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

[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.

[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"...

[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".

[cdave]

Ooh, how's about Ignosticism?

Just found that.

[andrewducker]

Interesting one! Thanks!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"strong" and "weak" are both bad, misleading terms, because in both cases they concede the framing of the argument to imply that there is a *reason* to "assert nonexistence*, or a functional difference between nonbelief and assertion that other people are wrong to believe.

And, reall,y I'm not saying you can't call this position agnostic. I'm simply saying, I'd call it atheistic:
Since you don't actively believe that one or more of the postulated supernatural things are affirmatively true, you're not a theist. To not be a theist is to be an atheist. Full stop.

[andrewducker]

If atheist, to you, means "One who does not positively believe in God." then what's your word for "One who positively believes God does not exist."?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"a meaningless distinction that falsely claims a difference between unbelief and nonbelief"

But as long as you're incorrectly conceding the rhetorical possibility of "believe in a negative", I'd call that an atheist.

"What do you call someone who likes football?"
"A fan"
"But what if they like football AND really like Man U"
"They're a fan."
"But those things are different!"

[andrewducker]

You may find it meaningless - I find it incredibly important.

I cannot disprove the existence of God, and I would find it insulting and inapprorpriate for someone to think I was insisting that God definitely did not exist. And so I do not use the word atheist about myself, because that it how people seem to use it.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, I wonder why you would find it insulting / inappropriate to insist that God did not exist?

I can understand why it would not be scientifically verifiable, but in a world where it's acceptable to claim existence of a being based on the evidence of select texts, I don't see why it should be insulting to strongly argue that God definitely doesn't exist.

That is to say, I cannot prove my assertion that God doesn't exist, but I am more than happy to go toe to toe with those who are willing to insist that he does and to argue with equal fervour.

[andrewducker]

I would find it insulting to _my_ intelligence, not to the other people. I would not want to be associated with that view, and I correct people who say that I believe it.

I'm happy to argue that there's no reason to think God exists, and that assertions that he does are without grounds. Just not to assert that God is impossible.

[cdave]

Strong Agnostic and Week Atheism and Agnostic Atheism are not incompatible.

I say that believing that none of the "culturally postulated supernatural beings" are real is as irrational as believing that one is.

[cdave]

Gah! That's the third time I've misspelled "weak" today.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I say that believing that none of the "culturally postulated supernatural beings" are real is as irrational as believing that one is.

You can say this all you want. You will still be wrong.

(Hint: the underpants gnomes, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and God all have exactly the same evidence in favour of them and the exact same track record on influencing the real world.)

[cdave]

See my last blog entry :P

the underpants gnomes: Culturally understood to be responsible for theft of underwear. Large scale inexplicable underwear theft not reported. I'm happy to believe in non-existence.

The tooth fairy, Santa Claus: Culturally understood to be responsible swapping teeth placed under pillow for rewards, and providing stockings full of presents. Others have since made plausible claims for personal responsibility. I'm happy to believe in non-existence.

God: Culturally understood to be outside the universe as is and laws of physics . Responsible for many things such as maintenance of an afterlife, creation of the universe, and possibly small scale tinkering with the day to day running of the universe. There is no real argument that can be made using my day to day experiences that contradicts these. I'm not happy to believe in non-existence.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You appear to have a very, very different "cultural understanding" of God than most people who assert its existence. You've gone as far as the most competent Christians have, by redefining God to be an undetectable, irrelevant, meaningless construct, but you fail in two respects:

1) "lack of belief" is not a positive statement. Attempting to mischaracterise "a lack of belief" as a positive assertion in nonexistence is, in and of itself, either intellectually incompetent or intellectually dishonest. Bald is not a hair colour. "Not collecting stamps" is not a hobby. Lacking assertive belief is not assertive belief.

2) You, like them, have forgotten about the gravity gremlins, the flying spaghetti monster, the invisible pink unicorn, the tooth fairy, and an infinite number of other, evidenceless, undetectable, meaningless, purporseless constructs, who have identical support to your assertion of God. As long as you're going to alter the culturally postulated God into a meaningless, irrelevant, untestable state, you have to accept that belief in it is a utterly irrational as belief in *anything else anyone can make up that's equally as untestable*.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

This.