atheism vs. agnosticism

Hey - you don't have to believe in God to go to church!

http://www.uua.org/

wouldn't a lot of (most?) religious people say "he" does?

But I've never heard of an agnostic who chooses to live as if there is a god.

welcome to post-modernism. you can challenge the belief or status of someone who fits this description, but I'll bet there are a lot of people who do.

HAHAHAHAHA I now sing at a UU church! Of course they're more Episcopalian than most Episcopalian churches but that's another debate for later.

I'm trying, because just trying to rationalize God's existence isn't getting me anywhere, but it's not really working. I just sort of figure, "go to church, study the bible, pray, be as good as you can, and if it's meant to work out it will, and if it doesn't it won't but you didn't do yourself any harm (except it'll be a little embarrassing)." Why? Because I like Christianity. I think it's pretty gorgeous and spectacular.

I can't think of a concept of God that really makes sense with the universe outside of me, though, it's all too anthropomorphic and then if you get away from that all you can say are negative things: God is not this, not that....well what is God then? So I refer to myself as an atheist sometimes, when I'm feeling like "oh I really don't believe and that's that," and an agnostic, when I don't want to sound shut off from new ideas.

As fully rational arguments or what Kant would call “pure reason”, the proofs of God we often hear from theists are in my opinion invalid. They are certainly persuasive and reasonable but only if we accept certain emotional posits. You can argue that all proofs require a “leap of faith” and to a certain extent I agree .Belief in science alone isnt for me though.

Science itself is never certain of anything and its methodology is flawed and biased in too many ways to explain beyond the obvious points- we all view the colours, shapes etc etc slightly differently and everything we observe is relative not only to time and space but also the conclusions we draw are influenced and biased by prior beliefs and references.

For those with little experience in science a key point to understand is that from a scientific viewpoint for a “proof” to be “valid” it must be open to being falsified (proven wrong), otherwise it becomes what Popper would call “ultra stable”. The structure of an ultra stable theory is such that it cannot be disproven under any circumstances and (according to the scientific or positivist mentality), not worthy of consideration and more than likely false (eg the belief in God …unicorns …the tooth fairy etc etc).
A scientific theory will always be considered, at most, 'highly likely' based on the available evidence. This apparent weakness, is of course science’s greatest strength- enabling theories to be adapted and even abandoned when “more likely” evidence is presented.

To me the question of "why be moral" is something atheists cannot answer, anything goes, so to speak . Moral laws, which I believe are written on our hearts tell our conscience what we OUGHT to do and what we should not do. Clearly many men do not obey these laws . SO we have facts(how men behave) and we also have something else (how they ought to behave). In the rest of the universe and science there need not be anything but facts. Electrons behave in a certain way and certain results follow . End of story. But if a man behaves in an evil way and the result is the killing of an innocent person , it is not the end of it for we all know they “ought” to have behaved differently.

I agree with the assertion that belief in God cannot be achieved as a conclusion to a logical proof,certainly I believe that through resaon we can disciver God but an attempt to “prove God” is to my mind an irrational goal.

Atheism, and faith in science alone will always be an entirely inadequate view of reality for me. SCience's cold "Life just is" view just doesnt fit with me and the reality of world I know. I cannot accept a world where the soul, spirit, self, and sacred have no meaning. A world where man cannot even know himself beyond what he can empirically measure and weigh! A world where there is no objective sense of good , no evil, a world where there is no beauty, no justice, no cruelty, no love, no truth. Consequently for me at least atheism turns out to be too simple.If the whole universe has no meaning , we should never have found out that it has no meaning!

Peace!

Why?

The antipathy against religion thing: I think that can be the case - I'm always slightly wary when someone describes themselves as an atheist (especially withour prompting), it's perhaps unfair, but I don't tend to judge negatively until I get a better feel for their character. It's just that too many boring conversations with more militant atheists puts you off the idea - listening to half understoond marxism about how religion opresses people, or complaining that religion is responsible for all evil in the world etc.

I had the same experience in college; one of my best friends was a huge Kierkegaard fan who dreamed of either becoming a minister or a cinematographer. When I had conversations with him about religion, compared to the lockstep conservative Christians I tussled with in high school, I could no longer "win" the argument, since he was so smart and philosophical about the whole subject. It definitely opened me up more to the possibility of a spiritual dimension than I was willing to concede previously.

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Hi Maria

Well i dont think Gods outside of it at all, indeed I think God is in everyone but certainly caring for others makes for a better world no argumet there.Is just that isnt truth beauty love etc etc are all subjective and relative and as such meaningless concepts without an objective moral guidleine. J.L. Mackie, an atheist and respected philosopher, provides a devastating argument for why, if there is no God, we can have no obligation to be moral.

Pol Pot, Hitler, STalin,Mao great recent compassionate examples of atheists, joking joking. On the subject of tyrants I cant resist Lewis again "How monotonous all the great tyrants and conquerors have been:
how gloriously different the saints."

Peace!

He also liked to speak in a cryptic made-up language that was link a fully-exemporized slang; he would make up words for people and things constantly and drop them into conversation without context. The best example of this was the time when, in reference to my parents, he asked me, "So, how are Chaga and Figo?" and, despite never having heard my parents referred to in that manner before, I knew which one was Chaga and which one was Figo. He also spent a year talking exlcusively like a pastiche of Dana Carvey's most famous SNL characters/impressions (I loved being in classes with him).

Because I think it's culturally and spiritually useful to have a religion, I identify as Christian -- a lot of people who loved and cared about me spent a lot of effort trying to drum some Christian morality into my young heart, and I haven't yet come up with any overwhelming reason to discard that. In terms of actual, interior, pit-of-my-soul BELIEF, I lean closer to agnosticism. Does it go without saying that I attend a UU church?

I say I'm an agnostic, because I'm not sure if there is anything 'more' beyond life, I wouldn't mind if there was.

Dan & jaymc - I had the same experience last year. In high school I was like "meh I'm agnostic but I don't know what to do to really think about God so I'll wait until I have better time and resources in college," not expecting to actually DO so. And then I get assigned a roommate who is one of the nicest, smartest people I've met, who has an amazing and deep sense of beauty and who doesn't blow off questions like "how can all suffering possibly be for a greater good?" as just a lack of faith...so, oops, those midnight conversations sort of DID change my view of Christianity. It's a little jarring, though, how so many of the Christians I know here often have the same sorts of doubts I do even though they believe in God...it's like "whoa is there EVER a resolution if you're honest with yourself?"

near as i can tell, they're just agnostics who go to church about it!

I went to a Dominican high school, where we were taught this. The Dominicans are kind of weird - I mean, they pretty much showed me the path to agnosticism.

[T]he sacred orgasm is your Divine Right. Your beautiful bodies were designed for this in order to attract evolving souls into your plane, third dimensional planet Earth. The reptilian-based tyrants have kept you from this knowledge. They have imprisoned you in guilt and shame; you are ashamed of your bodies which are works of art.

They think after God, starting from the death of God without caring about what might mean the death of God, it's "existence", if it still exists; the tranquil atheist doesn't care about this kind of questions.

Deleuze explains it's less caring about a static negation or a fight against God than a dynamic method emerging on a positive proposition aiming at building after the fight.

OTM

This guy embodies surreal silliness.

Touche Daniel !

THe self is never an illusion eh, your gestures are all original! Immortality beckons!