The TV is tuned to ESPN, and of course, they’re doing a sob piece grasping for some way to draw a connection between Virginia Tech’s football team playing football and the tragic shooting last spring. God, lit candles, school spirit, it’s all very grotesque. I wish that just once during one of these sob pieces trying to create a relationship between a sporting event and some senseless tragedy, someone would say, “Well Tragedy X taught me that there is no god, the universe is indifferent to human suffering, and life has no outside meaning, so it’s up to us to make our own meaning. Which is why I like sports.”
But of course, that would violate about 15 different unspoken rules about how the TV makes meaning out of tragedy, so even if anyone said it, it would never get on air.
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“But of course, that would violate about 15 different unspoken rules about how the TV makes meaning out of tragedy, so even if anyone said it, it would never get on air.”
The Ministry of Information is always watching…
Remember, one of the important guiding principles of the People’s Christian Democratic Republic of America is Ignorance is Strength…
My biggest problem is the unwritten assumption that middle class college kids shouldn’t experience anything like the real world. Yes VT was sad, but its a weekly occurence for peopel teh same age in Iraq.
I’m with you on this bogus “tragedy sports triumph” bullshit. I put on ESPN to watch sports, not bullshit fake sympathy pieces designed solely to pull the heartstrings of credulous viewers.
ESPN doesn’t give one flying fuck about “tragedy”; they care about ratings. Which is exactly as it should be. But for fuck’s sake, don’t bald-facedly lie about.
There’s more than one possibility here, Amanda. Either:
A) there is no God,
B) there is a God but she/he/it doesn’t care what happens to human beings and therefore doesn’t really protect them from anything regardless of how hard they might pray,
C) there is a God, but this God can’t do anything to prevent these kinds of tragedies because this deity isn’t totally omnipotent as the Bible says,
D) some other explanation for why God might not get involved.
But regardless of whether or not God exists, one thing becomes very clear: we humans can’t count on being saved by any sort of divine intervention, and we should try to achieve our goals by ourselves instead of asking for help from something that may or may not exist and may or may not give two shits.
VT and similar events are terrible tragedies. Period. I don’t agree with the God aspects, but if it makes any of them feel better, okay.
The sports/God connection in general irritates- so many post-game interviews include the obligatory thanking God for the win. Bleah.
Just once, I’d love to see some glum player complain, “Oh yeah, WE would have won- except Jesus made me fumble!!”
But then who would they have to thank for their touchdown, interception, being named player of the game, TV time in general, their athletic “gifts,” etc?
Can you imagine the hilarity that would ensue were most of these D-1 athletes off-script (they’re apparently only allowed to greet their mothers and thank gawd) during their interviews?
“I think soccer would be more popular in America if more people could afford soccer balls. Then we could compete with the like such as Africa and Iraq to make the world better for our children.”
I like sports because it’s fun.
Go Irish! Beat Jackets!
Amen.
One incident in my youth that helped me make up my mind about cases like this was a plane crash, I forget where, that killed all but five or six of the people on board. The plane crashed at takeoff, and the pictures made it clear that most of the passengers must have burned alive in their seats. And of course, the TV news had one of the fortunate survivors, who was loudly proclaiming that God must have intervened to personally save his sorry ass. And I thought: but then, who left nearly everyone else on the plane to roast?
The omnipotent God of most Christians is the accessory before, during, and after the fact to every crime, sin, and tragedy that occurs. That they would then turn around and worship such a creature tells us a good deal about their moral foundations.
That’d be awesome, but as it’s UnAmerican to dis the Baybee Jeebus, it wouldn’t be allowed to air. Don’t want to aid our enemies or fail to support our troops!
Claiming that Jeebus allowed one American College football team to lose a game is an Al Quaeda plot, ya know!
But, but, but, don’t you SEE? It’s all PART OF GOD’S PLAN! We can never know the omnipotence and INFINITE LOVE GOD HAS FOR US!
If people died in some tragic and horrible way, they MUST HAVE HAD IT COMING! YEAH, THEY DESERVED IT, ‘CAUSE THEY DID SOMETHING BAD ONCE! THAT’S THE LOVING WAY GOD WORKS! FUCK UP ONCE AND YOU’RE TOAST!
…
One of my favorite moments in the old SF series Babylon 5 was when a character said something to the effect of: “I used to get angry at the horrible things that happen to good people - but then I realized how much worse it would be if God was just, and we really did deserve the horrible things that happen to us all. So, now I take great comfort in the randomness of violence of the universe.”
Of course, what’s really going on is the “Angels in the Outfield” meme: some poor kid is in the hospital, and Babe Ruth promises to hit a home run for him (or in Disney’s version - the angels help the Angels). Odd how nobody shows the poor kid in the OTHER team’s home town’s hospital, whose star player ALSO promised to win the game. Which kid deserves the win - and was it the other kid’s fault?
Magical thinking - giving us the illusion of control over the universe’s randomness.
“Odd how nobody shows the poor kid in the OTHER team’s home town’s hospital, whose star player ALSO promised to win the game.”
Hah!
“Well, Jimmy, I guess God just doesn’t like you very much…”
Just once, I’d love to see some glum player complain, “Oh yeah, WE would have won- except Jesus made me fumble!!”
The Lord giveth, and he taketh away. Next time, stiffarm the prick.
And in a fair and just sporting world, they would penealize for excessive praying (ya know, the mass huddle after a score) like they do excessive celebration.
Although uniformed players doing a mass Funky Chicken would be okay.
Oh I am SO glad it’s teh Football Season! My true religion since childhood. Now that MA Jeff has helped me with my little problem, this calls for an update.
Test.
Could there be a bigger idiot than Lee Corso? What a joke.
Just once, I’d love to see some glum player complain, “Oh yeah, WE would have won- except Jesus made me fumble!!”
Wish I could remember the name of the stand up comic who made about a five minute set out of that very idea. It was brilliant.
It’s George Carlin, who also gave the world the list of 7 words you can’t broadcast:
http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml
A truly twisted super-genius.
If there is a God, and if that God exercises any influence in the affairs of humans, then I imlore that God to visit plagues and afflictions of Biblical proportions on all the idiots on the planet that use TEH in any written or verbal communication.
Amanda, The Onion is way ahead of you: “Sports Unable To Heal Small Town Following Tragedy”
RepubAnon: some poor kid is in the hospital, and Babe Ruth promises to hit a home run for him
That was Lou Gehrig. Is it only those of us who grew up in the NY-metro area who saw “Pride of the Yankees” rebroadcast on TV at least once a year?
Teh-teh-teh… testing.
Nope. Still fine- no rashes, plagues, locusts or frogs, lightening strikes or unexpected visits from IRS or in-laws.
Try again!
Wish I could remember the name of the stand up comic who made about a five minute set out of that very idea. It was brilliant.
Dollars to donuts, David Cross. One of the few comics I’ve seen who isn’t afraid to declare really fucking clearly there is no god, and the very idea is stupid.
He’s also noted for “Larry the Cable Guy isn’t an idiot. He’s playing an idiot, because he thinks you’ll think it’s funny. He’s insulting you.”
One of the many reasons I’m an atheist, is that I find the dogma that my grandparents are in hell, or hungry ghosts to be sadistic beyond words.
If there is a God, and if that God exercises any influence in the affairs of humans, then I imlore that God to visit plagues and afflictions of Biblical proportions on all the idiots on the planet that use TEH in any written or verbal communication.
God is beyond teh ken of mortal men. His power is beyond teh infinite, as is his vision. Teh corruption of teh word “teh” is none of his concern, as teh English language has changed many times under his watchful eye. Teh bastardization of teh crummy language of a bunch of bland white people from an island off the coast of Europe has no part in teh divine plan.
Karpad, [polite golf applause]
I love watching the Olympics because teh sporting events are teh awesome, but oh how I want to throw a brick through my moron machine when those soft focus, tinkly piano music backed “Up Close and Personal” profiles come on. To hear about so and so’s horrible struggle against teh asthma when they were 7 and how they overcame that hideous burden is just wretch-inducing.
Years ago, after an NFL playoff game (sorry details about who and when are lost in teh mists of my pot-addled brain) one of the players said that he was sick before teh game, but he prayed, oh how he prayed! and thanks to God, he was able to climb off his deathbed AND his team won to advance. OK, standard boilerplate Xtian stuff. What made it offensive was that he clearly stated that teh injured player on the other team that would have made teh difference in the game wasn’t loved by God, otherwise God would have made *him* well too. Asshat.
Trot Nixon, in his Red Sux days, started babbling about teh Baybee Jaysus after a playoff game. On a British message board I go to, someone posted this: “Who is the godbotherer and why does he think God gives a damn about his game?”. I had to explain that by being a godbotherer, Nixon was getting a special advantage, that God would help him out simply because he believed. The reply: “Ah, praying as the equivalent of steroids, then”. Of course, Nixon would say that by believing, he shows teh Glory of God when he hits a HR to win a game.
By teh way, his name is Christopher, why would anyone willingly choose to be called Trot?
Oh geeze, guys come on. I don’t like the pushers or the fundamentalists as much as the next person…probably even more than the next person…..ALOT more than the next person, tbh.
But I prefer thanking God for the touchdown or grammy award (as ludicrously trivial as those things are [did anyone ever see that madtv skit?]) as opposed invoking the name of God for something wrong, evil, and/or henious.
I believe a relationship between a person and God is personal…so, let them believe, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.
From the Urban Dictionary: TEH
3.An expression used by idiots to helpfully identify themselves to other idiots.
Idiot 1: That’s awesome.
Idiot 2: Wait, what?
Idiot 1: Uh, I mean, that’s “TEH” awesome!
Idiot 2: Oh, thank god! For a second there I thought I wasn’t talking to another idiot!
Idiot 1: “PNWED”!
The TV is tuned to ESPN, and of course, they’re doing a sob piece grasping for some way to draw a connection between Virginia Tech’s football team playing football and the tragic shooting last spring.
Did the news “anchors” look wooden? Maybe wooden isn’t the right word for it.
How about plastic.
Practiced facial expressions. Practiced hand gestures. You just know they don’t give a shit. They have helmet hair. They could stand there in the middle of a tornado and their hair would stay just…fucking…perfect.
I’m Canadian and the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) ain’t what she used to be. But from a journalism standpoint there is not an American channel that even comes close.
I really, really hope your stance on what television producers should value doesn’t extend to news media. Or.. anything else, really. Sports, fine, who cares.
Arrested Development wouldn’t have been half as wonderful if the writers cared about catering to morons with cliche characters and lovey-dovey messages at the end of every episode. Despite winning too many awards to name, FOX dropped it because of low ratings, but since a group of people chose “brilliance” over “success” I get to enjoy the series on DVD any time I like.
..probably read too much into your comment. Point: ratings should be near-irrelevant.
Speaking of Arrested Development, two people have mentioned a David Cross bit upthread.. are you guys talking about the hyperbolic football announcer one? “And then he grew wings and ascended to heaven where he dined with the gods..”?
From the JackGoff Dictionary:
Pedant, n.
Didactic jerk who persists in making his or her objection to minuscule and inconsequential quirks or deviations from his/her set idea of correct behavior by portraying them as gross flaws of being, worthy of complete derision, and, in the worst cases, entry into states of eternal punishment. See also: asshole, prick, jackass.
Let’s try this again.
From the JackGoff Dictionary:
Pedant, n.
Didactic jerk who persists in making his or her objection to minuscule and inconsequential quirks, or deviations from his/her set idea of correct behavior, known by portraying them as gross flaws of being, worthy of complete derision, and, in the worst cases, entry into states of eternal punishment. See also: asshole, prick, jackass.
(more polite golf applause, this time for teh JackGoff dictionary)
(more polite golf applause, this time for teh JackGoff dictionary)
“One of the many reasons I’m an atheist, is that I find the dogma that my grandparents are in hell, or hungry ghosts to be sadistic beyond words.”
This seems like a really strange reason to be an atheist. That religious dogma paints what you perceive to be an unpleasant picture of reality is as irrelevant to that dogma’s truth as the fact that atheism paints what religious believers perceive to be an unpleasant picture of reality is to atheism’s truth.
Actually, PhysioProf, what CBrachyrhynchos said regarding grandparents, hell, and hungry ghosts made a lot of sense to me.
Whatever leads a person to the sanity of atheism is good…
This seems like a really strange reason to be an atheist.
It’s a good reason to find most religions repulsive, though. I’m not an atheist because I think Yahweh is a giant prick, but I feel very fortunate that I don’t believe in him.
“It’s a good reason to find most religions repulsive, though.”
Why? If religious scenarios of a vicious vengeful god who punishes your grandparents in hell were actually true, then the fact that religions accepted that reality wouldn’t make them repulsive. It would just make them realistic.
It is not the unpleasantness of the content of a religion’s delusional belief system that makes it repulsive. What is repulsive is that religion demands that people believe delusional bullshit in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Religions would be no less repulsive to the extent that their delusional belief systems were based on peace, love, and ponies for everyone.
PhysioProf - good point. Going in with the assumption that the absurdities of religion are false it’s easy to see them for the horrors they are. It’s deeply disturbing to realize that for the true believer these absurdities are objective truth - that absolute justice is no more than the dictates of a God who is often arbitrary, capricious, petulant, cruel, and vindictive. If you take that view as given it’s a lot easier to understand how someone could vote for Tom DeLay.
“Religions would be no less repulsive to the extent that their delusional belief systems were based on peace, love, and ponies for everyone.”
While I understand what you’re getting at, it’s pretty clear to me that the worst damage a “delusional belief system” causes is from the really harsh and negative concepts, not “peace, love, and ponies for everyone”.
Hell is scary, Heaven is comforting. Smiting is scary, love is soothing. Strict rule following under mortal threat is scary, understanding and compassion are reassuring, whether based on fairy tales or not…
PhysioProf, CBrachyrhynchos wrote that the grandparents in hell thing was only “one of many reasons” they are an atheist. So it need not be the sole and sufficient reason for atheism. However, to me it does make sense as one reason among others in building a case for atheism. I can’t speak for CB, of course, but when a system of thought suggests an outcome (grandparents roasting) that seems contrary to both experience and rational insight, well, it might be time to consider things from another perspective.
Go Irish! Beat Jackets!
Whoo-hoo-hoo, boy, did that not work out. And that Michigan game? How ’bout them apples.
Damn, Matt T, you totally took my lines!
Though I definitly giggled at Touchdown Jesus gazeing down all the losers on the field.
God love App St, and now Michigan. Eh, today at least…
*nods* Completely … I’m with MikeEss on this one, people come out of religion for a variety and a combination of reasons, and this certainly seems plausible to me.
And yeah, thank goodness for all of those reasons in whatever combination, as the world certainly could do with less religion.
Oh, and I am completely with Amanda on this post … I notice precisely the same thing whenever there is some tragedy, namely the assumption and virtually enforced religiosity of “dealing with it”. Couldn’t the remberences, the public events, be secular? Couldn’t the religious people keep their religion to themselves and do it privately? I’m been to rememberence ceremonies, and I am sick of being made to feel like I wasn’t fucking welcome, or even considered as a member of those there. Why is neutrality so hard?
And, of course, this then extends to those that would exploit it for ratings.
I’m a VT grad so I have to say my reaction today watching the game on ESPN was mixed. As stupid as it sounds, having your team do well after a tragedy does help. After all the digby reading I’ve done I’d probably caulk it up to some tribal thing. Religion also helps for many people, to a certain extent myself included.
That being said, I do have a problem with the marketing of the tragedy. I remember right after the shooting my sister went to a church service for former tech students and was hounded by reporters during the service. When you have people sit next to you in church, ask if they can interview you and they don’t give up when you say no there’s a problem. I think having GameDay at Tech today, and all the pre-coverage was on the verge of being morbid.
To the Iraq comments, Iraq is worse. I’m not denying that. But it’s like finding out that someone was killed down the street from you. Is that event worse or comparable to what’s going on in Iraq? No, but for whatever reason it does have a tendency to affect you more. Part of being a selfish human being I guess.
I’m not a very good writer, (which is why I normally don’t comment), and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings about this myself so I apologize if this is a bit disjointed.
I’m a VT grad so I have to say my reaction today watching the game on ESPN was mixed. As stupid as it sounds, having your team do well after a tragedy does help. After all the digby reading I’ve done I’d probably caulk it up to some tribal thing. Religion also helps for many people, to a certain extent myself included.
That being said, I do have a problem with the marketing of the tragedy. I remember right after the shooting my sister went to a church service for former tech students and was hounded by reporters during the service. When you have people sit next to you in church, ask if they can interview you and they don’t give up when you say no there’s a problem. I think having GameDay at Tech today, and all the pre-coverage was on the verge of being morbid.
To the Iraq comments, Iraq is worse. I’m not denying that. But it’s like finding out that someone was killed down the street from you. Is that event worse or comparable to what’s going on in Iraq? No, but for whatever reason it does have a tendency to affect you more. Part of being a selfish human being I guess.
I’m not a very good writer, (which is why I normally don’t comment), and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings about this myself so I apologize if this is a bit disjointed.
I’m a VT grad so I have to say my reaction today watching the game on ESPN was mixed. As stupid as it sounds, having your team do well after a tragedy does help. After all the digby reading I’ve done I’d probably caulk it up to some tribal thing. Religion also helps for many people, to a certain extent myself included.
That being said, I do have a problem with the marketing of the tragedy. I remember right after the shooting my sister went to a church service for former tech students and was hounded by reporters during the service. When you have people sit next to you in church, ask if they can interview you and they don’t give up when you say no there’s a problem. I think having GameDay at Tech today, and all the pre-coverage was on the verge of being morbid.
To the Iraq comments, Iraq is worse. I’m not denying that. But it’s like finding out that someone was killed down the street from you. Is that event worse or comparable to what’s going on in Iraq? No, but for whatever reason it does have a tendency to affect you more. Part of being a selfish human being I guess.
I’m not a very good writer, (which is why I normally don’t comment), and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings about this myself so I apologize if this is a bit disjointed.
” Hey Flanders, it’s no use praying. I already did the same thing, and we can’t BOTH win!”
— Homer Simpson, “Dead Putting Society'’
Events like this remind me of speed skater Dan Jansen–remember him? His sister was dying (or had just died, maybe), so he dedicated his race to her, to win it in her honor–and then he fell. In fact, he proceeded to fall in every race for the rest of that Olympics, *and* the one that followed. As I recall, he did eventually win, and the TV coverage was predictably saccharine, full of talk about “healing” and “redemption”; but I found myself wondering whether he was “healing” from the death of his sister, or from his own repeated public humiliation?
If there is a God, and if that God exercises any influence in the affairs of humans, then I imlore that God to visit plagues and afflictions of Biblical proportions on all the idiots on the planet that use TEH in any written or verbal communication.
That’s “implore”.
Phoenician’s Third Law: The chances of making a spelling error go up ten-fold if you’re flaming spelling errors.
Phoenician’s Fourth Law: You will notice a spelling error just AFTER hitting the “Blaspheme!” button.
Phoenician’s Addenda to the Fourth Law: And, no, hitting stop and attempting to correct it and post again will not work. Both of them will go through and you’ll just look like a bigger prat.
D) some other explanation for why God might not get involved.
“Have you ever considered the possibility that God does not like you, that He never wanted you, that in all probability He hates you?” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club (movie version).
“Have you ever considered the possibility that God does not like you, that He never wanted you, that in all probability He hates you?” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club (movie version).
ahh, I witnessed a similar quote: “So if there were a benevolent god, He would have prevented the Holocaust, right? The easiest way to do that really would be to have given Hitler that job as a painter, let him into art school. But god didn’t. Maybe God is benevolent, but a really, really big art lover, and didn’t want a mediocre hack with no sense of composition being a professional artist. God might just love art enough that killing millions of people was the lesser of two evils.”
If religious scenarios of a vicious vengeful god who punishes your grandparents in hell were actually true, then the fact that religions accepted that reality wouldn’t make them repulsive. It would just make them realistic.
The fact that they aren’t in fact true and originated solely in people’s fevered imaginations makes them especially repulsive. It takes a sick fuck to imagine that someone’s grandparents are roasting in hell, and to come up with that scenario with absolutely no help from reality. Peaceful, loving religious concepts are no less delusional than vicious ones, but they are less repulsive.
If a child talks to an imaginary friend, I find it charming. If an adult does it, I move to the back of the bus.
The hard atheist line that we absolutely know, as a fact no evidence could possibly controvert, that there cannot be a God or some such underlying spiritual integrity to the Cosmos, seems as extreme to me as a Thomist assertion that not only is God proven, but He is necessarily the conservative Catholic God. I have long suspected that any divine ultimate that may exist has deliberately seen to it that its existence can be neither proven nor disproven, but that’s just my guess. I’ve had ambiguous personal experiences that I chalk up to a leap of faith that there is indeed such a benign ultimate, and that in the end it will be well with all of us, that there will be justice, reconciliation, redemption of some kind, and everything will ultimately be justified. But that’s a faith claim and I recognize it as such.
It does seem to me that there is at any rate such a thing as justice and balance, and that we are groping toward a goal that is actually there, if only because someday we or some other intelligent beings in the universe will create it.
Lately I’ve been trying to formulate an ethic based on the integrity of all the things that have evolved in range of our current and projected knowledge.
The argument against God based on the miseries of our lives and those around us is a strong one; I often say that if the universe is “intelligently designed” it doesn’t look like the Designer would get decent grades for workmanship from any engineering school.
But we don’t know the whole story yet. I suspect that God is sitting back with popcorn, enjoying the spectacle of our struggles for existence and meaning.
Which is why I think there had better be redemption and reconciliation eventually, even if only in the final winding down of time.
Clearly, a lot of the evils that many people here are attributing to spiritual faith as such, on the grounds that such a faith is necessarily based on falsehoods, could better be traced back to the specific claims of the specific kinds of societies we are familiar with, which have characteristics that generate all sorts of paradoxes based on deception, to cover up the fact that these societies are based on routine moral evils–on the cultivation of a militaristic, violent ethos, systematic exploitation, and a whole set of bigotries, beginning with patriarchial misogyny and immediately branching out to homophobia, racism, and of course sectarian religious quarreling. The ultimate spirit of a dominator society is “team spirit,” the division between Us and Them and the definition of “good” as whatever favors Us against Them.
I suspect that if we could reconfigure our practices and thinking to banish this, we would find new insights into spiritual matters and new value in this human heritage; vice versa, explicit atheism or scrupulous agnosticism in the spirit of dominator society leads to the same kinds of logical absurdities, including reliance on the assumption of some kind of pre-defined categories of real things, rather than appreciation of how real things arise from processes and are never “purely” some pre-defined thing. At any rate, that kind of thinking prevails in reactionary ideology that is explicitly atheistic, often leading to a Straussian (or characteristically fascist) scheme to perpetuate authoritarian “faith” among the unenlightened masses while the worthy leaders hold themselves above such superstition.
The hard atheist line that we absolutely know, as a fact no evidence could possibly controvert, that there cannot be a God or some such underlying spiritual integrity to the Cosmos
Oh, please. If you find me an atheist who claims they wouldn’t believe in a god if there were solid, reliable evidence for it, I’ll give you a fucking cookie. Atheism is not the same as religion, no matter how much self-satisfied “agnostics” want to think it is.
To acknowledge that such a vicious, vengeful god existed would be realistic. To praise and worship such a god would be repulsive.
(Assuming, of course, that Brachy’s grandparents were good and decent people. If they were murderous sociopaths, then some version of hell might possibily be an appropriate afterlife for them.)
If someone’s child dies a painful and lingering death, is it repulsive for that person to seek comfort in the idea of heaven, and to believe that the kid has finally found peace and comfort? Repulsive? Really?
I vote. I teach my child that voting is important. The chance that either I or my child will ever materially influence the outcome of an election by voting is nil. One could argue persuasively that by suggesting that voting is a valuable way to spend one’s time on election day, I’m encouraging my child to believe delusional bullshit. Am I repulsive for taking my kid to the voting booth and letting her help me pull the levers?
We all take cognitive shortcuts. We all reach conclusions on insufficient evidence. For the vast majority of us — atheist or faithful — those shortcuts rise, in at some cases, to the level of belief in delusional bullshit. I don’t find that repulsive. I find it to be evidence of our limited capacities, and of our frailty, but I don’t find it repulsive. And yes, I do think it makes a huge difference whether we believe wrong things that lead us to behave generously and kindly or wrong things that lead us to behave viciously and cruelly. I won’t say it’s all the difference in the world, but it’s pretty damn close.
Brooklynite,
That’s the sort of insight that distinguishes pragmatic agnosticism from absolutism, and also, the latter is, I think, just as much an outcome of dominator patterns of thinking as dogmatic theism.
In the dominator paradigm, a hierarchial social order which substitutes force for inclusive persuasion is projected onto the whole universe; as below, so above, presumably. Thus there must be some ultimate patriarch in the sky who has arbitrarily, but by His command of ultimate force, rightly, made things Just So. In this context it makes sense to imagine that one can have grasp of ultimate, final truth; it requires only the favor of the hierarchy to be let in on the secrets. (To be sure, authoritarian power structures are generally riddled with conspiracy and deception; that’s how absolute monarchs, fascist dictators, and corporate bureacracies ran or run things, with conflicting, overlapping sub-baliwicks that only the Supreme Leader can resolve, thus compelling the subordinates to seek his favor and confounding factional conspiracies. Such anyway was the theory of absolute monarchy in the Hobbesian mode, that claimed that the monarch alone embodied the state and only he represented the will and good of the nation as a whole. As below, so above. But in principle the good monarch could confide his secrets to a sufficiently worthy subject.) So, in principle, can we fathom the secrets of the universe, and know them in a final sense. This is the Baconian paradigm of science; Francis Bacon wrote of torturing secrets out of Nature as inquistors would torture heretics (and, not to lose the gendered metaphor, suspected witches.)
But if in fact there is no such divine patriarch, if God either does not exist or is inherently beyond our metaphors, how will we ever know how close we have come to knowing everything that matters? A handful of sand from a beach could be made into glass by Bacon’s contemporaries; today we could make it into silicon chips or many other things; who knows what we don’t yet know about things we deal with every day, let alone things we have yet to glimpse at all? If there are no answers from the back of the book, what then?
And yet people who pride themselves in their hard-headed realism continue to carry over arguments and certainties without noticing their epistological bases have been left out.
Science, and human thought generally, is about problem-solving. We deal with the issues we find at hand, giving priority to what seems most pressing to us. I believe that ultimately every one of our theories and frameworks, no matter how elegant and how obviously sweeping in application, must give out sometime, someplace. But that does not mean they were worthless all along. Like everything else we have, they are tools in our hands, fit for the purposes they were designed for. Our future understandings might use them as structural members, or perhaps merely as scaffolding to build something quite different; we don’t know. Nor does it matter, if we are usefully solving problems today.
We can fairly beat up certain religious metaphors that clearly aren’t serving as well as they once may have done; we can denounce paradigms that obviously incorporated nasty elements from the beginning, even if in certain phases of history it seemed there was no alternative at the time. But it’s in the nature of being human, not so much our “frailty” as what we necessarily are, that we only approximate, and extrapolate jerry-rigged thoughts without solid logical underpinnings. Indeed, Godel proved that any system of logic with any interesting or broadly useful degree of complexity would necessarily either include undecidable propositions, or if these are patched with new axioms, reach contradictory conclusions–which is to say that logic is inherently unable to capture the full range of the experience of human beings interacting with the real world.
So yeah, I for one go on voting even when I am sure I won’t “win,” even knowing that just in California I’m one of 20 million or so potential voters and even in Sonoma County just one of hundreds of thousands. I vote even believing that the machinery (not just electronic ones; the whole system) is of questionable integrity, and to some degree has been my whole lifetime and in the entire history of our nation. I do it because I believe that our actions do matter and are accounted for in the end, without knowing how or by whom.
Also let us acknowledge the differnce between belief and religion. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Foxwell: “At any rate, that kind of thinking prevails in reactionary ideology that is explicitly atheistic, often leading to a Straussian (or characteristically fascist) scheme to perpetuate authoritarian ‘faith’ among the unenlightened masses while the worthy leaders hold themselves above such superstition.”
This sentence and the rest of your comment sound all learned and complicated and fancy, but let me ask you two questions.
(1) How many times in the history of mankind has atheism been used as a justification for fucking up huge numbers of people and huge amounts of their shit?
(2) How many times in the history of mankind has religious dogma been used as a justification for fucking up huge numbers of people and huge amounts of their shit?
Oh please, that’s bullshit.
Ockham’s Razor “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”, or more colloquially, “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one”.
What is more likely? That the universe game into being itself, or that some trickster deity brought it into being, yet purposefully did so in such a way that there is absolutely no evidence for such?
Do I have proof that there is no God? No, but the thing is, I don’t need proof to hold a negative proposition; it is those holding the affirmative that are required such. If some proof turned up, I’d be more than willing to change my position on things.
I really get sick of this sanctimonious agnostic bullshit equating atheism with belief. I don’t believe. This does not mean that I believe I do not believe; no, it means I simply do not believe.
Hell, I’d argue such equating from equivocating agnostics actually contributes to letting the negativity of religion to continue. To also letting the example that Amanda describes above continue.
I always thought this stuff was simple:
My magic is better than your magic, therefore you bow to ME!
being an athiest is more like wanting a real God, knowing you can’t percieve an ultimate even if there was one, and deciding that effort expended in conceptualizing a personal relationship at any level is a big waste of energy.
Agnostic people, somewheres in the back of their minds, are worried that some people’s magic might be REAL! They are always mindful of the status consequences to disbelief, so they always have a thick PB&J sandwich around to explain the mumbling….
Praise be The Mouse.
The meaning of this is really very simple. We have millions of mentally ill people who are not being recognized or treated. On top of this, our society has decided to let anybody who wants to, have a gun. Occasionally one of these units is at risk of breakdown. This has nothing to do with an existence of a creator, but is merely a consequence of free will. It’s not we should be crying about G-d; it’s G-d who is crying about us.
Religions would be no less repulsive to the extent that their delusional belief systems were based on peace, love, and ponies for everyone.
The problem is that Christianity teaches that god is love itself and that he created love, and he apparently expresses this love by torturing his creation. That’s why CBrach is not off, Physio. It’s the glaring contradiction that’s an issue, not the idea that god is or is not cruel. Some religions teach that the gods are capricious or indifferent, and at least they’re consistent. The Christianity that teaches that god tortures and god loves is especially cruel.
“The Christianity that teaches that god tortures and god loves is especially cruel.”
Yeah, I see what you are saying.
I guess for me, fooling people into believing a whole system of bullshit that actively prevents them from confronting the reality of human existence is really fucking cruel, no matter what that system of bullshit is. Score it a 10 on the PhysioProf cruelty scale.
If a particular system of bullshit contains intrinsic features that cause its believers extra misery, then I am willing to bump that score up a little bit. So in the case of a religion that tells people that an omnipotent creator loves them and shows that love by punishing the shit out of them, score it a 10.5.
And if a particular system of bullshit contains intrinsic features that cause its believers to suffer a little less misery, then I am willing to bump the score down a little bit. So in the case of a made-up “everyone gets ponies” religion, score it a 9.5.
Oh, and one other thing: TEH!, TEH!, TEH!
lolz
FWIW, I see a huge difference between “praying to win” and “praying for the strength and clarity and whatever else you need to do your very best.” I also see a big difference between “praying for perspective and guidance, and for the ability to forgive and love and heal” and “praying for outcome X.” I do think many Christians (and other theists) do know the difference. The problem is, it’s the fundie knob-heads who think G-d prefers them who have a compulsive need to flap their jaws about it; the ones for who it’s a Personal Thang tend to keep shtum because for them it’s, y’know, personal, not something they have to bang Duh Public over Duh Head with.
(And I love getting to hit the “Blaspheme” button on a Sunday morning in order to post this.)
“Fooling,” of course, suggests that the system is being maintained by people who don’t believe in it themselves. Religion isn’t transmitted from cynics to dupes, it’s built up — for the most part — by communities of believers.
And if a person can, through religion, come to be strengthened in his or her resolve to stand up to moral wrongs, or to fight addiction, or to let go of petty resentments in order to love more fully, would you really describe that person’s belief as something that keeps him or her from “confronting the reality of human existence”?
Most of the really profound questions of human existence are questions that science and philosophy offer no ultimate answers to. They’re questions that each of us has to grapple with, with the tools we have available. When Martin Luther King said that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” he wasn’t actively preventing his co-believers from confronting the reality of human existence, he was offering them sustenance in the struggle. Was that cruel? Was that an effort to hoodwink them? Was that bullshit?
Well, maybe not to the same degree, but basically yes.
For instance, progressive and/or liberal arguments made from a left-wing Christian perspective AREN’T something many of us really want to have a basis. Because, such arguments, at their core, are based on nothing more than “My God says so”, which since it is based on faith, has no more validity over the same justification for conservative arguments from a right-wing Christian argument.
Which then devolves into a theocratic argument based on which group knows their god better.
I would rather that they made their arguments from a secular, neutral, religion-free position. At least there were have a ground where we can make rational arguments for progressive causes.
So, sure, if someone can become a better person privately through religion, good for them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it via a method that means they aren’t really doing it on the basis of the reality of human existence, by definition.
Agnosticism is a word for tepid, polite atheists who don’t wanna hurt anyone’s feelers. Either you believe a posited representation of the world to be true, or you do not.
George Smith’s “Atheism: The Case Against God” demolishes the notion of “agnosticism” early on.
I understand the desire to call oneself an agnostic. Maybe, immersed in Christian culture, you lose yourself in thought now and then wondering “But.. what if? What if the Christians are right,” and have to go over all the reasons you know it’s nonsense to pacify your anxieties. But how often do you do the same for Islam? Or for the Greek myths? Never. You are 100% certain that these stories are nonsense. You are an atheist in regards to those gods.
It’s a perfectly reasonable position. How can one even be said to be an absolutist in regards to a lack of belief in that which has no evidence to support itself?
pls bear with me as I try to express myself.there are a lot of things that progressive and/or liberal stances that don’t have anything to do with “what God said”…however, a progressive and/or liberal can still believe in those while believing in God too, right?
Sarah, a few thoughts.
First, it’s certainly possible to believe in god and not rely on “my God says so” as the ultimate answer to all political and moral questions. I have moral and ethical debates with my liberal Catholic family members all the time, and they never pull out Jesus as a trump card. It just never comes up.
Second, it’s not clear to me that a person who has arrived at (for example) the moral conclusion that we have an obligation to help those in need through an atheist route necessarily has a firmer basis for challenging someone who disagrees with that proposition than someone who’s arrived at the same conclusion by a religious path. I don’t know that I’d consider my sense of my moral obligations to be wholly rational, even though they’re not grounded in religion — see my discussion of voting in an earlier comment.
And third, I think it’s important to be clear on what we mean by “confronting the reality of human existence.” For me, scientific knowledge is primarily a means to human (and planetary) betterment, not an end in itself. If one person is grappling with profound moral questions and working hard to do good in the world while another is so wrapped up in some abstruse scientific problem that he or she ignores his or her moral obligations, it’s not clear to me that the second person is the one who’s “confronting the reality of human existence.” It’s even less clear that the second person is leading a more worthy life.
If religious faith helps you to find ways to lessen others suffering, and it drives you to do so at real cost to your own material comfort, then yes, I think it’s helping you to “confront the reality of human existence,” because for me the reality of human existence is that there is a huge amount of pain in the world, and we each have an obligation to do what we can to reduce it.
Roxie -
Of course they can. It’s just not a good basis for a social movement, is my argument. Regardless of my feelings on faith and/or religion, I’m not going to tell you what to personally and privately believe.
Brooklynite -
I think you may need to read what I wrote again.
I did not say that arguing from a secular basis and belief in some deity are mutually exclusive. Rather, I said that to base liberal-progressive arguments on the wants of some deity is a Bad Idea.
And I do think that someone coming from a secular position has a more rational argument basis, given all is held equal, than someone that came to it from the position of faith. Because the former is basing their motivation on the particulars of the situation, whereas someone coming from faith isn’t, if their basis for that action is merely their faith.
As has been shown here before, if all that is stopping someone from killing another person is because their “god says so”, that fundamentally SCARES me. Because all it takes is a change in theocratic position, regardless of particulars of the situation, for their mind to change.
Again, as I said above this does not preclude a person of faith from arguing from a secular position.
Does that mean that all atheists are the most rational of people, and not acting on internal prejudices, etc? Or that people of faith are by definition irrational? No. But given everything, I’ll stand by the assertion of secular arguments for progressivism being fundamentally better than those coming from faith.
Like to add to my last comment:
There doesn’t seem to be anything outright wrong or dangerous about belief in a creator/god that has no personal interest in the human species or in the planet Earth. But, of course, once you distance it that far from any relevance, there’s no point in actively believing it.
I think you’re misunderstanding the role of religious belief in many Christians’ moral intution.
I believe that we all, as people, have a responsibility to be kind to each other. My wife, a Catholic, believes the same thing. Each of us was taught this principle as a child, and each of us has a mix of rational and non-rational reasons for sticking with it.
My wife would say that her belief in the importance of kindness is “made from a left-wing Christian perspective,” because she firmly believes that kindness is something God approves of. But her belief in the moral importance of kindness isn’t merely a matter of adherence to dogma — her moral intuition and her Christianity are intermingled, and it doesn’t make any sense to talk about which one is the basis for the other.
Certainly my moral intuition is secular in a way that hers isn’t. But it’s not clear to me at all that it’s more rational as a result, or more grounded in the particulars of any situation we may be discussing.
Then we may politely agree to disagree.
If it were merely a matter of private belief, then we wouldn’t be trying to save this planet from theologically based disaster, whether Christian or otherwise. The accident of location and birth are not a basis for the solidity of a particular belief, nor is it an appropriate basis for an enlightened social movement of diversity, or any real movement.
Thats is just so true!
Its that bunch of Virginia Tech KKK supporters who caued the massascre in in the first place! If there wasn’t a bunch of gun toting pinkie football playing rednecks then he never could have obtained the guns, nor would he have feld the need to use them!
Isn;t that obvious?
Some of what has been addressed here is so personal and so devasting that it would only be fair to respect what these people have experienced. VT was a wake-up call to everyone from college administrators to those who have been or are a part of any college campus.
The question we should be addressing how records can be better accessed to insure the mentally ill get the treatment they need and who has the right to view and act on those records.
As far as GOD, remember he has given “free will” to man. Man acts upon that free will with every decision.
PhysioProf argued that horror at idea of good people being tormented eternally is a bad reason to be an atheist. I’m not so sure.
You could treat the conclusion that good people are being tortured forever as a reductio ad absurdem.
Religions purport to be about justice, not just natural facts. Christianity teaches that the unsaved go to hell because they deserve to. We’re not supposed to think that damnation is just an unfortunate brute fact about the universe.
There’s just no way that decent, fallible human beings deserve eternal torment for not believing in God. That conclusion goes against our most deeply-held intuitions about justice and morality. Just punishments are for bad behavior. Besides, just punishments must fit the crime. According to the legend, we’re given free will, limited
(continued)
According to the legend, we’re given free will, limited cognitive ability, an inborn disposition to sin, and a very finite lifespan. Allegedly, if we don’t “get” the god thing in the limited time we have, we are punished eternally, no matter how many good things we do. That’s not justice. Any religious doctrine insists that this is justice is fundamentally defective.
Granted, you can acknowledge the reduction and still believe in God. Lots of people try to revise the theology, or become agnostics. Still, rejecting the whole religion isn’t unreasonable, given the ridiculousness of the afterlife thing. If your main reason for believing in God in the first place was because you trusted the theologians, then rejecting the religion means rejecting your justification for believing in God.
Agnosticism is a word for tepid, polite atheists who don’t wanna hurt anyone’s feelers. Either you believe a posited representation of the world to be true, or you do not.
Rubbish. I’m agnostic.
I’m agnostic because there is insufficient evidence to apply Occam’s Razor to the universe as a whole. We do not have enough evidence to state that it is more “probable” that the universe Big Banged itself into existence without help than with help. Our experience is with objects within the causal scheme; we don’t know enough about the universe as a whole to even begin to make meaningful statements about causality.
I am, however, an extremely sceptical agnostic. I believe that any God is highly improbable, and leads to the “turtles” argument. I believe the Christian idea of God is inconsistent and obviously an emotional response to human needs rather than a statement of evidence.
I am intellectually a sceptical agnostic. I am functionally an atheist. This means I get beat up by theocrats who can’t stand dissent and reactionary StridentAtheists(tm) enamoured with their own adolescent casuistry.
Fortunately, I can deal with both with one frontal lobe tied behind my back.
Lindsay, the idea that the unfaithful are damned to hell is one that — in America at least — seems to have a lot more support among church leaders than to rank-and-file congregants.
In recent years, polls have found that 70% of Americans believe that it’s possible for people of different faiths than their own to be admitted to heaven, that 60% believe it’s possible to earn salvation through good works, and that 44% believe that even atheists may get into heaven if they’re good people.
The specter of a jealous God who’ll damn you to hell if you don’t worship him the right way has obvious appeal to ecclesiastical authorities, but it’s an article of faith that a lot of Americans are quietly rejecting.
I find it amusing that received wisdom is something that’s put up to a popular vote. If god throws people in hell for not believing, he does it even if his believers don’t really like it, right?
Phoenician wrote:
I don’t see why “knowing the universe as a whole” has to be the necessary standard of evidence for atheism. In fact, I’d say turning away from such an impossible standard is an essential step in atheism. Why should it require absolute proof, one way or another, to believe or disbelieve? There are a lot of things we may not be able to prove absolutely, but about which we can still make meaningful belief statements. Take your example of causality. We may or may not be able to say anything definitive about it, but we can in fact make plenty of meaningful statements about it (cf. science). And the fact that we can make such meaningful statements greatly influences our lives and behavior. Which I guess is sort of a roundabout (and probably not very clear) way of claiming that agnosticism asks the wrong question. We shouldn’t ask, can God definitively be proved or disproved? By definition, that’s more or less unanswerable and, like a lot of existential-type questions, runs into nasty problems in the argument. Rather, treat God like causality, that is, as one proposition among others. Given experience, history and reason, we have good grounds for claiming the existence of causality. And for God?
Also, if you have one frontal lobe tied behind your back, I’d suggest a looser cap!
I find the idea that one person or group of people can decide the meaning of words hilarious.
“I defined it first, and so-and-so agrees with me, so neener neener!” What the fuck ever.
I don’t see why “knowing the universe as a whole” has to be the necessary standard of evidence for atheism.
Because the question about atheism over agnosticism is a statement about the universe as a whole. I do not believe our experience within the universe necessarily translates into being able to make any valid statement about the universe as a whole, including its origins. I state that we lack the ability to make any such statement, while regarding atheism as a more accurate heuristic.
You might want to see John Fowles’ _The Aristos_ for a look at how a theist reached a similiar stance.
In fact, I’d say turning away from such an impossible standard is an essential step in atheism. Why should it require absolute proof, one way or another, to believe or disbelieve?
Because that’s what choosing atheism over agnosticism is - a statement about the acceptable standard of proof. I am agnostic because I don’t know, because I acknowledge I don’t know, and because I believe it is impossible to actually know in the sense of extrapolating from experience with regards this question. i suspend an ability to make judgement and am thus intellectually agnostic at the same time I adopt a practically atheist stance.
Take your example of causality. We may or may not be able to say anything definitive about it, but we can in fact make plenty of meaningful statements about it (cf. science).
No, we make meaningful statements about causality within a given context, the universe as a whole. To extrapolate that to make a statement about that context itself is an unjustified step.
Consider an analogy - every point on Earth save one has a point which is south of it. What is south of the Earth as a whole?
Uh…have you been living in or near the United States during the past 6 or so years? The freest nation in the world has been groping toward fascism and profiteering for the rich at the expense of everyone else. It’s hard to believe how far from justice and balance this country has fallen or that how just a few men could cause such a horrid change in the very nature of a nation.
In America’s youth, it was easy to believe in progress and that humanity was moving toward something better, but now in our ugly adolescence, it’s becoming clear that freedom and justice are ephemeral dreams. We can choose to make them reality, but there’s no such thing as inevitable progress.
There are no answers. The only answers are those we make ourselves. We take what we observe in fact and in dream and make our reality.
Even from a religious point of view that’s dogma–free will means nothing’s written in stone, that there is no ‘back of the book’.
Determinism has always seemed to be the most unjust of religious belief to me. It’s adherents are always quick to say they are the Redeemed and the Chosen and the rest of the world is damned, and they seem to revel in their fellow humans’ damned fates. Those are the folks with the answers and the book.
Really ugly.
“I’m agnostic because there is insufficient evidence to apply Occam’s Razor to the universe as a whole. We do not have enough evidence to state that it is more “probable” that the universe Big Banged itself into existence without help than with help.”
“The universe came into being like this” is simpler than “The universe came into being like this because a magical being made it happen”. There, Occam’s Razor.
I guess I think of it the other way around, Amanda.
Let’s start from the premises that liberal Christians tend to start from — that God exists, that there is an afterlife, and that the Bible is an imperfect human record of divine events.
The historical/political reasons for churches to emphasize faith through salvation are obvious — if you don’t need faith, you don’t need the church, and if you don’t need a particular catechism, then one church is as good as the next. So the idea that you can only be saved by worshipping God in a particular way could easily be a human invention.
As Lindsay has noted, moreover, the idea is a bit dicey from a theological perspective — it suggests that God is capricious, vengeful, and jealous.
So a liberal Christian could well conclude — and many liberal Christians, including some prominent theologians, have concluded — that the idea is a human error, not a divine revelation.
It’s not a matter of believers disregarding God’s will, but — from their perspective — of them coming to a better, more thoughtful understanding of God’s will than their ancestors were able to attain.
It’s a little like the “living Constitution” approach to legal theory.
“The universe came into being like this” is simpler than “The universe came into being like this because a magical being made it happen”. There, Occam’s Razor.
Like what?
And define, for the sake of argument “came into being” and “made it happen”…
All this “agnosticism versus atheism” talk is nonsense.
Atheism is nothing more than the attitude that unless you have been presented with evidence that some entity exists, it makes the most sense to conclude that it doesn’t exist. And when the entity is of the sort for which a huge amount of evidence should have already presented itself if the entity exists as it is described, then that conclusion has a lot of weight.
No reasonable atheist thinks he has proof that there is no god. He simply believes that it is unreasonable to conclude, given what we know, that there is a god. And most atheists believe further that, given what we know about how the universe works and what the properties are that god is described as having, it is *extremely* unreasonable to conclude that there is a god.
Atheism is no deeper or more complicated than is the decision to not believe in leprechauns.
Phoenician hon -
You are being a tad obstinate … it IS possible to use Ockham’s Razor on the issue of whether a supreme being created the universe. Namely, which is more complex a concept? That the universe came into being by itself, or that some deity created it, but made it appear that it had had no hand in such?
If we take “came into being” as undefined, yet matched in each case, the far more complex solution is the latter. Hence, Ockham’s Razor. The postulation does not require the evidence you seem to think it needs.
Furthermore, you seem to be concluding that atheism is some positive affirmation in there being no god. That we somehow believe that we do not believe. This is bull-pucky. It is up to those that would posit the existence of some deity to provide such evidence. As there is no such, the only logic conclusion is to fall back on the base position; that there is no god. This is not belief.
Oh, please. If you find me an atheist who claims they wouldn’t believe in a god if there were solid, reliable evidence for it, I’ll give you a fucking cookie. Atheism is not the same as religion, no matter how much self-satisfied “agnostics” want to think it is.
To be fair, I have seen exactly that. if in a work of fiction. in DC Comics, a man named Michael Holt, Olympic Athelete, the third smartest man in the world (the first two are also atheist or irreligious at least, butare less philosophical about it), and commander of a massive, non-corrupt UN Military Black Ops agency. He’s on a first name basis with a man who used to be the embodiment of the old testament vengeful god. He has data files on honest-to-god angels, and he explained his atheism at a funeral service shortly before an honest-to-god Demon stood up and gave a eulogy. He knows magic is real, he knows people who have come back from the dead through actual divine magic.
He also doesn’t think it’s worth relying on, that it’s spotty, ineffective, and could have a scientific explanation if presented in a lab for proper study. Which kind of makes sense, since the most powerful creature in the universe is another guy he’s on a first name basis with, and he got that way through a weird combination of luck, genetic engineering, and old fashioned evolution.
But I can still call myself an agnostic, with a full understanding of what I personally mean by that phrase, and why I have chose it and not atheist. And I have no use for people telling me that I am wrong for doing so. I do not have the same semantic approach as they do.
I’ll give you a fucking cookie. Atheism is not the same as religion, no matter how much self-satisfied “agnostics” want to think it is.
And FUCK the idea that I’m “self-satisfied” simply because I don’t use the correct term to your exact specifications and liking. I’ve never told an atheist that they have a religion. I’ve thought in the past that maybe atheism is unprovable, but I understand and agree with arguments against that idea. The need to prove atheism is nonexistent. The burden of proof lies in those making extraordinary claims that rely on faith and not fact.
I still choose “agnostic” for my own descriptor. I’m sorry if people have a problem with that.
“But I can still call myself an agnostic, with a full understanding of what I personally mean by that phrase, and why I have chose it and not atheist.”
What do you mean by it? You haven’t said.
What do you mean by it? You haven’t said.
I mean that I personally have no clue, nor do I care, about the presence or absence of a deity. You may define this how you will, and you may call me what you will, but I am personally an agnostic person, despite whatever definition you think trumps my own personal choice of labels. It’s just a label, in the end.
“I mean that I personally have no clue, nor do I care, about the presence or absence of a deity.”
Do you feel any different about deities than you do about leprechauns?
Nope, as I have the same evidence for both. Doesn’t really change much, though. Some people could say leprechauns are deities, as well as unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot.
Hence the more important “don’t care” part. The timecube guy, now he’s funny. But I have no care whatsoever in the validity of his stupidity.
Phoenician, I do of course see what you’re saying about context and within/without the whole and such. And I’m not arguing about the unproveableness of propositions that are, by definition, unproveable - I probably should have stated that more clearly. My point is that the atheist’s standard of evidence is indeed reasonable itself. That is, atheism is a sensible position to take if you treat God as one proposition among others, subject to the same rational criticism we usually direct elsewhere. Or, basically, kinda what PhysioProf said at 90. If you like, that does mean that atheism adheres to a standard of evidence within the context of the whole or whatever. However - and this is probably where you and I differ the most - this is not just a nifty heuristic, because that context is the only one that really makes any sense here, I think. To that end, I’d ask, where should agnosticism stop? Does it apply only to God stuff, or to other stuff as well? For instance, take our old friend causality (again). Do you take the stance that intellectually, causality remains unproven absolutely, but practically, it works? Because it seems to me that that question satisfies the same criterion you stipulated for agnosticism, namely, that it’s a pretty much unanswerable question about how the universe as a whole is constructed. And really, you could take just about any question about experience in general and turn it into a constitutive, universe-as-a-whole-type question. Is my perception accurate, or just a perception? According to the definition of agnosticism you laid out, I think you’d have to intellectually suspend judgment there. And in that case, such an agnosticism isn’t really all that different from radical, brains-in-vats-type skepticism, albeit of the high-functioning kind. Maybe they put a nutrient bath in those vats or something.
(c’mon, please format correctly)
That is, atheism is a sensible position to take if you treat God as one proposition among others, subject to the same rational criticism we usually direct elsewhere.
God, in the sense of “the origin of the universe”, isn’t a proposition among others. It’s a question about the context within which our experience is derived, and as such the lessons of said experience cannot be extrapolated to cover it.
Do I think there is a Big Guy With A Beard who has an inordinate interest in my lack of a) sex life? No. Do I think the universe was created? I dunno. My position is that questions of this nature are unable to be meaningfully stated - what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. Thus I am agnostic.
I could attempt to bluff by bringing in Kant here, but quite frankly the man puts me to sleep. Life is too short.
You are being a tad obstinate
A tad? I’m wounded - being obstinate is my life. I can be persuaded from positions I have thought on - but not casually.
… it IS possible to use Ockham’s Razor on the issue of whether a supreme being created the universe. Namely, which is more complex a concept? That the universe came into being by itself, or that some deity created it, but made it appear that it had had no hand in such?
And here comes the million dollar question, Sarah - how much experience of universes do you have on which to make that assertion? Your experience comes embedded within a particular framework; it does not necessarily apply to the framework itself.
And as regards leprechauns - the definition of “leprechaun” contains certain truth claims that can be evaluated and assessed, as does the definition of “God” under Christianity. Both are highly unlikely based on the evidence associated with those truth claims - but that has nothing to do with the origin of the universe save as the Christians attach their Big Sky Fairy myth to that origin.
Jackgoff:
I think the word you’re looking for is apatheist. It’s a word that i’ve learned recently, and i think it describes me–and the beliefs that you state here–quite well.
Obviously, i could be wrong…
I still choose “agnostic” for my own descriptor. I’m sorry if people have a problem with that.
all well and good, Jack. Unfortunately I for one have personally encountered more than a handful of agnostics who don’t just apply Agnostic to themselves as a conclusion they reach, but define it as “the only one rational people could take, because to reject something which by its nature cannot be proven is irrational.” This includes people who have told me atheism is IMPOSSIBLE.
These people are incredibly irritating. There are myriad reasons for rejecting the possibility outright, from “they’re no evidence for it at all” to my personal reason “It grants validity to anyone that makes an affirmative claim that god exists. Agnosticism is the equivalent of granting “fair and balanced” airtime to people that claim they were abducted by UFOs under the command of Elvis”
Theism itself is a relic of the development of human civilization, and says nothing about the fundamental nature of the universe.
we aren’t just making up these self-satisfied agnostics. they exist, they’re infuriating, and they’re a celebration of ignorance. Anyone raised in a religious setting can’t become atheist without first doing a hell of a lot of reflection, on reality, their mind, and the world around them. It isn’t easy, not by a long shot. These smug agnostics don’t think about it. They really are part of the problem, the same way people who ignore racist jokes or who buy Girls Gone Wild DVDs are a part of the problem, even if they’re making superficial nods to equality.
clarification: not you, again, you made quite clear you’re speaking for your own beliefs and aren’t up on the smug better-than-atheists vibe. Atheism isn’t hard to defend, nor is Agnosticism, as both amount to “The existence of divinity is an outrageous claim needing outrageous proof.” atheism simply follows up with “I will not entertain such a hypothesis until you have even a modecum of evidence, anymore than I would entertain claims of the existence of dragons.”
Phoenician: Too late, I see your Kant and raise you, um, some more Kant. Somewhere in the first Critique (the Paralogisms? the Antinomies? Whatever, I’m not looking it up), Kant does tackle propositions like these - origins of the world, physical necessity, free will and so on, noting that you can come up with logical and mutually contradictory answers for all. If I remember correctly (which I probably don’t), Kant’s response to this dilemma revolves around splitting off the arguments and claiming that they belong to different (phenomenal and noumenal) realms, and are therefore not actually contradictory. The same proposition can logically be seen from multiple aspects. I’d suggest we can make a sort of analogous move here, since God has this odd quality of both creating and being a part of the universe (unless you’re dealing with a sense of the universe as something other than totality). So God-as-creator can be seen as a constitutive or structural proposition, and thus lay beyond definitive proof. Though if we take this in its strictest form (which I think is what you’re suggesting), there’s not really a lot of content behind the concept - sort of like the noumenon, wherein God is minimal and more or less completely unknowable. That would be grounds for agnosticism. On the other hand, God-as-creator, I would maintain, can also be viewed as one proposition among others, in that it implies action, causation, presence, absence and a whole host of other things that take place within the world. And we do in fact have a good vocabulary for dealing with stuff like that - evidence, argument, criticism and so on. I’m probably butchering Kant here, but I’m too hopped up on green tea to care at this point. Anyway, point being that there probably should be kind of a lot of evidence for such, as PhysioProf and Sarah in Chicago pointed out in 90 and 91. Lacking such evidence, this would be grounds for atheism. Put another way, just because God may or may not lay beyond direct or ostensive proof does not by itself entail that there be no evidence of creation. So I would say that the question depends on which standard of evidence you choose or find most compelling.
Also, I still don’t see how your definition of agnosticism is much different from radical skepticism, which is one thing Kant was definitely trying to ward off. If you really do intellectually suspend judgment on all constitutive or structural propositions, then it seems to me you’re pretty much logically obligated to believe in brains-in-vats grade skepticism. I’m gonna have to stick with the notions that the world is the case, and that the world is all that is the case!
Totally agree about Kant’s powerfully soporific effect though. The man was duller than Erik Satie’s Vexations.
Oh, I see what you’re saying, Brooklyn, but my straight-up anti-authoritarian attitude makes me feel that the proper reaction to realizing that authority is selling you a bill of goods with religion is to abandon religion completely, instead of try to modify it to make it easier on your conscience.
Amanda,
My own personal experience is that while my personal bullshit detectors went off in childhood, long before I felt free to articulate what they were telling me, re the authoritarian agenda of Christianity, nevertheless I retain an authentic faith in some kind of transcendent moral order to which we and all observable reality belong. Therefore I reject dogmas and criticize my personal perceptions and the actions of even the best faith-based communities ruthlessly, but I feel it is too sweeping to assume that the human experience of religiousity is completely without any merit.
But I freely concede this may indeed be a species of moral cowardice on my part (though that isn’t how I experience it), and I certainly honor and respect the gumption of atheists like yourself. Certainly there are a lot of them in my UU congregation!
I’m confident and comfortable where I stand on this, and it looks to me like y’all have the same confidence, and so I don’t see the need for conflict.
Amanda, the Catholics I know tend to be people who are extremely skeptical of the church hierarchy, and frustrated by its craven and reactionary tendencies. But they believe strongly in the principles that the church, in its compromised way, represents, and they believe in the power and the potential of the community of people who are engaged with it. And so they stay. They accept some things grudgingly, they work to change others, they maintain a critical relationship with the church, but they stay. Some get completely fed up and leave, but others stay.
On the other hand, the Democrats I know tend to be people who are extremely skeptical of the party hierarchy, and frustrated by its craven and reactionary tendencies. But they believe strongly in the principles that the party, in its compromised way, represents, and they believe in the power and the potential of the community of people who are engaged with it. And so they stay. They accept some things grudgingly, they work to change others, they maintain a critical relationship with the party, but they stay. Some get completely fed up and leave, but others stay.
Brooklynite,
I’m attending a Catholic university for my PhD. Never been to anything other than a state school before and never really thought about catholicism. Attending this school, particularly with the Boston Archdiocese officed (formerly) across the street, has shown my what a completely morally corrupt and bankrupt institution the church is. Not the people in the pews, but the formal organization.
I feel sorry for the deluded.
Brooklynite,
Of course the analogy breaks down because one can be spiritually independent and free-thinking (without necessarily being an atheist) and refuse to adhere to any particular creed, whereas in politics it is inherently necessary to form explicit alliances to be at all effective.
Now, in my personal experience, community as such seems to be part of valid and necessary spiritual practice, for me anyway, as a human being, therefore I have sought out and afilliated with a particular community–albeit one that prides itself on diversity, inclusiveness, and includes many explicit atheists.
As a person raised as a Catholic, a snobbishly reactionary Catholic at that (and don’t think I didn’t pay painful prices for my pride!) I fully understand the power of “cultural Catholicism.” The committment to community is one of that creeds better features. On perhaps the dark side of it, becoming any kind of Protestant was unthinkable for me; in rejecting Catholic dogma I rejected Christianity itself, and that’s where matters rest for me now. I know lots of great Christians (notably at United Church of Christ congregations) but I am not one of them, because I don’t think the traditions and revelations of the Christian tradition have any special merit versus the many other traditions.
This heretical perspective of mine actually began many years before I left high school, home, and attendence to the Sacraments, when I reflected on all the billions of people forming the vast majority of humanity through history, who had indeed heard plenty of the “Good News” of Jesus and yet were not Christian; what, was I supposed to believe they were damned? Well, no, said my post-Vatican II religious education, but still we were supposed to believe Christian–specifically Catholic–tradition was somehow inherently better or safer or something. After that, my adherence was really a matter of social conformity.
Inkybrain: “If you really do intellectually suspend judgment on all constitutive or structural propositions, then it seems to me you’re pretty much logically obligated to believe in brains-in-vats grade skepticism.”
Yeah, what Inkybrain said.
Yes, you can have a spiritual life without participating in formal religious practice, but you can also work for social change without participating in electoral politics.
I know plenty of people who think that the two-party system is so corrupt that it’s a delusion and a sham to participate in it in any way. I agree with MAJeff that the Catholic church is, as an institution, more corrupt than the Democratic party, but there are lots of folks who’d say that both are irredeemable.
I thought this thread would be about bringing us together in the great and heart-swelling cause of hating ESPN and all its works!
Instead we’re fighting about shades of unbelief. Why, I believe that spending any amount of time listening to Lee Corso (Who, as to the theology of a just universe, was once hit in the head with a full plastic cup of beer when doing gameday live from East Lansing) can unite aroudn dislike for him?
The VA Tech passion play this Saturday was crap. And it wasn’t crap for sports fans. King Kaufman makes this point very often, which is that ESPN and Fox don’t cater to people who really like sports and are going to watch the games. They’re catering to the people who’ll tune in if somethign other than a football game is going on. When the networks openly angle for those viewers, it always sucks. Jim Rome doesn’t want to talk about zone defense, he wants to blather, whine impotently, get his ass rimmed by his callers and pretend to be a tough guy. Monday night football spent last year bringing bored celebrities into the booth to talk over the game.
[Monday night football spent last year bringing bored celebrities into the booth to talk over the game.]
MNF has made some truly inspired bad choices over the years, including Dennis Miller, and now the “which is the big football night- Sunday or Monday?” debacle.
Gonna go with listening to Coach Madden, every time.
I really hate dragging on an argument with people who truly understand the subject exactly the same as I do. You’re all very smart, and I see your reasons for choosing the word. But I just.. I really think it matters, that its important. The term “atheist” has a lot of punch, and our particular society needs it.
“Agnostic” has a mood of indifference to it. It doesn’t encourage a conversational intolerance to nonsense.
You even admitted:
If you function as an atheist, then you’re an atheist. You are without the requisite belief to be a theist.. that’s as simple as it is!
I am a a agnostically apathetic, I don’t know and I don’t care.
Well, okay technically, I am agnostically apthetic, with a pagan lemon twist.
In other words, I don’t know, I don’t care, but it sure is fun dancing around a bonfire and finding a partner to “act out” folkloric Beltane rituals come springtime.
And, now that I think about it, agnostically apathetic with a pagan twist needs to be made into a drink, to be sipped while watching religious dicussions.
I’ll let you know what I come with, perhaps a recipe or two will be posted next time religion comes up.
I wish that just once during one of these sob pieces trying to create a relationship between a sporting event and some senseless tragedy, someone would say
The Pat Tillman memorial service, carried live on ESPN, came close. Rich Tillman went off-script: “Just make no mistake, he’d want me to say this: He’s not with God. He’s fucking dead. He’s not religious. So, thanks for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”
I think Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus summed that one up:
pseudonymous, I love the Pat Tillman story. What a perfect figure to happen to be an atheist.
Which isn’t to say that I’m glad he died, or think that his life wasn’t anything but tragic and his decisions somewhat honorable.
It stands well next to the newly-revealed Mother Theresa diaries revealing that she was hardly certain about her beliefs. Its astonishing to see how attitudes on universally-lauded heroes change after discovering they refused to accept religious claims as reality.
“Agnostic” has a mood of indifference to it.
“A-gnostic” = “without knowledge”. I don’t know, and I am aware that I am ignorant. Further, I do not know that the heuristics we use in normal circumstances (such as Occam’s Razor) apply for this question - I am aware of my own ignorance here, which others don’t seem to appreciate fully.
It doesn’t encourage a conversational intolerance to nonsense.
Not at all. Any claim beyond “I don’t know” is a truth claim that can be assessed; I’ve spent long and enjoyable hours tormenting people who believed in revealed religion without considering the contradictions in their claims (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent - choose any two…)
“I am intellectually a sceptical agnostic. I am functionally an atheist.”
If you function as an atheist, then you’re an atheist.
Nope - only functionally so. Consider me in the position of someone voting for a Democrat when they’d really prefer a Green candidate.
You are without the requisite belief to be a theist.. that’s as simple as it is!
You are without knowledge as much as me; does that make you agnostic?
Sorry, but agnosticism is a respectable third position to theism and atheism, despite the smug claims that we’re wishy-washy. Some might be; I’m agnostic because I’ve considered it and come to the conclusion that the “existence of God”, while not likely, is something that can’t be assessed by our normal experience, and thus I am confronted with the simple fact of my continuing ignorance. I must remain true to myself.
It doesn’t encourage a conversational intolerance to nonsense.
Really? Ask some of my Jewish and Catholic friends sometime about how much they hate conversing religion around me. Particularly the part where I repeatedly ask them to define God in a manner that does not use the impossibility of a definition as a trump card. But then, I supposed I could say I’m the asshole agnostic. The guy who really wants to find a valid answer but also knows that the question was horseshit in the first place.
Karpad - I think Jack was responding more to the (more common) phenomenon of agnostics getting attacked from both sides, by theists for being un-believers but possibly convertable, and by atheists, for not not-believing hard enough.
But how often do you do the same for Islam? Or for the Greek myths?
Seems a pretty big leap to assume that I don’t. In fact, I think many of the old-school polytheistic beliefs make more sense than the Christian god, and therefore might be more likely to be right.
If I say that I truly believe that it is impossible to prove whether or not there is a god until we are in a position to meet it (after death, or otherwise), can’t I say that therefore, all religions have an equal chance of being “true” - and therefore, none should be considered inherently “better” than any other?
I wish I could find it, but there was an absolutely excellent description of one person’s agnosticism (it was in the comments for the post illustrated by the mostly-naked jesus statues).