Monday, July 12, 2010

Agnostic Manifesto Mess

Balko puts himself somewhere around

Despite the common misconception, Richard Dawkins and other atheists do not have an absolute, 100% disbelief. In The God Delusion, Dawkins has a [Spectrum of theistic probability] scale from absolute belief to absolute disbelief, with agnostics in the middle. He puts himself close to, but not actually at, 100% disbelief. The common analogies are comparing a rational consideration of the possibility of a deity to the rational consideration of the existence of a teapot in orbit between Mars and Earth, or the existence of fairies in the bottom of the garden. Strictly speaking, I can’t rule out the teapot or the fairies, because tomorrow someone could actually provide proof. But I feel quite safe in disregarding such a “possibility” as too trivial to concern myself, like an infinite number of other similarly trivial “possibilities”.

That’s not agnosticism, either.

I identified as an agnostic for about 15 years. I considered atheists to be smug and often hostile to good people of faith. But I realize now that what tethered me to the theist side of the fence was residual Christian fear and guilt, as well as a kind of desperate hope that there was some kind of higher power. I even described myself as an agnostic leaning towards Deism.

I cut the tether [see #75 for more details] when I read someone point out how cruel it is to convince a child that their beloved grandfather would be burning forever in fire because he wasn’t baptized. All of the seemingly “well-meaning” traditional religions are poisoned with such hideous fundamental ideas, because it is necessary to inculcate people with fear and/or hate in order to keep them from “straying”, i.e., using their rational mind and dismissing religious tales as ridiculous fantasy–not to mention identifying the truly horrible aspects and applications. Leaders can only control the minds of religious followers so long as they use such despicable ploys. Even the Eastern and New Age religions are often poisoned with a worship of death over life. (Without such poison, they’re just silly fluff, mere fads.)

So, once I freed myself of that irrational anchor, I decided that, while I can respect people of faith who treat others respectfully and appreciate how much their beliefs mean to them, I should never again respect their actual beliefs. I don’t include the non-supernatural, rational beliefs like the 'Golden Rule' and [rules like] don’t commit murder. But I give no special exceptions for brises, religious education, slave garb for women, etc.. No, it’s not for me to decide how other people raise their children or treat their wives, but I also don’t have any reason to overlook cruelty and deception just because it falls inside some conceptual fence of “faith” (a wholly unvirtuous human quality).

I regret wasting my time on the agnostic fence and I would highly recommend that anyone who now considers him/herself an agnostic to critically question why. Read god is Not Great (Hitchens) and The God Delusion (Dawkins) if you haven’t already, rather than relying on hearsay about these people. I have a couple bones to pick with both, such as Dawkins’ utilitarian approach to morality and Hitchens’ occasional broad brush condemnations. But they do make excellent arguments against theism and agnosticism.

2 comments:

Matt said...

Atheism is about rational thought.

Carl Sagan wrote about atheism:

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Unknown said...

The problem is what is meant by a God concept. The material world was created at the big bang, and if you learn about quantum mechanics there is so much weirdness in the world as we understand it that a mechanical materialist understanding of reality doesn't work. In fact, with space-time as an entity which exists as a whole all the "time" it's clear much of this is far beyond our current understanding. Perhaps all quantum realities "exist" but are actualized by human experience only along particular paths dependent on choices made. Anyway, God in all of this would be some incomprehensible entity (or for pantheism, an entity encompassing all of this) that is a causal factor in why we experience three dimensional forward time in a very limited material space-time world. The fact we can't conceive of anything outside space-time suggests that any "god" is outside of human comprehensibility. That goes against against existing religious dogma (except maybe Buddhism) but opening the God concept to such a definition makes it likely that a "god" exists. In fact, we may even be part of that entity. So I remain agnostic.

I do have a theory though: a game of "Quantum Life" : http://scotterb.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/quantum-life/