Wed 4 Jun 2008
God Creates Atheists
Posted by anaglyph under Atheism, God Creates..., Religion, Scary
[15] Comments
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A study made last year by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that people declaring themselves to be atheists are the least trusted in America. A phone survey of more than 2000 people rated atheists ‘…below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other groups as “sharing their vision of American society.”‘
In America, it seems, one has freedom of religion, but when it comes to freedom of thought, not so much.
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15 Responses to “ God Creates Atheists ”
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[…] as I said in comments on my post God Creates Atheists I’m more inclined toward the Wikipedia definition that says that atheism ‘…as an explicit […]
You mean God creates realists.
Same thing.
“God is real” some people insist.
“God’s a lie” claim the atheists.
One thing I can say
At the end of the day
Is somebody’s bound to be pissed.
Cathedrals, on closest inspecktion,
Well-represent god-like prfecktion.
In all o my searches,
Ive found a mere church is,
Just not quite as big an erecktion.
Casey: It’s interesting to compare the definitions of Agnosticism and Atheism that Wikipedia gives: Agnosticism is defined as ‘…the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of God, gods, deities, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable.’ and Atheism that ‘…as an explicit position, either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism. When defined more broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities, alternatively called nontheism.’.
The online Oxford is more succinct with Agnosticism as ‘the belief that nothing can be known concerning the existence of God.’ and Atheism as ‘the belief that God does not exist’.
And therein lie all forms of subtle confusion. It could be argued that the Oxford definition, rooted in tradition as it must necessarily be, implies that it holds with the existence of God, and its definitions follow from that premise, whereas the modern Wikipedia (which the academics love to hate) casts an altogether more objective eye. By the Oxford definitions I am an Atheist. By the Wikipedia definitions I find myself, curiously, somewhere on the Agnostic edge of Atheism. It’s the concept of reality being ‘inherently unknowable’ that does it for me.
I don’t for a split second believe in any Supreme Being, but I do think that the ultimate nature of reality is, in all probability, unknowable by puny human brains. At least as they are now. (And any religiously-inclined people reading: just because reality is inherently unknowable is no reason to suppose that there is a chink there that God can muscle through… if you want to go down that path, then pixies are just as likely).
Either way, according also to Wikipedia, your assumption is correct: ‘Demographic research services normally list agnostics in the same category as atheists and non-religious people’.
‘Godless Heathens’ as my gorgeous late wife used to say.
Colonel: Yes, a sad consequence of poor education. They are the same people who like to say that science is ‘just another belief system.’
Joey: Inspired, as usual.
Fiction writers created God, OOOOHHH SNAP!
Agnostics are just atheists without balls. -Stephen Colbert
Well, that’s a nice catchy epithet but it kinda sells the philosophy short. I would totally agree with Colbert if you use the Oxford definition I quoted above, but disagree if you look at the Wikipedia (more studied) definition.
It hinges on a fundamental premise from science that ‘you can’t prove a negative’. You can’t ‘prove’ that there’s no God, nor something like a God, nor even something not like a God that is, in some way responsible for our reality (some kind of ‘computer’ simulation, for instance, as Paul Davies has speculated as a possibility). So saying equivocally that ‘there is no God’ is an opinion, not science.
But neither does science show any evidence that there is a God. In fact, my opinion is that, the more we learn more about our universe, the more it appears that there are rational if difficult to comprehend explanations for things that ‘God’ is hitherto supposed to have done. I see no reason why this trend should not continue.
BUT. I also think that there is a fair possibility that human brains may not be able to comprehend the universe properly. There is absolutely no imperative to allow that we should. In fact, this is where science (or some scientists, to be accurate), in my opinion, starts to get its head in the clouds with religion: we must accommodate the point of view that we may come to the edge of being able to understand the data, even if we accumulate all that there is to be had. To speculate further may be useless scientifically, just like it’s useless saying ‘God did it’.
I emphasize again: this does not in any way imply the creation of the universe by some supernatural force. Just because our brains can’t understand it does not mean it is magic.
A fagnostic is a guy who dont know God, but who knows quite a lot of men — in th biblickle sense.
Yeah, I’d prefer it to be pixies too.
I like the idea of Pixies too!
I believe in pixies.
Pil: DON’T go there.
But at least atheists are polling better than President Bush.
http://renalfailure.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/were-polling-better-than-bush-but-that-aint-saying-much/