Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own. – Principia Discordia
Atheists. What is the deal with atheists? I'm not at all confused about atheism, which makes sense. Atheism makes sense after evaluation of one's religious experiences and subsequent rejection of their worth. It's the atheists that I don't get. It's like when they concluded that religion was damaging, they forgot that it was the damage that was negative, and not the religion, and proceeded to do their own damage, but in the name of Atheism instead of in the name of God.
Another big hypocrisy that vocal atheist are prone to is in regards to the free practice of religion. Atheist activists categorically dismiss all religious beliefs as ridiculous, including those religions which are technically Atheist, or those that are fully accepting of science, as ridiculous. According to http://www.atheists.org :
We're respectful of the American people's individual rights to practice as they see fit (equal to our rights to do the same), but this does not mean we have to respect the decision. If you choose to ignore logic and knowledge in order to believe in an invisible magic man in the sky, or Santa Claus for that matter, you've made a ridiculous decision and we're not going to pretend it's "just another way of looking at things."
The bulk of their vitriol is directed towards Abrahamic religions which are the religions of power and influence in most of the world. Atheists are hardly the only group to be frustrated by the ridiculousness of culturally mandated ignorance, but they destroy their chance of having political allies by summarily dismissing all belief systems as the same as those that kill people and demand lesser education for our children.
While it makes perfect sense to attack religious beliefs that fly in face of all evidence (such as the denial of evolution) or churches that extort money from their followers, it doesn't make sense to dismiss all spiritual people as ridiculous. As a Discordian, if you are going to call me ridiculous, I want you to know what you're talking about, first. I'm not offended if someone reads the principia
and concludes it's ridiculous, but I am offended if someone reads the Bible
and concludes that the principia is ridiculous, because that's just plain ignorant.
The bulk of their vitriol is directed towards Abrahamic religions which are the religions of power and influence in most of the world. Atheists are hardly the only group to be frustrated by the ridiculousness of culturally mandated ignorance, but they destroy their chance of having political allies by summarily dismissing all belief systems as the same as those that kill people and demand lesser education for our children.
Atheism is NOT the belief that there are no gods.
ReplyDeleteIt is the distinct LACK of belief in the concepts of gods whatsoever. In reality, it is the default position to assume that there is 0 of something until there is evidence to suggest otherwise.
The great majority of atheists are AGNOSTIC atheists; this is the position that qualifies that although the atheist would hold that he thinks it likely that there are 0 deities in the universe, he doesn't claim to have absolute knowledge of this kind of fact. He is simply holding the default position.
GNOSTIC atheists ARE making the claim that they can have absolute knowledge about deities and possibly other such phenomena, which therefore puts their assertion as that "There are NO gods in this reality/universe/whatever". An absolute claim is an extremely rare, if not non-existent one in the scientific method, and so the vast majority of atheists are AGNOSTIC ones.
You are correct in saying that gnostic atheists are in general making an unscientific claim, however you've failed to realise that a whole lot of others qualify their position by making it agnosticly.
Going about the task of disproving non-existent things will ALWAYS be an endlessly fruitless task though. The sensible, reasonable position is to assume non-existence until evidence shows otherwise.
We may not be able to prove that there are no gods, but the default position in the scientific method is disbelief until facts are found. You don't create a theory out of nowhere and then look for supporting or disproving evidence. All hypotheses are based on some observations or facts, they aren't just created out of nowhere. It needs to get to that stage to be uncertain. Science is inherently building up on previous facts, the fact that we can't disprove a ridiculous claim is irrelevant. Many religions do have things that are indeed provable as false, such as the age of the earth, virgin births, existence of Jesus Christ, etc. Supposed I claimed that there were completely invisible, and unobservable dancing elfs in our bloodstream. You most likely find that ridiculous and do not believe it at all. The only difference between that statement and religion is that religion is much more accepted.
ReplyDeleteYou are assuming all atheists are strong atheists, which is not the case.
ReplyDeleteA strong atheist would say "There is no god." This is a statement of fact for which proof must be provided and, as we both know, no such thing exists.
Your comments about this type of atheist are completely accurate and I don't understand these types of atheists either.
The problem here is that most atheists are what you would call weak atheists, also referred to as a negative atheist. These atheists, like myself, would not say "There is no God" because we know we cannot prove such a statement.
We would say "I don't believe in God." This is not a statement of fact but an expression of disbelief and requires no proof. It's not that we believe God doesn't exist, it's that we don't believe he does.
It's a subtle difference that can be hard to wrap your head around (it was for me, anyways) but it makes a huge difference in terms of our actual views and how rational they are.
It seems as though the Discordian view on life is that all things might be true, even if disproven. We are free to believe in an entity named Eris. But we're also free to disbelieve and still be Discordians. Discordians are also allowed to believe that Art Garfunkel is Eris if it makes us happy. Yes, we can see certain scientific principles like thermodynamics or gravity as being very predictable, but we reserve the right to believe that one day they may not be true any longer.
ReplyDeleteBest. Religion. Evar.
I will read Principia right now and suggest that you read my Athiest bible, A Case Against God by George H. Smith.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who is even passingly familiar with the history of chemistry knows that, indeed, science began with hypotheses simply yoinked straight out of a philosopher's ass, after which evidence was sought to convert hypothesis into theory. Science is a descendant of philosophy; there is a reason the most advanced degree you can earn in Physics is Doctor of Philosophy. To attempt to separate the two is fallacious.
ReplyDeleteSalydra clearly has no idea about the scientific method. It is simply not possible to prove that something doesn't exist. But you can accumulate results (for example there has been no evidence of any kind of god, ever, and use that to appoximate a probabilty of the existence of a god. When you do that you end with "almost certainly does not exist".
ReplyDelete