Not sure if this thread is needed or allowed or whatever, but if it is then feel free to post serious questions here and I’ll answer them as thoroughly as I can.
For anyone unfamiliar with the term “agnostic”, or how I define it:
Also including a poll, because I’ve seen people say that you’re either religious or atheist and can’t be anything in between and am wondering who agrees with that.
EDIT: Typo in poll question, forgot the word “is”, sorry
This thread is going to be full of people thinking that agnosticism is a middle ground between atheism and theism. Followed by explaining the reason why it’s not. The middle ground between theist and atheist is undecided. You can also be gnostic, or agnostic with. I can’t wait to see everyone not getting that concept again.
Well, they can feel free to make that point if they’d like. Personally I don’t see it as a middle-ground so much as a different set of beliefs (a simple one). Rather than believing in God and whatever else comes with a religion, I believe that the questions that religion seeks to answer will never be answered thoroughly enough to satisfy me.
So I understand why some people chose religion, the answers presented in that religion satisfy their quest for knowledge and they accept it as truth. In my case, I don’t believe we have the knowledge right now to answer those questions about life, so I chose not to commit myself to saying that there is or isn’t a God; I just can’t know for sure.
I consider myself agnostic/spiritual. I believe in something that I don’t think anyone else has the authority to know. I don’t follow mainsteam religion because
It’s mostly bullshit
If it was ever “true,” it’s been corrupted by man over the course of centuries to keep power and spur revenue.
The fact that they all claim to be correct is ridiculous. Thousands of other religions claim the same thing.
Everyone should worship what lies in their hearts and minds. Look within, find something to believe in, and that is your own personal religion. You shouldn’t look to deacons and bishops to tell you how to live.
Even then, I can qualify my want to believe in something with simple psychology.
That’s just the thing, I don’t have a want to believe in anything. I’m perfectly fine with not knowing (right now, anyway, I may turn to religion when i grow up idk), and it actually bothered me when I went to synagogue because I had so many doubts. I’m jewish by background, went to a Jewish private school from preschool to 9th grade and I just was never satisfied with that.
So do you not care whether or not you get the true/right answer, or just whether or not the answer you get floats your boat?
@agnostics in general, what is your response to the statement: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”?
From what I understand you don’t think there is evidence for God and as a result you keep your answer as not sure. But it is simple logic to disbelieve in something which has no evidence or probability.
I see agnosticism as saying “I’m not sure whether or not unicorns exist because there is no evidence proving or disproving the existence of purple unicorns”. Am I mistaken?
I say “no” to whether agnosticism is part of atheism. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a deity or deities. Agnosticism answers to a different question.
One can agnostic and theist.
I am an agnostic atheist. I don’t know and I don’t believe. Until someone provides evidence for a deity, I cannot believe. Do unicorns exist? Until I see some evidence that they do, I don’t know. It’d behoove the unicorn-believers to come up with some evidence.
Pretty much. I don’t feel a burning desire to know the truth. It would be nice and I do wonder sometimes, but the desire isn’t strong enough to cling to a religion.
Disagree. If there is no evidence to prove it, you don’t necessarily dismiss it… I’ll explain in more detail below.
Not necessarily. That’s like saying that because there is no evidence of intelligent life outside of earth, it’s simple logic to disbelieve in it. Maybe for some, but I like to keep an open mind in regards to that kind of stuff.
Kind of… I’d say that the chances of unicorns existing are probably slim since unicorns as we know them today are a figment of human imagination, but I don’t go “definitely no unicorns, that’s impossible” because for all I know there is some planet out there with unicorns similar to the ones we imagine.
Also, it seems most of the discussion has been about why you don’t believe in god but don’t necessarily deny his existence. What about science? What stops you from deciding that the entire world can be explained through logic and science, albeit not now and not even by humans or any being, but simply that the world is governed by scientific processes?
That’s why I mentioned probability as well as evidence. I believe in intelligent life outside of Earth. There may not be any direct evidence of life outside of Earth, but I do know that the only things that made Earth develop life are a series of conditions determined entirely by chance. And since the universe is incredibly large and full of planets there HAS to be other planets out there that meet the exact conditions that made life on Earth possible. Unicorns have no evidence and they are improbable.
I care about people doing what is personally right for them, and not following a religion because they were born into it. Than means doing some inner searching. If you are an atheist at heart, so be it. If you are a hardcore Christian, I don’t necessarily agree because Christianity has been twisted to serve man over the centuries, but that’s your business.
Just don’t try to push it towards other people because they, too, must find what lies within themselves.
Same reason I don’t decide that the entire world can be explained through religion. Science is a “religion” I believe in because there are explanations to back up theories that actually make sense to me, but that in no way means that I say that everything in science is set in stone. Scientist once thought the world was flat, right?
I consider myself N/A as far as religion goes, but I don’t want to label myself as a shitty indecisive agnostic.
Why? Unless you disagree with some fundamental part of agnosticism (there isn’t really much to it), why can’t it describe you? Unless you just hate labels in general, which is another story
Science differs heavily from religion. Science is logic reason and evidence while religion is faith and emotions. Also, there is science and then there is human science. Science is the functions and laws and processes that govern the universe. Human science is our understanding of science. Human science is flawed and incomplete. As time progresses human science becomes more and more complete and less and less flawed. It is my opinion that we have gotten to the point that human science is complete enough to call it more or less “correct” and call it the answer to the universe and it’s functions.
Scientists thought the world was flat for many reasons. To name two; to say otherwise lead to social ridicule and it had been imprinted deeply in their brains that the Earth was flat leading them to ignore evidence to the contrary (they made their conclusions before fairly analyzing the evidence). Calling the Earth flat was a social failure more than a scientific failure; the scientist’s false conclusions were more based of what society had forced upon them than what the scientific process would lead them to believe.
But you do agree that there is ONE right answer? That all these people with all their theories and beliefs are wrong? And that there is something that is right? Do you not care that all these things people are “finding int heir hearts” are just illusions and fantasies? Illusions and fantasies that can lead to negative beliefs and acts such as gay hate anti-abortion and terrorism to name some of the extremes?
May I give a different view? I’ve seen a lecture explaining that actually the sets of beliefs of a religion is a virus (like a computer virus), the belief passes on from generation to generation. It’s not that the “belief” was “corrupted” by men, but it mutates as it passes from one person to another - that is expected in any kind of talk. Then competition and natural selection takes place to “choose” the religions and beliefs that are more “contagious”.
In other words, it is not that the belief was used for evil purposes, but sometimes the belief evolves to something evil, which sometimes make it more contagious.
I warn anyone that wants to watch the video that it is (not intentionally) offensive to religious people, and that might make you angry if you are religious. In any case, the whole lecture is in the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Ug-o9rxWo
There is also a talk in the channel Atheist Experience (a “short version” of the video above):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPN3UlxCXH4
Anyway, sorry to bump into your thread, russilker, I’m not agnostic.
What’s wrong with delusions and fantasies? Whether we know the truth or not is irrelevant, we can’t do anything with that knowledge but satisfy our own desires. If fantasy satisfies people’s desires for the answers and they believe it to be true I see no problem with that, as LONG as they don’t impose it on those that aren’t OK with those delusions.
And garthbartin, I never said science and religion are the same. When I said I believe in the religion of science, I meant that science answers many of the same questions religion aims to answer, that’s all.
And gugamilare, thats fine, any contributions are appreciated haha. Nice to see a good debate going on here.
I feel that when you accept delusions and fantasies and allow them to go unchallenged it very often leads to unnecessary conflict. Lets look at abortion. It is my belief that women should be allowed to choose to have an abortion. Many Christians might decide based of their religion that abortion is a moral abomination and a great injustice to the aborted fetus. So even if this Christian always does his bestest not to step on toes and to keep his fantasies from interfering with other’s truths or fantasies, is morally obligated by his delusion to step in on behalf of the fetus. Whether or not you object to abortion and whether or not you are Christian, take this situation as hypothetical, and see that it applies to any situations such as Islamic terrorism gay bashing The Crusades etc. And the only difference between the delusions you are okay with and the delusions you aren’t is that the latter just happen to disagree with the truth in a way that demands action.
Also, the most immediately comforting answer, religion, isn’t necessarily the best one. For example, someone who has lost someone close might choose to deny that that person has ever even died. To pretend that that person is still alive. This is comforting at first but just leads to trouble just as religion can be a false comfort by hiding the truth.
The fact that people often twist their delusions into ridiculous things lke homophobia isn’t because delusions themselves are bad, but because the people making them are flawed. Having delusions of knowing the answer to life is perfectly fine as long as, like I said, you don’t impose them upon others.
Excuse me for a moment. Just because previous scientists were “wrong” doesn’t mean that they were WHOLLY wrong.
They took the evidence available to them and came up with a conclusion. Later, with more evidence, they refined the conclusions. On a spheroid, when you look at it from the perspective of being on a very large one, it looks “mostly flat”.
No scientist says that “science” is set in stone. Religion, however, does.
I never said that they were wholly wrong, or that they claim their findings to be set in stone… I was merely pointing out that much of science, while in my opinion is much more accurate than most religions, will most likely change with time as new and “better” theories replace the ones we have today.
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