Yes:Forlong said:Religiously.
Oh, that joke was terrible.
It's this thread just inviting people to annoy each other with their hard-heads?
Although you're right about it not being a third option, it's got nothing to do with uncertainty. Agnosticism refers to knowledge, you can be a gnostic atheist (I know God isn't real and I don't believe in Him) or an agnostic atheist (I don't know that God is real, but don't believe in Him) and you can also be a gnostic theist and an agnostic theist.dfphetteplace said:Agnostic is not a 3rd option. Either you believe or you don't. An agnostic is just unsure why they feel the way they do.thelonewolf266 said:Because it means that even though you are not religious you are open to the idea that there may be something to it you just can't prove or disprove it.Krall said:Wait, why is agnosticism a third option? Surely it's covered by "No"?
Really? Let me quote Carl Sagan:CJ1145 said:Indeed I am, Lutheran here and proud to be one. I also find it fun that for some reason the internet seems to have no idea what a Lutheran is, even if they could recite the life of Martin Luther like it was the Hungry Caterpillar.
I've tried to be an atheist, just doesn't sit right with me. A mix of personal experiences and an outlook on the world makes me simply unable to accept that a world this beautiful and with so much potential is as pointless and mundane as people like Richard Dawkins (whom I do not consider to be the average atheist, mind you.) would insist on me believing.
I'm not a fan of heavy-handed preaching on either side, but with atheists it bothers me more. When religious people are trying to convert you at least they have the motivation (in most cases) of wanting you to have eternal joy/peace/etc. When an atheist does it, it feels to me like their sole goal is to suck all the magic out of the world for you.
While I don't agree with all your points, and on a topic like this, how could we? But I thoroughly enjoyed this post.k-ossuburb said:Although you're right about it not being a third option, it's got nothing to do with uncertainty. Agnosticism refers to knowledge, you can be a gnostic atheist (I know God isn't real and I don't believe in Him) or an agnostic atheist (I don't know that God is real, but don't believe in Him) and you can also be a gnostic theist and an agnostic theist.dfphetteplace said:Agnostic is not a 3rd option. Either you believe or you don't. An agnostic is just unsure why they feel the way they do.thelonewolf266 said:Because it means that even though you are not religious you are open to the idea that there may be something to it you just can't prove or disprove it.Krall said:Wait, why is agnosticism a third option? Surely it's covered by "No"?
Most atheists will be in the agnostic atheist category, because they can't really prove a negative (you cannot prove that something does not exist) and most atheists are honest enough to admit that there is no real way of proving or disproving something like a god the same way that there's no way to disprove invisible pink unicorns or the celestial teapot, but since the evidence is lacking, it's just more logical to assume that there is no such thing until it can be proven to be real.
It's also completely possible to be an atheist creationist, you don't have to believe in any kind of god to believe that the universe was created by something.
I'll use my Booism example, which basically states that the universe was created by a giant space hamster named Boo after a celestial binge on his favourite food; quark-gluon plasma. Boo sneezed and the plasma formed the proto-universe. At which point he buggered off to another dimension to sleep. He's still monitoring us with miniature giant space hamsters, which are exactly the same size and shape as regular hamsters, except they can communicate with Boo through inter-dimensional super-strings.
OT: I'm an atheist and I don't really have a religion, but if anyone asks, I'll tell them I'm a Booist because it amuses me.
Ahh good ol' Carl.Xooiid said:Really? Let me quote Carl Sagan:CJ1145 said:Indeed I am, Lutheran here and proud to be one. I also find it fun that for some reason the internet seems to have no idea what a Lutheran is, even if they could recite the life of Martin Luther like it was the Hungry Caterpillar.
I've tried to be an atheist, just doesn't sit right with me. A mix of personal experiences and an outlook on the world makes me simply unable to accept that a world this beautiful and with so much potential is as pointless and mundane as people like Richard Dawkins (whom I do not consider to be the average atheist, mind you.) would insist on me believing.
I'm not a fan of heavy-handed preaching on either side, but with atheists it bothers me more. When religious people are trying to convert you at least they have the motivation (in most cases) of wanting you to have eternal joy/peace/etc. When an atheist does it, it feels to me like their sole goal is to suck all the magic out of the world for you.
"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works ? that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
Pointlessness and mundanity aren't something held back by the world. They are something put into the world by the observer. If you see the world as pointless without a unseeable, unprovable, unspeakably hypocritical father figure, than that is fine with me.
But this small, weird little world in this massive, weird universe of ours is an incredible place full of beauty and purpose. Just because I don't believe in the supernatural doesn't take that beauty or amazement away.
Looking at the world around me, I don't see it as pointless and mundane.
Or, as Dawkins put it:
Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling.
i just went to a scottish primary school and we had a priest in every two fucking months, plus we had to GO TO CHURCH.RobCoxxy said:Nope. I went to a Church of England Primary school, where they force religion onto you from your first year onwards. I just thought it sounded weird. Then I read up on science. And it explained everything a lot better than the vicar did.
To quote Doug Stanhope:
"They shouldn't teach you religion until you're eighteen years old, it'd be a whole different world. If they weren't pushing it into your head while it was still soft you'd never buy it."
If you really believe death leads to eternal bliss, why are you wearing a seatbelt?
I figure the OP was talking about "cultural Christians."k-ossuburb said:Although you're right about it not being a third option, it's got nothing to do with uncertainty. Agnosticism refers to knowledge, you can be a gnostic atheist (I know God isn't real and I don't believe in Him) or an agnostic atheist (I don't know that God is real, but don't believe in Him) and you can also be a gnostic theist and an agnostic theist.dfphetteplace said:Agnostic is not a 3rd option. Either you believe or you don't. An agnostic is just unsure why they feel the way they do.thelonewolf266 said:Because it means that even though you are not religious you are open to the idea that there may be something to it you just can't prove or disprove it.Krall said:Wait, why is agnosticism a third option? Surely it's covered by "No"?
*SNIP*
FEYNMAN!TheDist said:Ahh good ol' Carl.Xooiid said:Really? Let me quote Carl Sagan:CJ1145 said:Indeed I am, Lutheran here and proud to be one. I also find it fun that for some reason the internet seems to have no idea what a Lutheran is, even if they could recite the life of Martin Luther like it was the Hungry Caterpillar.
I've tried to be an atheist, just doesn't sit right with me. A mix of personal experiences and an outlook on the world makes me simply unable to accept that a world this beautiful and with so much potential is as pointless and mundane as people like Richard Dawkins (whom I do not consider to be the average atheist, mind you.) would insist on me believing.
I'm not a fan of heavy-handed preaching on either side, but with atheists it bothers me more. When religious people are trying to convert you at least they have the motivation (in most cases) of wanting you to have eternal joy/peace/etc. When an atheist does it, it feels to me like their sole goal is to suck all the magic out of the world for you.
"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works ? that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
Pointlessness and mundanity aren't something held back by the world. They are something put into the world by the observer. If you see the world as pointless without a unseeable, unprovable, unspeakably hypocritical father figure, than that is fine with me.
But this small, weird little world in this massive, weird universe of ours is an incredible place full of beauty and purpose. Just because I don't believe in the supernatural doesn't take that beauty or amazement away.
Looking at the world around me, I don't see it as pointless and mundane.
Or, as Dawkins put it:
Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling.
I'd like to add this youtube vid here of Richard Feynman, to do with seeing the beauty in things.
Become a Booist, we have ice cream and boobs (why do you think they're called Boobs? Because they're awesome and they were invented by the great inter-dimensional hamster himself, who is king of all awesome).dfphetteplace said:SNERP
According to my mum, as an infant; as soon as I was taken into a church I began kicking and screaming until I was taken outside.TrilbyWill said:i just went to a scottish primary school and we had a priest in every two fucking months, plus we had to GO TO CHURCH.RobCoxxy said:Nope. I went to a Church of England Primary school, where they force religion onto you from your first year onwards. I just thought it sounded weird. Then I read up on science. And it explained everything a lot better than the vicar did.
To quote Doug Stanhope:
"They shouldn't teach you religion until you're eighteen years old, it'd be a whole different world. If they weren't pushing it into your head while it was still soft you'd never buy it."
If you really believe death leads to eternal bliss, why are you wearing a seatbelt?
my friend actually asked his dad to tell the school he was pagan and against his beliefs to go on holy ground. his dad thought this was a brilliant idea.
it didnt work though.
and pretty much all of my friends are atheist, like me.