the whole idea pro- or anti-) gave it up as a bad idea.

-- Steve is one to "live and let live" on this, though, unlike the Crusading types. (Specifically including Dawkins in this category, along with the mullahs and televangelists.)

[andrewducker]

And there we get into the "strong" atheism versus "weak" atheism debate, which I've been in far too many times before. Where weak atheists have no-belief-in-God and strong atheists have belief-in-no-God.

And whichever one I use to mean "atheist" one of the other types will pop up and contradict me. So I prefer to use agnostic, so that I am describing my state of knowledge (unknown) rather than the universe.

And I don't just find it unreasonable to believe in the supernatural - I find it unreasonable to believe in anything that lacks proof. Which includes, say, various conspiracy theories.