Rational BAC

I liked that one Sabine---

Excellent post.

Sabine Grant

Same anti dote as for the hornets...

Bumble Bee Tuna

No, Rad, I don't agree with you in the slightest. Agreeing with your tripe is quite rare indeed. You're right in one sense, you do tend to "answer" questions, not to our satisfaction. The problem is your perception. You think it's just we "don't like" you're answers, and want you to answer with something else. Usually, however (and this is definitely the case with Captain Vague-O himself, Rational BAC ) it's a matter of the answers being entirelytoo undetailed, and/or raising new, but related questions.

RBAC, there's a problem with this statement:

This is misguided. One can be an atheist or an agnostic atheist or a theist or an agnostic theist. Atheism and agnosticism are not connected nor are they mutually exclusive.

Atheism: lack of belief in gods
Agnosticism: Belief that knowledge of god is impossible

You can be both. And if you're not a theist, you're by definition an atheist. There is no middle ground here, or rather, atheism encompasses the middle ground. You either have a belief in gods (theist) or you lack it (atheist). So if you ever lost your faith, you would have to be an atheist.

Anyway, strong atheism!

Weak atheism: I do not believe god(s) exist.
Strong atheism: I believe god(s) do not exist.

The reason why strong atheism is the preferable position, to me:

Knowledge is impossible. We can only be 99.999999% sure, yada yada...Yet we still say we "know" things. What does "know" really mean? It means "I'm pretty damn sure".
Well, there is no evidence for any god claims. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence to imply that all god claims are spurious. For most god claims as well (Christianity especially! But you cherry pick away from this) there is ample evidence cintradicting them to further propel the case that they are false.

From all this evidence, which points towards religion being a man-made construct used to control people, I can safely say I'm pretty damn sure that all god claims are false. Therefore, I "know" they are false. Therefore,
I believe that gods (by any useful definition of the word) do not exist.

Now, when you get into vague, useless, undefined gods (i.e. deism god that does nothing), agnosticism is the only viable position. These gods are entirely unverifiable, and since they would theoretically exist in a completely unverifiable place, we can't even determine probabilities of their existence. We truly cannot have any knowledge of them whatsoever, which is the definition of agnosticism.

BUT! Nobody gives a shit about vague, useless, undefined, unintervening, impersonal gods. They are by definition completely irrelevant. Thus I don't describe myself as an agnostic, I say strong atheist because when people are asking about god belief, they're usually asking about the Christian God or at the very least SOME religion's god, which I can be sure is false.

-B

Rational BAC

Bumble Bee----

Captain Vague-O himself---------- Rational BAC--??

Now you are getting really nasty.
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But I did appreciate your definitions of an atheist and an agnostic. Thank you.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Sorry it was intended as a light-natured remark thus the wink. Sorry if you took offense.

Stephen T-B

Getting back to the metaphor business...
The Bible as metaphor worked pretty well for the great span of time when social, political and technological changes were only detectable over many decades; since the early 19th century, however, changes have has been accelerating in many parts of the world at a rate which is now detectable over years in terms of society and politics, and months in terms of certain technologies.
Yesterday’s metaphor, therefore, may not be comprehensible to today’s population, and I think this has lead to a serious loss of stability.
I think Science and Technology were seen, especially in the immediate post-WW2 years, as providing us with a new and improved rudder. But they didn’t, and now we’re thrashing around trying to find a replacement - hence New Age-ism and the surge in pan-Fundamentalism. But the one leads to an ad-hoc, meaningless mish-mash and the other to suicide bombers.
The cherry-pickers are preferable, as long as they apply humanistic values to what they pick, but I suspect they are too wishy-washy and not sufficiently consistent to be seriously influential at a time when consistency is much sought-after, and while Art (as opposed to Science) might have the potential for reminding us of what it is to be Human and giving us a sense of the immutable values which give meaning to our lives, I don’t see how it will make the necessary impact..
I think we are in for a deal more thrashing around, and that we may have to get used to it.

Mageth

Stephen T-B:

IMO, the primary problem with the "Bible as metaphor", in the past and today, is that the metaphor is interpreted as history and as a guide for our lives and societies. Recognizing the metaphorical parts of the Bible (e.g. the Creation and flood accounts, the virgin birth, and the death and resurrection of Jesus), and other religious texts, as metaphors for aspects of the human condition rather than as actual histories that direct us into whatever (usually exclusive) Religion we choose to spin out of them is at least a step in the right direction.

I thus think the metaphors portrated in the Bible and elsewhere may still have some use in today's world in helping us to recognize and deal with the human condition. But Starboy is right; we'd be better served with some fresh ones.

Starboy (and you) have a valid point - the Bible and other religious texts don't map well to today's world. They've become useless, and often harmful, as histories or metaphors to be followed in most cases. We'd be better off demoting the Bible from its position as the guide to live our lives and base our societies on to its proper position of an ancient document with some interesting stories.

Rational BAC

Bumble Bee ---

No offense taken. I thought it was pretty funny.

No harm --no foul.

BioBeing

I have heard it said (by a bible-literalist on another site) that maybe the reason that modern society doesn't match well with the bible anymore is because society has drifted away from what the bible teaches... thus society should return to the bible, not society should abandon the bible.

Now I for one wouldn't want to go back to slavery, women as second class citizens and thinking that it was OK to kill disrepectful children, but I guess there are some who do

Starboy

Bumble Bee Tuna, I would like to add to your well stated post that one can be a strong atheist lets say in regards to Zeus and an agnostic when it come to a deist god. The god you are talking about matters.

Starboy