Raistlin

I wish things like this happened at one of the colleges around here. Stupid Colorado.

I'm glad he said that about agnosticism, in light of the slew of articles/editorials lately regarding agnosticism versus atheism, which is too ridiculous for words for me right now

I agree completely. For those that don't know what Clo is talking about, the worst offender is undoubtedly this piece of utter tripe in Slate a couple of months ago, which should make any remotely rational person facepalm hard.

I am trying so hard to give a but it just isn't happening.

Christopher Hitchens > you.

I just found another editorial saying Hitchens should never have been invited (this one in W&M's official student newspaper; the one I originally linked to is apparently independently-run), this one claiming because his anti-Islam principles are "dangerous." Apparently it is a "smear" to say it's justifiable to fear Islam because of a lot of radicals who threaten to kill anyone who dares do so much as draw Mohammed (interestingly enough, this is exactly why Penn & Teller have refused to mock Islam in their Bull! series, despite mocking Christianity and other superstitions fairly regularly).

This statement is especially ridiculous:

These states lack the pluralism and openness that is so essential to the success of any religion in modern times. Islam does not need the West to reform it, because wherever Islam exists in a free society, it is as modern, open and free as the Quran originally intended it to be.

Originally intended it to be? Really? This person is so clueless and/or deluded he thinks the Quran's original message is one of promoting freedom. I... there are no words.

He also seems to believe that Hitchens claims that every single Islam believer is such an extremist idiot, which is not at all what Hitchens, or any atheist critic, actually says. Islam, like all religions, can be made to mean whatever the hell people want, and the culture many Muslims grow up encourages more of such horrible principles than in the West. There is no "true" Islam anymore than there's a "true" Christianity or a "true" Scotsman. Every single believer thinks their version (which coincidentally complies with everything they want to be true anyway) is the "true" one. It is all willful self-delusion.

Having been in a class that teaches about Islam's history and belief systems for about three weeks, I believe I can talk about Islam at a near-expert level. I'm joking, I'm not even touching that with someone else's ten foot pole.

However, I will say that I do identify myself as an agnostic. though I do not hold any pride in that fact whatsoever. It is a term I give to people to appropriately sum up my belief in God without getting too deep in the topic, though I still have to explain what the hell an agnostic is to the majority of people I tell this to. It is more out of carelessness than anything else and I do have more atheistic leanings within my agnostic "beliefs". I'm not even sure if that makes sense right now.

What is the distinction you draw between yourself and atheism (which is the lack of theism)? The only agnostics I've ever heard of that don't disbelieve in god just as much as atheists are agnostic/deists who think there is some sort of power but that we can't know anything about it. Otherwise, the only distinction is some agnostics claim that both the disbelieve and belief in god are "equally (in)valid," which is clearly hogwash. I'm pretty sure you're not that much of an idiot.

Hitchens related a common conversation with self-labeled agnostics, which I've had myself. "Are you a theist?" "No." "So you don't actually believe in god?" "No." "Well that's what I think too."

The easiest way to describe it, when speaking to people that are unfamiliar with agnosticism (though you aren't) is the fairly standard definition of the word. I, personally, do not claim to know one way or the other whether or not God exists and it is not entirely important in my life to make the specific distinction one way or the other.

The most important thing is that I just don't care enough one way or the other whether or not a God or multiple Gods exist, as neither possibility effects my life in any way that I can think of. To me, the word is just a simple label that I apply to myself for ease and then move on, as it doesn't really change the way I think about the majority of things.

I agree with all of that.

Originally Posted by Bunny

I, personally, do not claim to know one way or the other whether or not God exists

Neither do 99% of atheists. The most I'll say is "there's no evidence to believe in any god and the universe operates, to our knowledge, exactly as it would without a supernatural force affecting it." The only rational conclusion to an assertion with no evidence is disbelief (the null hypothesis in statistics, which similarly does not assert the negative, but simply denies the positive). By your words, you would be considered an atheist, taking the broad definition of the word ("anyone who's not a theist") that most actual atheists ascribe to themselves. It is simply the absence of one particular assertion (theism).

And I agree that the existence of any deity has no direct impact on my life. The only reason it matters to me is how religion affects others and their actions, which can and do impact me.

I think it's largely a semantics argument and though most self-described agnostics are technically atheists (they accept believe in a god), they most likely don't like to use the bile-encrusted word atheists because atheist = evil, immoral, hateful, godless heathen.

While I find the agnostic view point from the safe side of semantics bothersome, I don't find it nearly so bothersome as the intellectually bankrupt notion of strong atheism that seems to think they can literally prove there to be no god.

Yes, "strong atheists" are being irrational. I find "weak agnostics" (the "I don't know, atheism is equally faith-based" nonsense) to be even more annoying because there's far more of them then strong atheists, and they're doing more damage by furthering the "atheism = extreme/faith-based/etc." propaganda of theists. I've never personally talked to a strong atheist (though have heard of a couple anecdotally).

I think it's because most agnostics fall for the misnomer that atheism means strong atheism all of the time. They are unaware that, in fact, their stance is truly atheism. I would agree that agnostics do a lot of collateral damage in their urge to be egalitarian. They spend too much time trying to court the religious and being that the religious are the more prominent, this is the ground to whom they give more ground.

For the same reason they fear using the title of atheism (social backlash) they actually end up attacking atheists because, to the least rational people (read: theists), this gives them more credit as being convivial.


Slightly off topic (please don't ban me), but what about the effect of apathetic atheists (I've heard them called apatheists)? I think this type of person is quite common, especially in the sciences at large. It's not that they don't want to get their feet wet, but rather that the issue of god doesn't regularly cross their mind. I find it hard to understand how they cannot feel assaulted (especially in the southern US) constantly by religious anti-science claims, but I guess some locked it the ivory towers of academia don't really have to face it.

There are times I wish these people would realize that their inability to speak up further marginalizes atheists, but at the same time, I'm not willing to martyr myself at my job over my lack of belief. Perhaps their are less apathetic than they let on and being self-preservatory. Though I suspect some are literally completely oblivious to the war going on outside their minds. How I envy them.

Apatheists are mildly annoying. Obviously whether a non-personal god exists or not (really the only type that could exist) does not have any real impact on our lives, but that misses the point entirely. It's not the question of such a god that really matters at all, but the question of religion and how it is promoted by believers in such a detrimental way. It is organized religion and believers which require religion to be attacked, not my lack of belief in a deistic god.