An Atheist By Any Other Name . . .

Hi Chuck, But of course, no one ever killed anybody because they collected the wrong type of stamps. No-one was ever ostracised from their community because they didn't like stamp-collecting. No-one ever tried to justify misogyny by reference to their favourite stamps. No government gives special decision-making powers to stamp-collectors. No-one ever suggested that stamp-collectors should be exept from tax. It is entirely possible to imagine a non-stamp-collector being elected PotUS, because no-one cares whether the president collects stamps or not. No-one ever tried to sabotage science education and replace it with loopy stories about stamps.Get the picture?Mutate and Survive

Hi Ringo, long time no see! Presuming that we're still talking about actual stamp collecting or something similarly trivial and harmless, I would ignore them most likely. Dumb-asses are as entitled to their dumb-ass opinions as anybody else.It's when the "stamp collectors" are having a detrimental effect on society that "non-stamp collectors" need to unite. If you regard that as a hobby, I'd say that's more a feature of the metaphor breaking down than anything else. Founding a "We Don't Like Stamp Collecting" club could be seen as a hobby. Similarly, founding a "We Don't Like Religion" club could be seen as a hobby, but, stepping outside of the metaphor again, that still wouldn't make it a religion.Mutate and Survive

Hi hooah,I said that atheism might be - in some circumstances - viewed as a hobby. I didn't say that there was anything wrong with that. I'm just trying to delineate the point where the "hobby" metaphor breaks down. In an ideal world religion would be no more than a hobby as well.Your point about support networks is well made.Mutate and Survive

Hi Shadow, Well it's kinda both. The difference is based on what we can say with a reasonable degree of certainty and what we feel in our gut.I define myself as an atheist. It is my position that there is no valid reason to believe in a god or gods. I think that this position is logically valid and is entirely justifiable. I think that this position leaves the proper space for tentativity and acknowledgement of my own fallibility. I do not claim to know that gods do not exist, just that there is no reason to suppose that they do. Of course, I would take the same position on leprechauns, celestial teapots and garage dragons.But then, on the other hand, there is my gut feeling. I am pretty certain that there are no gods and no supernatural. If I were to take a punt, I would put my money on the non-existence of gods. The difference here is that I do pretend to know that there are no gods. I can't prove that there are no gods. I can create a pretty good case against their existence, but I can't pretend that I can create a logical argument that absolutely proves that gods aren't real. Still, if you want my opinion, I think that gods are basically fictional.The former is a position that I would be willing to defend in debate. the latter is my personal opinion and so I'm a little more easy-going about it. I would characterise both positions as atheism.Now compare and contrast with the common theist's position that they just know that God is real. Well, sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but no, you don't know. You may think. You may be certain that you are right, but you don't know. And neither do I.No-one knows with 100% certainty what the state of the universe is. No-one knows with 100% certainty whether gods exist or not. Anyone who tells you that they do is a dupe, a lunatic, a fool or a liar. I try to reflect that in my opinions and arguments.Mutate and Survive

Yes, but as I mentioned before, I admit that there may be a God only in the same sense that I admit that there may be an invisible dragon in my garage;

quote:

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The Dragon In My Garage

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by Carl Sagan

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"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

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Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

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"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

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"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

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"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

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You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

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"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

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Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

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"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

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You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

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"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

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Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

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Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

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Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

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Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

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I am an a-dragon-ist in the same sense that I am an atheist. I think that characterising atheists into a position where we have no shred of tentativity regarding the existence of gods is an attempt to shoehorn us into an unreasonable position that very few of us hold.I have a tiny scintilla of doubt over whether gods exist. To have any less doubt would be arrogant. If this makes me an agnostic, then I would suggest that any theist who does not possess 100% certainty of God's existence must be an agnostic too. To my mind, the term "agnostic" implies considerably more doubt than this, otherwise what's the value in these terms? All but the most deluded zealots would be agnostic, leaving us with no useful terminology to describe more reasonable positions.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

You asked.Seriously, you asked, we answered, now you are apparently in a sulk because you don't like the answers. How pathetically childish.I can only suggest that, if you are going to get upset when you don't like the answers, you cease asking questions. You might want to try using your brain. Well no. You have said yourself that no evidence or argument could possibly sway you. In the face of such dogmatism, what end could there be? All I can suggest is that you stop asking difficult questions if you're going to act offended when you receive answers.Mutate and Survive

And you got dozens of them. You're still not satisfied. In fact, you're starting to get snotty. But wait; I thought you weren't interested in our opinions? Remember? How does that gel with your alleged desire for honesty? Were you lying then or are you lying now? Of course. he could appear before in all his blazing glory. Throw some lightning around, wrestle a unicorn, you know... all his showy stuff. That might not instantly convince me - I would have to bear in mind the strong possibility that I had gone stark staring mad - but it would certainly give me cause to serious rethink Christianity.As I have explained over and over, I am not a dogmatist or a zealot. I am not like you. I can admit to myself that I might be wrong. this is the difference between us and the reason why atheist thinking is so baffling to you. not everyone thinks like you; some of us have humility. Because (a) we think you are delusional and (b) because you asked! You asked for honest answers! Well you got them! I can't tell you that I think you're right when I really think that you're wrong. I owe you that much respect at least.As Theo said above, if you believe in God and I believe gods to be fictional, then it necessarily follows that I think you are deluded. It also follows that you think that I am deluded. You claim that there is clear evidence of God, although you seem unsure as to what it might actually be. Lourdes or something? You don't know... Well I am in denial of that evidence. Clearly, I am deluded.Just for the record, when in Message 88 I said "To my mind, the term "agnostic" implies considerably more doubt than this, otherwise what's the value in these terms? All but the most deluded zealots would be agnostic, leaving us with no useful terminology to describe more reasonable positions." I was talking about a hypothetical zealot, someone who claimed absolute knowledge of God's existence. I was not talking about you. At time I had assumed that I was speaking to a reasonable person. Having read your comments in Message 100 though, I can now see why you chose to take offence at my criticism of deluded zealots.Anyhow, I am at a loss to explain your continued presence in this thread. You don't want to change our minds. You have made it clear that you are enough of a zealot that nothing could even conceivably change your mind. You're not interested in what anyone else thinks. You're not even really telling us much about what you think. What's the point? What are you trying to accomplish? Or are you really just whining because Carl Sagan called you deluded?Mutate and Survive

"Doctor Shadow! Doctor Shadow! You have to help me! My family are really robots sent from the future to kill me! It's because I'm really Alexander the Great, or possibly Napoleon. Or both! Also the nurses in this hospital are secretly flesh-eating aliens sent by the government who are out to get me because my psychic powers let me discover their conspiracy to control people's minds through the TV news!"

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"Well, whilst I may disagree with you on certain matters I respect your right to believe whatever you like. Far be it from me to call you delusional."

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"Really? Wow. All the other doctors offered me anti-psychotic medications. Well cheers anyway Doc, I'm off to kill me some robots!"Mutate and Survive