Before anything else, let’s get some definitions nailed down first: I call myself atheist, but it’s only in the weakest sense of the word, and nearly anyone who doesn’t understand the orthogonal nature of atheism (belief claim) versus agnosticism (knowledge claim) would call me an agnostic. That is, while I have no specific God-belief, I also don’t claim positively that there are no Gods, no way, no how, no where, no sir. Formal or dogmatic atheism of this sort is at best unfalsifiable and at worst immediately self-refuting; even the Catholic Encyclopedia gets that much right.
With that said, here is my background: raised by a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, I am the oldest of three siblings, with a sister and a brother at 2 and 6 years younger respectively. All three of us went to CCD, but it seems like I was the only one it took hold of; my brother could best be described as “ignostic” and my sister is, sad to say, the living embodiment of every negative atheist stereotype on the planet. I mean it. She has no philosophical background, almost no knowledge of the history or mythology around any religion, and zero grounding in logic. Her entire argument can be summed up as “Religions people do stupid things, therefore all religion is wrong and there is no God, homie.” My parents, as you might expect, are extremely cavalier about their supposed beliefs, and I think it’s fair to call them Deists.
Unfortunately, the CCD program I went to was run by a bunch of hellfire and brimstone charismatic Catholics, and I personally got fire and brimstone pounded into me from a very young age. I believe this was responsible for a lifetime of panic disorder, OCD, anxiety, depression, and schizoid symptoms. It only got worse when I discovered (well, admitted to myself more like) that I was a lesbian around age 16, though the signs had been there since early junior high. Luckily, though, I had stumbled on either Deism or “liberal” Christianity without knowing it, and simply lived like my parents for a long time.
That changed around 2008, which was the start of a still-ongoing series of kafkaesque, frightening events which have so far lost me everything from jobs to a long-time lover to…well, if my parents hadn’t let me move back home I’d be dead dozens of times over. In April 2009, having had brushes with insanity, homeless, and death (and not in this order), the floodgates opened and I found myself in the middle of a perpetual religiously-fueled nervous breakdown. This is the sort of thing former fundamentalists usually describe: constant shakes, oppressive fear of hellfire, feeling as if some huge, angry deity has it out for you, and so forth. This led to over 2 and a half years of obsessive and unhealthy research into the origins of the Abrahamic religions, much study of Biblical languages and text criticism, and archaeology. The result is that most people think a) I have a Master’s in religious studies and b) I’m in the throes of terminal caffeine poisoning.
These have not been good years. My resting heart rate and blood pressure have spiked, I lost a lover of almost 4 years largely due to her inability to handle the panic, and in general I feel as if all my axons have been sandblasted. I am afraid of everything. But, thanks largely to people like Richard Carrier and Dan Dennett, I’m escaping the Abrahamic religions. I still have some residual fears left over, and forget what I learned when sleep-deprived or panicked. But progress is being made.
As to why I’m an agnostic-atheist specifically: evidence. Not just lack of evidence for certain propositions, but anti-evidence against them. I tend to play devil’s advocate (angel’s advocate?) for any position I oppose, as a way of keeping honest; yet despite that, no apologist from Craig to Bahnsen to van Til to Aquinas to Anselm to Bultmann has been able to offer competent theodicy and apologetics. Science has disproven the major tenets of the Abrahamic faiths. Bob Price and Richard Carrier have done stunning work in revealing the seeds of Christianity in Judaic thought (cf. “Not the Impossible Faith”) and while I am not a mythicist I agree with much of their scholarship. Quiet, softly-powerful Dan Dennet introduced me to philosophy, and Dan Fincke (Camels With Hammers) has personally been helping me work out some moral philosophy and meta-ethics, for which I owe him a debt that can never be repaid. And you, PZ, have given me a home base in the world of freethought, introducing me to many other likeminded people via Pharyngula.
I am on a quest to regain what was lost so long ago and re-integrate myself. I want to breathe innocently again, and not feel that I must hold all existence in contempt or still all desire for it being the root of suffering. I want to experience the quiet and peaceful wonder of existence, the universe-spanning transcendence Sagan and others spoke so lovingly of, and which is my birthright as a scientist. I want to sleep peacefully in the arms of the Milky Way above and wake refreshed to the blue of the sky. And someday, I want to love and be loved again. None of these are possible in a milieu that assumes for its foundation that we are evil, fallen creatures at the mercy of a Bronze-age throwback who thinks that an eternity of torture is meet for finite sins. I am learning that it is not so; but I have lost so much in the learning.
Hazuki Azuma
Thanks for sharing your story Hazuki and I hope things are continuing to improve for you.
Azuma Hazuki,
Your tale has touched me more than once. It still leaves me a little breathless and weepy. Your struggles seem to have progress every time I hear a little more and that lets me share some confidence back to you that your wishes are attainable. Take care of yourself and know that yours is a voice that has helped others.
Wow… although our lives went in slightly different directions (I avoided the worst of the fire-and-brimstone Catholicism, and my mother was a liberal Catholic), I’ve got a ton in common with this essay writer.
Catholic mom, Jewish dad, oldest sibling, lesbian (actually genderqueer, physically female, identifies as masculine), and it took me ages to get past the psychological scarring of religion. I had a few different decision points along the way, but… man, this is such a familiar story.
Best of luck, Hazuki Azuma.
My life has not contained a single adverse experience to rival the range of yours; you write beautifully and movingly. Thank you.
Wow, it was a surprise to see this on here! And, I’m glad to see people think I write well :) Things have actually improved and changed a bit since this was written, chiefly that the literally hellish nightmares have finally stopped.
One of the least unpleasant of those involved a man being slowly shredded feet-first by something I can only describe as a demonic, red-hot, organic sausage grinder, constantly screaming and begging God for mercy that would never come…and the mass of gore and bone splinters and blood that came out the other end was still screaming somehow. It’s things like this that are why I think I’m not very sane any longer.
Would that the believers in eternal torment had such an imagination! I sometimes wonder if I should bring a blowtorch to any debate on the subject I attend, as an example. I wonder how many Universalists could be made at the business end of a lighter.
To be completely honest, I’m never going to fit into the “new atheist” or even the “rationalist” mindset perfectly. I’m “old atheist” in the sense that science had very little to do with my deconversion, and not “rationalist” in that, don’t hate me for this, I suspect there is continuation of consciousness after death. I would guess it’s something closer to 19th century spiritism than Buddhism, for example, but I think I’ve seen and experienced enough that I can’t completely discount the possibility.
So, while I may not fit 100% here, don’t worry…after staring an eternal Hell in the face, and seeing Hell blink first, nothing will ever truly frighten me any longer. And if what I think is true is true, it’s actually a very good sign, because everyone gets exactly what they deserve and not an attosecond of pain more…and, everyone gets more chances.
I will continue on rebuilding my life and doing as much good as I can for others and self. That’s humanism, any way you slice it. :) If only I had come to this two years ago, and not lost the one I loved more than life itself at the time…
That is good news to read, thank you for the update.
Nice.
But I hope it’s not like one has to have read every book to be a acceptable atheist. The sister’s attitude didn’t strike me as so evil. “Religious people do stupid things” is one of the best summaries I have ever heard. Common sense is enough for some people. Maybe not enough to do good missionary work.
Oh good! This is one I was looking forward to.
Glad to hear it.
“Formal or dogmatic atheism of this sort is at best unfalsifiable and at worst immediately self-refuting”
How is it self-refuting? And does this logic apply only to God or does it extend to the range of fairy tale creations such as Elves and Santa?
That is, while I have no specific God-belief, I also don’t claim positively that there are no Gods, no way, no how, no where, no sir. Formal or dogmatic atheism of this sort is at best unfalsifiable and at worst immediately self-refuting; even the Catholic Encyclopedia gets that much right.
This is only correct in the sense that you cannot prove a negative. So yes, you cannot prove through purely deductive argument that there are no gods. But, as Descartes would have realized if he had been honest with himself, you cannot prove the existence of anything other than your own mind that way in any event. If you are going to deal with the real world, you’re going to have to settle for tentative conclusions based on evidence. On that basis, you can be just as confident in your conclusion that there are no gods as you are in your conclusion that there is no Santa Claus.
Hazuki:
-I’m glad you’ve found your way out of the morass of religion. It sounds like things are looking up for you. Hopefully that’s a trend that will continue.
Kel:
-I wondered that myself. I wonder how many atheists went through a period of “I’m agnostic”, before arriving at “I’m atheist”? I don’t care for the agnostic position. The implications of it are the acceptance that *anything* could be real, so one should reserve judgment until something is verified. As it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative, then verifying that something does not exist isn’t truly possible. Thus, the default position of agnosticism may as well be “position X is true”. Of course by virtue of this, agnostics may as well believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, dragons, demons, elves, gnomes, Odin, Osiris, Ymir, etc. There’s no evidence they exist, but there’s no proof that they don’t exist. Since one can’t disprove their existence, we may as well believe that they are real. Except for the fact that they’re no more real-lack of evidence and all that-than the Abrahamic gods.
A great story, thanks for sharing.
Just for the record, to be atheist, you don’t need to declare and pronounce that there definitely is no god, merely failing to actually believe in one is sufficient. It’s the difference between. “I believe there is no god” and “I don’t believe there is a god”.
Tony–FWIW, I went through a period of calling myself agnostic before considerning myself an atheist. I didn’t really think there was a God at that time, but having grown up in a conservative household and being repeatedly told that atheists are evil people, I of course didn’t put myself into that group. After all, I don’t consider myself to be evil. It wasn’t until I started reading “New Atheist” books and blogs that I realized I was an atheist, and had been for several years. I just hadn’t been calling myself that.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure there was a short period in late high school through maybe my freshman year in college where I no longer believed in the Christian god, but thought there was maybe something else out there. So at that time, I think the label of agnostic would have been appropriate. But there was a significant lag between the time I stopped believing in any god and when I started calling myself an atheist.
Hazuki, glad things are turning for you. Your journey will be complete when you accept that every god postulated by humans is imaginary. There have never been and never will be any gods. There are thousands of gods that were once fervently believed in by various people. Where are these gods now? Same place they were when they were believed to exist, nowhere. How many people have been killed by adherents to false gods (that is every god ever imagined)? How many more will die before people reject religion?
Take the next step – reject the lies.
Kel is right. Santa == Yahoo Wahoo == All gods
.
Of course, in reality, atheists know more about dogma. Please read a blog by a friend of mine.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/want_to_know_about_religion_go.php
Hazuki, Thank you for sharing your heart with us. As Tony says, I also went through a period of calling myself a “Rational Skeptic” before acknowledging recently that I am practically an atheist. I didn’t want to commit myself to a negative definition, or identify myself with the anger I’ve seen from a lot of atheists. I also, like you, saw that there is no certainty, which atheism implies, and the territory of reality is so much larger than our map of it. However I’ve found arguments like those brought up by Cag (#14) and cactusren (#15) to be compelling. While we cannot be certain, we can follow the evidence. What really clinched it for me was listening to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s talk at Skepticon 4 “Heuristics and Biases” which made me realize how much of our religious belief is based out of a cognitive bias toward finding agency’s to explain hard things. To us, assigning an agent to things like thunder and lightening or good and evil is easy when grasping the reality behind the facade of our perceptions is difficult.
Fairly recently, with the help of others through blogs and podcast’s, I’ve found new freedom. We know with almost certainty there is no functional god out there. The farther science progresses, the smaller and more distant a deity must be. Follow the math.
Whether the universe holds some ‘plane of mental stuff’ is terribly unlikely. Letting go of a hope of a soul is difficult and scary, but it is also freeing. Every sunrise is now a celebration. Every friendship is precious.
Take your time. Continue learning and exploring. Be true to yourself. We will be here.
I am often somewhat by the distinction between belief and knowledge. It would seem that if belief isn’t proportional to knowledge, that one isn’t forming beliefs rationally. Such beliefs are unworthy of serious consideration.
Regarding empirical claims, knowledge is never complete and therefore belief oughtn’t to be either. However, the practical difference between 0% belief in a proposition and 0.00…1% belief could reasonably be taken as negligible. One should still behave as if one doesn’t believe the proposition.
heh. “somewhat befuddled by the distinction between belief and knowledge”
I’m often befuddled.
Excellent post, Mr. Hazuki Azuma, except for this:
“That is, while I have no specific God-belief, I also don’t claim positively that there are no Gods, no way, no how, no where, no sir.”
is equivalent to
“That is, while I have no specific EASTER BUNNY-belief, I also don’t claim positively that there are no EASTER BUNNIES, no way, no how, no where, no sir.”
God is just another word for magic. You are refusing to completely rule out magic in the universe. You think you can’t be 100% certain there were never any fairies performing miracles with their magic wands. You are probably willing to rule out Easter Bunnies, but you won’t do that for the equally childish idea there’s a god with unlimited magical powers hiding somewhere in the universe.
You also had something nice to say about the idiotic worthless Catholic Encyclopedia: “Formal or dogmatic atheism of this sort is at best unfalsifiable and at worst immediately self-refuting; even the Catholic Encyclopedia gets that much right.”
You call being normal “dogmatic”.
I suggest the Catholic idiots, the Bible thumpers, and the terrorists would love you because you are implying they’re not insane.
Perhaps I’m nitpicking Mr. Hazuki Azuma, but I think you’re part of the problem.
*hug* *hug* *hug* *hug* *hug*
Please explain. :-)
Dats good, enuff cheezburger.
=8-)
*hug*
How can you tell it’s an excellent post when you didn’t read it closely enough to notice the word “lesbian” in it? :-)
Indeed you can’t. It’s just a useless, unnecessary, superfluous assumption that there ever were any.
Hoping you the peace you seek – thanks for writing
OK I am adding my two cents just because I feel a button being pushed – not because others haven’t expressed my sentiments ..
This whole agnostic vs. atheist dilemma is a canard; that is, that people believe that the mental designations are mutually exclusive. They aren’t in my book.
Any methodological skeptic is agnostic (recognizing that things are not completely known yet and future evidence may change opinion) but that does NOT preclude that same one’s saying “I do not believe there are gods based on evidence thus far, and further I see no practical value in pursuing such elusive and ethereal evidence.”
Practically I am atheist – methodologically I am agnostic – that is I do not dogmatically dismiss or ignore “the other side”. HOWEVER CALLING A FOUL – THAT IS DISMISSING A LINE OF INQUIRY OR ARGUMENT – AS AT A TRIAL – IS FAIR; THE STATEMENT “ASKED AND ANSWERED” IS FAIR.
I believe in the Theory of Evolution – I believe it demonstrably has the best answers for a host of questions. I am a firm believer the T of E is right and pursuing Intelligent Design is demonstrably a waste of intellect, money, and time.
But I am a skeptic. Evidence that proves ID – I mean substantial and that follows all the rules – could make me a believer in ID. But I am “100% atheist” for now re: ID – just like I am on “god”. And I would not hold your breath on evidence for god(s) or ID that passes muster.
Thanks for sharing, good to know it’s better for you.
Re: deconversion… in my case I went from theist (catholic) to angry (to have been duped) and then Sam Harris made me realize I was already an atheist, I just didn’t figure it out before. From what I can remember, I was never an agnostic, and have always felt suspect of that position, as a theist or as an atheist. I understand the atheist-agnostic position, but all I’ve encountered in meatspace are of the 50-50 wishy-washy annoying variety.
@19/HumanApe
Uhh, hello, “lesbian?” Though from reading your blog I guess being considered man-like is a compliment? Seriously, while it’s refreshing to see someone go so completely guns-blazing out on the deserving, you kind of scare me. There are good Christians out there; somehow, despite being Christian, they are good people.
@20/Dave M.
In regards to future existence…I don’t have anything groundbreaking, just anecdata, but I’ve practically eaten the entirety of most of the near-death experience sites and have friends who can remember and describe past lives in uncanny detail.
There’s also a fringe-looking site called the Society for Philosophical Freedom. It’s pretty foamy-looking, but I found something interesting: apparently the Catholic Church fairly recently changed its policy, and talking with the dead is no longer a sin. Interesting that the original bastion of hellfire and damnation would spend any time at all on such a issue…why would they? Shades of Samuel’s ghost!
Lastly, a friend from Malaysia insists she remembers her past two lives. Two lives ago, she was apparently a poor woman somewhere in feudal Japan (~1300AD) who lived to be about 70 and committed over a hundred revenge murders in her lifetime. One life ago, from ~1370 to 1987, she was in a Buddhist Hell being tortured for all the murders. Apparently she used to draw hellish scenes as a child, with no religious background at all, and they matched really well with Buddhist sutras. The man who first noticed this, she says, remembers several lifetimes beforehand where he alternated between a human lifetime of violence and several decades or centuries in Hell, and says he’s only this life around learning not to do that sort of thing.
Obviously this is all hearsay but it’s rather encouraging for several reasons. First: the sutras lie. Human births are not uncommon (one of the reasons I think this is more like Spiritism than Buddhism). Second, the sutras lie some more: no one spends trillions or quadrillions of years roasting in Avici for drinking alcohol, for example (she was apparently a huge drinker, big meat-eater, and just as gay then as now, and was told by the yamas that she was there for nothing but her murders). Third, according to her mentor most people never touch the Hells at all, and even some pretty awful ones get to wait out their sentence in a painless but boring place if they did enough good.
So, yes, all hearsay. But if it’s true, it means there is some cosmic justice in this world, and everyone really does get precisely what they deserve. I’m well aware of the problems here (who the hell do the yama think they are? what is their karma like? who made the hells in the first place? etc. etc.) but as far as just-so stories go this could be a lot worse. And honestly it jibes with my own intuition; I’m very heavily intuitive, and unfortunately we’re the type most likely to be vulnerable to religious woo-woo. Fortunately, the yama apparently don’t give two shits what religion you are or aren’t, and they are apparently atheists themselves. Interesting.
“That is, while I have no specific God-belief, I also don’t claim positively that there are no Gods, no way, no how, no where, no sir. Formal or dogmatic atheism of this sort is at best unfalsifiable and at worst immediately self-refuting; even the Catholic Encyclopedia gets that much right.”
‘god’ is not meaningfully defined, ergo it is 100% certain, by simple tautology, that ‘god’ does not refer to anything that exists (or that does not).
strong atheism. no faith.
strongatheism.net/library/atheology/argument_from_noncognitivism/
“god,” “soul,” “spirit,” “ghost,” “afterlife” <<< the common link ? the illusion of mind without brain.
nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html
pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_10_29_religion.htm
wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/religionbrain/
a quirky byproduct of human cognition in the dawn of consciousness?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions
:)
Hazuki,
This thread is linked now from your PharynguWiki page.
A very moving post Hazuki, thank you.
Thanks, Azuma Hazuki; I now understand (though I do not agree with) your frequent insistence that atheists should study the origins of Christianity in detail. The idea that consciousness survives death is incompatible with the overwhelming evidence (from neurophysiology and neuropsychology) that it is entirely dependent on the state of the brain, body and immediate environment. When something as simple as nitrous oxide can temporarily abolish consciousness completely, it makes no sense to think it can survive the decay of the brain into mush.
That you give any importance to what the Catholic Church says suggests that you’re not yet free of them. Why should anyone care what a gang of authoritarian fuckwits say?
People say all sorts of nonsense, without being crazy. Heddle, with whom Michael Heath and I were jousting here until he ran away, says his conversion to Calvinism could only result from madness, brain damage, or Calvinism being true. You simply cannot take people’s own accounts of their present lives, let alone past ones, at face value: we are all confabulators, to a greater or lesser degree (those who are aware of it, perhaps least). I recently found that my own narrative of my arrival at atheism, at age 12, was inaccurate in significant respects.
The biggest problem I have with the idea that everyone is reborn is the fact that the human population isn’t constant. It keeps rising. Of the estimated 70 billion Homo sapiens sapiens that have lived in the last 200,000 years, 7 billion are alive right now.
Let me guess: this happened at the 2nd Vatican Council?
Because that was when the CC got a sudden attack of rationalism. For instance, the veneration of several saints who probably never existed was abolished, none less than St George among them. I haven’t looked it up, but I can easily imagine a shift in official policy from “‘talking to the dead’ is talking to demons who really exist and are really dangerous” to “‘talking to the dead’ is a stupid but harmless pastime because it’s just an illusion”.
I haven’t, but what I’ve read of NDEs can all be explained by lack of oxygen in the retina, lack of oxygen in the brain, and, well, dreaming – unfettered but culturally influenced imagination.
How much evidence is there that the details are correct?
Whoa. She must have been extremely busy. Why was she never caught? If she killed all witnesses, wouldn’t someone notice that her entire village was gone?
Be very careful about “no religious background at all”. Complete lack of exposure to religion is difficult to accomplish anywhere.
Define “deserve”.
Try to avoid the Euthyphro dilemma in the process.
In contrast, I’m almost afraid of my wishful thinking. I’m bad at thinking “that would make sense, I’d like that, so it’s probably true” – I’ve been wrong this way too often. Even my dreams feature very little wishful thinking, less than my daydreams even.
My intuition is not reliable. I have no reason to think yours is.
I think it’s an autism-spectrum thing. “But is it true?” “But is it correct?”
Since you mention Carrier, are you familiar with Carrier’s arguments about why there can’t be consciousness after death?
No, that’s not a problem: particularly large souls often fission in the period between death and birth. How else does one explain that a large proportion of people who “remember past lives” were someone famous?
Not a problem for those who believe that animals and plants have souls as well.
However, the fact that the biomass is constant IS a problem for them. If there are more people then by definition there are less souls than before because larger creatures take up more biomass which means there’s less living beings.
She was Coan the Barbarian?
If you’re making stuff up, either consciously or unconsciously, you’re likely to make it dramatic.
I’m very sorry to hear of your troubles and happy to hear you’re overcoming them.
I’ve got to take issue with the notion that non belief fails if not well reasoned. We dismiss plenty of wacky ideas out of hand without a grounding in philosophy or a thorough knowledge of their practices and traditions. I don’t believe in leprechauns for example. I don’t feel a need to immerse myself in Irish mythology to come to that conclusion. I’m not agnostic on the matter either. I’m fairly certain they don’t exist.
I really don’t know why the christian mythos is any different. Why is it in the infinite variety of unknowable things that can be imagined some things are easily dismissed as not true and some things reserved are for agnosticism. I think it’s an odd kind of respect we give to the judeo-christian proposition. A cultural hangover.
Hazuki, imagination is a powerful thing. It has brought us the bible, Batman, Jaweh, Allah, thousands of gods, Harlequin Romances, Star Wars etc. etc. etc. How many Jesuses are currently haranguing people in parks all over the world. Every one of those Jesuses believe their narrative, just as your Malaysian friend does.
Some children have imaginary friends. Many adults also have imaginary friends. The difference is that the imaginary friends of adults are usually much more expensive (tithe) to feed.
No gods, no prior lives, no miracles.
Everyone, thank you :) I agree with what you’re all saying; none of the stuff she and others have told me is anywhere near as well-established at the things which contradict it. I’m still more with you than them, honestly; there’s a lot of issues with what I’m being told there.
Interesting bit about Heddle too; I always suspected something was wrong with the guy. Well, if it’s either insanity OR Calvinism being true, and we’ve proven Calvinism (as well as the entire family tree of Abrahamic religions) false…haha! I feel sorry for him, really. He seems plenty intelligent until you get him going on religion, then suddenly he’s channelling van Til at full blast :/
@31/LM: Not yet. I have a lot more reading to do :)
@30/DM: Yes, it’s entirely possible there’s some autism-spectrum disorder at work here. I’m actually very social and in fact part of my job involves sales (Best Buy…don’t ask. Token woman on the Geek Squad.). On top of all the other panic/anxiety/OCD/depression, why not that too? But I don’t trust internet diagnoses~.
@29/DM:
With regards to the RCC, no, this is a very recent (I think ca. 2002) ruling. As to evidence of my friend’s claims, yes, it’s lacking. Hence why I’m not 100% taken by it. As to never getting caught, she supposedly was well away from her home village, having had a rough childhood that included time as a slave. Busy, yes. “Deserving?” Without even touching Euthyphro’s Circle, the definition of “deserving” is “you suffer exactly the amount of pain you caused, not one femtosecond more or less, then get booted back up here to try again, idiot. And no stabbity things this time!” Which is supposedly what happened.
@36/brocasbrian:
I know it’s academic at this point, but yes, I do think it helps to at least know the definition and supposed habits of leprechauns before dismissing their existence entirely. Because the definition is incoherent (a rainbow is actually a circle in the sky, hence no “end” to have a pot of gold at), leprechauns by modus tollens do not exist.
Basically, “if leprechauns, then [definition of leprechaun]. However, [not definition of leprechaun], therefore not leprechaun.”
This is actually how I broke out of the Abrahamic religions. Since the major foundational and supporting arguments have been disproven by science, archaeology, text criticism, and so on, it follows that the idea itself is incoherent :)
Tony:
For me, I used to describe myself as an agnostic atheist because I bought into that whole “you can’t prove a negative” or “you can’t be certain God doesn’t exist” type arguments. On the former point, it’s a rule of folk logic – not real logic. On the latter point, certainty is something we haven’t had since Descartes so if certainty is the characterisation of knowledge then we’re all fucked from the start.
But I do think there are two positions worth making a distinction over: negative atheism and positive atheism. Negative atheism is a lesser claim, as Hazuki made above. I don’t think there’s any problem with taking this position, as it recognises where the burden of proof lies. But I think positive atheism is a defensible position, that it’s our knowledge about the world that can lead us to the conclusion that humanity invented gods with no foundation for doing so. It’s not just that a God who created the world 6,000 years ago and made man from dust has yet to be demonstrated, but that the universe has shown to be several orders of magnitude older and the evidence that we evolved is overwhelming. It’s positively wrong, and we are entirely justified in saying so.
Having reached similar ground to Kel I find it irresponsible at the least and fundamentally wrong in general to lend any support to discussions of superior beings that are based around theological terms and definitions. I find it very easy to imagine that there are other developed intelligences in existence that far exceed our capacities, but using deity or god to refer to them would be farcical. Furthermore, their existence would not show that religious people have been justified all along.
Never mind the constant-or-not number of Homo sapiens or any other animal. The question is when did souls come about, or at what level of the evolutionary continuum? The first molecules that started reproducing? Unicellulars (Yes, I just nouned “unicellular” and verbed “noun”)?
Also, cosmic logistics. What about other life forms in other planets/galaxies?
Forgive me but I have to say it again – one’s being atheist (a state of belief) does not preclude one’s being agnostic (a mindset related to one’s methodological skepticism).
So – using me as example – I consider myself full-blown Atheist. I 100% do not believe that gods/supernatural exist.
But why do I not believe? And that is an important question in the battle with those of faith; a question we have to consider and answer thoughtfully lest we be just dogmatists on the other end of a spectrum.
My answer is “methodologically (I will assume you can fill in the definition gap) I came to (and continue to come to) this conclusion.
I (we) have no evidence (neither tangible nor logical philosophically) that even suggests cogently that “they exist”. Same goes for evidence that “they must exist or have existed” for things to be as they are and the like. Same goes for “they need to exist to answer life’s questions/for me to live life/for me be happy/to have morality, justice, peace, etc.”.
I (we) also have evidence historically and presently that god/supernatural is a construct of humans and that faith propensity may be part of how an individual is “wired” via nurture and/or nature and not divinely given.
Bottom line: there is no good reason nor need to conclude otherwise (to not be atheist). Said a different way to conclude otherwise would be grossly intellectually dishonest of me.
HOWEVER!!! saying that I 100% believe there is no god/supernatural is NOT the same thing as saying there is no. Simply I am agnostic in that if ever I am presented with cogent evidence for god/supernatural I will consider it and adjust my conclusions to fit evidence as warranted. I do not DOGMATICALLY say we will never find god. I just say so far such a search is a waste of brain-power etc. In essence “god is dead!”.
As a judge might say “Question asked and answered – get to a different question counselor – else you are wasting our time – and I hate to waste the court’s time”.
Until faith-ists present NEW legitimate falsifiable evidence – I rule “verdict is in: justifiably atheist!” That I can know! And that is sufficient. I have no need to definitively say there is no god/supernatural.
Hugs, Hazuki. You’ve obviously had a really bad time of it.
I know you already know, but perhaps a sound bite will help when you’re sleep-deprived or stressed.
There is more evidence for the tooth fairy than there is for Hell. (Assuming you grew up in a country where they have the tooth fairy or similar.)
Seriously. I put teeth under my pillow, and in the morning I found cash. Every time. 28 for 28. Same thing for Santa. That’s far more evidence then I heard for hell (or heaven).
Hi Azuma
I can see your point about logical consistency. And if that got you out of religion that’s great.
To me it sounds like you’re starting from a position that a supernatural truth claim is by default true until you get a chance to research it in full and debunk it. I would take the opposite approach. To me the burden of proof is firmly on the person claiming knowledge of some supernatural mechanism. I’m going to remain skeptical and assume it’s not true.
Scientology is a religion about space aliens founded by a science fiction author. It’s preposterous from the start. I’m not going to be agnostic about zenu i’m going to assume there is no such thing until it’s demonstrated to me.
What you’re doing is assuming the burden of evidence.
How stupid of me not to have thought of this myself!
It’s not; the amount of carbon dioxide in atmo- and hydrosphere, the amount of carbonate rocks, and the amount of fossil fuels, aren’t constant.
The total amount of carbon on the planet is constant (except for the occasional carbonaceous chondrite, the exception that proves the rule), but that’s not the same as biomass.
Thread won.
…or women. He fled Pharyngula because he finally figured out we weren’t misogynistic enough for him.
Sorry – I mean I‘m on the autism spectrum: I’m the one who is obsessed with taking… which pill in Matrix… I forgot the color… the one that makes the illusion go away. I’m the one who always thinks “this sounds good and makes a lot of sense, but is it really true/did it really happen this way?”; I suspect that’s related to the general autism-spectrum concern with correctness – for instance, I immediately stopped saying “mom” and “dad” when I figured their names out, believing I had found the correct way to call them.
So what?
OK.
The actual reason given was because of a
which, to be fair, is hardly the same thing.
Hah. The more I see of Heddle the less respect I have for him. Maybe it’s naive but his seeming appearance of intelligence and depth made me at least extend some respect for him, Calvinist or not. The religious aren’t necessarily evil or stupid, just misinformed.
Small update: I foolishly tried to desensitize myself to gore and blood etc by watching some clips of the Saw series traps. Not a good idea. Turns out (who would have guessed?) that screams of pain still fuse my spine and freeze my blood in the veins. That has got to be an evolutionary adaptation. And I really, really did not need to see that poor bastard get pumped full of hydrofluoric acid and scream for almost five minutes while he dissolved from the inside and fell apart.
I wonder sometimes if people who blithely assert “there’s a hot place in hell for people like that” understand what it really is they’re saying…or that they worship a God who’s worse than Jigsaw, and Atilla the Hun, and Cthulhu comnined. I wonder how long Bill Craig would stay an eternal-torment proponent if someone set him on fire in the middle of a debate.
This of course leaves aside that “konasin aionion” does not mean “eternal torment,” that of the six original churches four were Universalist and the only one that believed in an eternal Hell was the Latinate church at Carthage and Rome, etc etc. But one shouldn’t need to know these things to know that the idea is completely incoherent and wildly disproportionate to a finite being’s finite sins. There are a lot of sociopaths out there :/
IDK. Kind of the same thing.
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*Calvinism*
And we’re the ones who should find existence meaningless.
Thanx for writing, Hazuki.
Don’t forget to read Stenger’s God: Failed Hypothesis.