spin

A potpourri:

Someone said: "atheism is lack of god-belief and nothing more."

Well, I thought agnosticism is lack of god-belief, whereas atheism is the belief that there is no god.

A lot of people seem to have very misguided ideas about Marx and what he wrote. He was fundamentally an economist who stretched to sociologist. One gets a better idea both by reading what he wrote and what economists of the previous era wrote.

Also a lot of people have a strange misguided idea of communism. What happened in Russia, though called communism simply was state distatorship and had very little to do with communism. There was no revolution of the masses brought about through the leadership of the industrial proletariat. (Antonio Gramsci explained why that never happened. Lukacs also makes good reading on the subject.)

Oolon has a very low esteem for the first few chapters of Genesis, but they are actually some of the most stunningly interesting in the bible. The biggest problem is that the religionists don't understand what the text says or why it says it. The first chapter is some of the most complex writing in the whole Tanakh. It also has a long tradition behind it which makes the text all the more interesting, as it has demythologized creation to a great extent -- believe it or not. However, you're giving it a bad rap, or perhaps the people who should know what it means has given you the impression.

As to Dawkins, the ubiquity of institutionalised religious lobotomies -- usually parentally performed at the earliest age, before most religionists can choose (it's a little like the women in Somalia who make sure, as was done to them, that their young daughters' clitoruses are removed and the daughter wails for weeks) -- makes his stance a rather brave one. Just think how you have no hope of being an American president if you don't profess to be a devout religionist, and that mainly means protestant Christian (Kennedy was a one and only Catholic). Idiots like Tony Blur can freely spew his rot or perhaps does it politically because of the fundamentally religionist electorate. Don't you wish there were a hellovalot more Dawkinses in this world?

Kevin Dorner

The spectrum:

Strong Theist: There is definitely a god; there is strong evidence for there being a god.

Theist: I believe that there is a god; I have faith in a god; there may or may not be evidence but I will believe regardless.

Agnostic: I don't know if there is a god or not nor can I state definitely whether I believe it. There is not now and may never be enough evidence to decide one way or another.

Positive/Weak/Agnostic Atheist: I have no belief that there is a god; there is no evidence that there is a god. (me)

Negative/Strong Atheist: There is no god; there is strong evidence that there is no god.

The distinction between the second-from-last and last is subtle but important.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

spin

Strangely I would define agnostic as not having the ability to know and, given the definition of what we are talking about, it's beyond our facilities for knowing, so I guess your limp-wristed atheist and my wishy-washy agnostic are functionally the same beast. Bertrand Russell was an agnostic, but he could live his life happily as though he were an atheist.

Kevin Dorner

Which is exactly the meaning of it from the Greek gnosis: to know.

Though there's nothing "limp-wristed" about it, really. I can't prove there is no god, but the critical distinction is that neither can it be proved that there is no tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Zeus or anything else, and the evidence for all of them is exactly the same: someone believes they exist, which is exactly no evidence at all. Neither does this prevent one from saying that any religious story that contradicts that for which evidence does exist is more belivable than the tales of the Brothers Grimm. Not so "limp" is it?

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

spin

I profess to being a wishy-washy agnostic. I thought it took a real man to take a bold position like there was or was not a god person.

Hence other positions are limp-wristed or wishy-washy.

Kevin Dorner

You needn't be wishy-washy: you can be a Militant Agnostic: I don't know and you don't either!

(Should sneak that one into the list.)

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

spin

Or perhaps, if I don't know, then you've got no hope.

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I guess, as the cause of this thread is serious, I should cut the crap.

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On the subject of agnosticism though, I really don't know how an introspective person, one who plumbs the depths of one's ideas can hold a religious position in this day and age. One has no excuse of not being able to explain the world. One has no excuse of appealing to the moral justness of a fair god when there is no way of the religionist knowing either if there is a god or, assuming there was such a beast, if it were in fact moral.

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There is, however, a further problem. If you do away with these ancient pagan beliefs, there is the fear that what would replace them would be worse. There is such a vague possibility. Note that our religionists seem to want to put themselves into a bipolar situation with them at one pole and the Hitlers and Pol Pots in the other. I don't know where one would put the Jimmy Joneses and the David Koreshes.

The only bipolar situation I can see is one of more or less education for self-sufficiency. If one is indoctrinated one cannot choose, be they good Nazis or good Christians or good Americans or good Muslims or good Capitalists. How can you know what value crap has when that's all you've been fed? Isn't there more than meat and two veggies? What is that TV man really s/telling me?

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

Quetzal

Pardon my ignorance, but the last three pages of this thread have what, exactly, to do with evolution?

Morpho the Permanently Confused