No, agnostics view the existence of God as unknowable... There is a difference. We are not "fence sitters", as you've so described...
Technically agnostics dont believe, and you qualified atheist as being in denial which is more than just non-believe. Denial is more of a positive claim, non-belief is a passive position.
Mmmm I personally think a better definition of an agnostic is one who doesnt know if there is a god or not. I dont think it necessarily means the believe it is unknowable. An agnostic could have a theis friend who claims to personally know God and the agnostic could believe the theist is telling the truth but so long as the agnostic doesnt have a personal experience or logical reason for believing in God, they may still remain unbelieving for themself. I am an agnostic when it comes to ghosts. I dont believe or not belief, i just havent had any personal experience or logical reason for believing for myself. If I chose to disbelieve I personally have to choose how to deal with the issue. Do I believe the people are all crazy or liars? Why do they think they are seeing something that isnt there? At the same time I have to wonder why I am not seeing them if there is something veritical about the phenomenon.
Sounds like the definition of agnostic to me... The agnostic believes that there is no empirical evidence that proves/disproves the existence of the man made conception of God... You are entitled to believe what you will.
Ironically, while the western world is currently going through gender being on a spectrum, it is perhaps the notion of god that should be viewed on a spectrum. Considering that there are thousands of religions, atheists, agnostics, various spiritual people, etc etc etc, it seems only logical that the human capacity for belief, and choice of belief, would be expressed as a spectrum and not a defined point or line.
It is also interesting to consider that the theist and atheist has similar experiences/feelings but process them and two entirely different phenomena, or even two atheists. For example, one might look up in awe at the heavens around us and feel some sense of the mystical, where a reductionist atheist might perceive it as a sense of insignificance, the more spiritual atheist or a theist might perceive it in a more appreciative sense that they are apart of something so vast, or even as if they are special. I wonder what predominantly effects this perception, is it a biochemical difference or the fundamental interpretation i.e. a presumption based on their worldview. I suppose a reductionist would say that ultimately everything is determined by the bio/neuro chemistry. In which case, it seems hardly rational at all for a reductionist atheist to condemn a theist, for they cannot be blamed for believing in any transcendant meaning if their bio/neuro chemistry determines the only way they process information. If you consider someone like Christopher Hitchens, who always seemed quite bitter about religious belief and can be paraphrased saying (in response to a question if he believes we have free will) "i dont think i have any choice but to have free will". I think the same justification for suggesting chemistry/nature determined that we think we have free will is also the chemistry/nature thay determines some to believe as they do. One he supports eradicating and the other he values deeply.
People choose to be offended. It's ideas that are bad, not people. The differentiation between atheism and agnosticism, I would explain as following; in practical terms I'm an atheist, in scientific terms I'm an agnostic as I can't prove the existence nor non-existence of divine unicorn-mounted leprechauns... or whatever you fancy. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I went to 12 years of catholic school where the brainwashing happens daily. I never believed any of that shit even when I was a small child - and I don't believe it now.
I have to agree with this. I was never forced through Catholic school, but I was forced to go to church and Sunday school for awhile. The thing that I could never understand was HOW the Jesus story was somehow "real", and yet the stories of "mythological" Gods weren't.
Catholic summer camp...and I wasn't raised Catholic. I was eight and begged my parents to go because my Catholic school attending cousin raved how wonderful it was. After getting there I realized that maybe the reason my cousin though it was great was because she lived in Jersey City so any excuse to get out of the city for the summer was great. To this day I can't listen to someone recite the stations of the rosary without falling asleep (we did it every day at 4pm at the camp). I also have the awkward experience of a nun rubbing Vicks vapor rub on my eight year old chest. Fun times.
Agnostic-atheist, i guess? Or confused, ill put it that way. Some days i look at religions and the people in them and IMO think its all silly. Other days i look up at the sky, think about how odd all this shit is and really wonder why were all here. So there might be something out there. But i dont know what it is, if its out there. Why should i? 's
I I too gaze up at the sky at night and wonder what's out there. I know it's not God(s) but perhaps maybe other species. The universe is without limit and even our scientists are finding other "goldilocks" planets our there that have the ingredients to sustain life. When I think about all the things that had to come together in order to form this planet in just the right zone to allow life to take hold I get a little pissed at the simplistic notion that some magical sky wizard just blinked everything into existence in 3 days. If there was ever a religion that truly sucks the wondrous aspect out of life then Christianity is up there. Can you imagine how much farther along as a species we might have been if the church wasn't killing and torturing scientists for hundreds of years? I wonder about that stuff a lot. Even now we have adults operating on the delusion that some mythical being created the planet just for us so anything we do to it is fine. Which normally I wouldn't care except some of these deluded people are congressmen and senators and are creating destructive laws and sitting on our scientific councils. We should be much further along as a species, of that much I'm certain. Instead we are still killing each other in the my God is better than your God game. Sigh.
I agree, but on some level, if you think about it things the way i do, it seems odd that there would be some perfect "bang" that made this world and everything in it. But that could also be the beauty of life. Sometimes i wonder if there's some divine creator, but that all seems odd too. It's all too complicated for me or any human to truly figure out so I choose to just wonder.. 's
It seems to me there are a few options. This universe, as incomprehensibly as it seems, by chance popped into existence perfectly as it is. Or it came from infinity. Under the latter, either there is an infinity of universes that actually exist and we find ourself in this one, or an infinite potentially exist and this universe is the deliberate one that actually exists. Grossly over simplified these ideas align as Big Bang Multiverse Special Creation There are many flavors, but fundamentally they seem to boil down to these. I think God is the anthropomorphic attempt to understand or convey this concept, and bring it down to a level people can grasp. If they keep digging, they will come to discover the deeper truth.
An interesting thought and as you alluded you can ask multiple atheists about their perceptions of our relative place in the universe and get multiple responses. So of course I can only speak for myself as an atheist. I've always felt that most religions squeeze all of the wonder out of the universe. No one knew the real reasons of our creation, the world's creation or what happens to us after death so religion just made up something nice and tidy and stuck with it long after most of religions explanations were proven to be totally wrong. A magical being zapped everything into existence in 3 day? Please. The actual facts of how our planet came together over billions of years, against enormous odds, is far more wondrous. I'm fine with not having all the answers, truth is far more fascinating. I don't need to cling to a fairy tales for comfort. Blind faith and clinging to lies brings me no piece of mind. It's never worked for me unfortunately, sometimes I wish it did. As I've stated before I just can't shake the feeling that the human species should be much farther along technology, intellectually and socially but we're still too busy killing ourselves over whose God is the best true God. Very sad.
"The first drink from the glass of natural science with make you an atheist, but at the the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you." - Werner Heisenberg "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee." -Isaiah
The trend of not believing in supernatural spooks must stop immediately. Whatsa matter, you want everybody to suffer the fire and brimstone of the mean supernatural spook, the good supernatural spook created for us?