(19 votes, average: 4.32 out of 5)
Loading ...Bill Maher was on The Daily Show the other day. He’s a funny guy. He was promoting his new movie, Religulous (“religion” + “ridiculous”) that, as you might suspect, is all about making fun of religion. You can see part of his visit on The Daily Show on his website. He was great, but then he went and said the following.
“I’m not an atheist. I’m not certain, and I don’t think we can know for sure.”
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. Most people that say they are agnostic are really functional atheists, but they are making an epistemological argument to avoid confrontation and accusations of having faith or dogma.
Certainty
What are you really certain of? Anything that you can say you are certain of, I can claim that “I don’t think we can know for sure.” Do you think that the force of gravity will work tomorrow as it has so far today? Are you 100% certain? I think you are really only 99.999999999999% certain. You have no evidence that gravity has ever not worked, but anything could happen, right? How certain are you that you won’t die immediately after reading this sentence?
Still here? Good, let’s do some calculus. One of the things that surprises most calculus students is that 0.99999… = 1. How can that be? Well, the simple proof is that, if you agree that 1/3 = 0.33333…, which it does, then what do you get if you multiply both sides of the equation by 3? My point is that arguing the difference between “really quite sure” and “absolutely certain” is pointless and you’ll only end up in the big sticky semantic tar pit that’s called philosophy. When I say I am certain that there are no gods and that gravity will function tomorrow, I mean that I am as sure as anyone can really be about anything without being dogmatic.
To not believe, or to believe not
Let’s examine the subtle difference in meaning between the following two sentences.
- An atheist believes that God does not exist.
- An atheist does not believe that God exists.
I suspect that all people who call themselves atheists share my complaint about the definition of atheism. I’ve looked up the word in three dictionaries, and they all say that #1 is more correct. I really hate that. When I call myself an atheist, I’m using definition #2. The second definition better represents the scientific line of thinking, specifically the null hypothesis, that leads one to atheism. The null hypothesis states that any extraordinary claim must be assumed to be false and the burden of proof is on the claimant. If sufficient reason to believe the claim is not given, one should not believe it is true. Notice that…
not believe is true ? believe is false
Conclusion
It is a shame that the definition of atheism is worded the way it is. If “believe not” could be changed to “not believe”, I think all of you agnostics out there would have the courage to call yourselves atheists. As it is you get caught up in the meaning of certainty. In my mind, the difference between agnostics and atheists is the same as the difference between 0.99999… and 1.
Also, I forgot to say – Congratulations on your impending parenthood. It is definitely fun and never what you can imagine. Best wishes to you.
great posts and arguments. my Spanish husband is a 100% atheist. i’ve clung to the term agnostic, i think mainly because i was raised in a family that basically told me since i was a baby–believe in jesus or die in hell. (yikes, that sounds so harsh!) silly, i know, because i don’t believe in god or allah or buddha or isis or any diety.
anyway, he (Spanish husband) introduced me to Richard Dawkins who has really enlightened me in so many ways. But I have to say, I like the interview he gave to Bill Maher when he said that he was not 100% atheist because, as a scientist, he could concede that anything could happen. (I saw this clip a while ago, so don’t pounce on me if I am quoting it slightly wrong, as i am pretty sure i got the gist of it).
i really think you guys have some interesting arguments here and am glad to see them.
by the way, my favorite phrase of my husband’s is “thank god i’m an atheist!” that just cracks me up!
Strong atheist here. I personally have more respect for devout Christians than I do for those who claim to be agnostic. The agnostic (under the definition of one who believes there is no god, but can’t be certain), is a person who possesses and understands the argument but is too weak (or possibly frightened) to commit wholely, or as stated above, “on the fence.”
How absurd. How can one not take this debate seriously enough to make up their minds? These are the type of folks that go into politics. Ewwwwwww.
Sorry for my english.
The representation of a number as a digits aligment depends on the basis you choose (commonly 10) and is not unique; two different sequences may represent the same number, so are simply two different “names” or “symbols” standing for the same object; in your example, 0.999… and 1=1.000… are two ways to represent the same exact number, the unity, which is that unique number (let’s call it e) that leaves unchanged any other number when multiplied to it: e*x=x*e=x.
So there’s no difference between 0.999… and 1, and this is not to be surprising.
Yeah. Labels are restrictive and completely unnecessary IMO.
I am doing a series called God Idols that takes a satirical look at religion. Won’t you have a looksie?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6hMexveJd4
My issue with this is that the terms are not mutually exclusive. Atheism refers to a lack of belief, agnosticism refers to a lack of knowledge. You can be an agnostic atheist (which i am)or an agnostic theist.
Yes it is possible to believe something is true, and yet still admit that you don’t and can’t know for sure.
The two terms are what separates two groups of people who should speak together as one.
Peace
I’m an agnostic in that I don’t know if I believe God does or doesn’t exist.
It’s a pet peeve of mine that people have to believe one or the other.
I have read with interest some of above comments…. Very confusing. I was bought up a Catholic in the 50s and from the first day at school when the nuns tought me about Heaven and Hell I just accepted there was a God without really thinking otherwise. Now, I cannot really accept the notion of an almighty and merciful God who apparently every day condemns thousands of people to an eternity of never ending torture.However, I am terrified that this God does actually exist and some day eternal torture will be my destiny for NOT accepting the existance and therefore loving this God. Am I an agnostic or what? appreciate any comments.
Atheists and Gnostics are right in most of their thinking
It has been common among religious believers to look with misgiving to atheists and Gnostics, and to think that they are mistaken; however, in many instances the opposite is the truth; some religious beliefs are not just irrelevant, but baseless. The “God” of main line traditions simply does not exist. I accepted the challenge of finding the One who may be recognized even by Gnostics and atheists: the Existence itself, “All-That-Is.” If something is there, that is God. Look at the book “Christianity Reformed From ist Roots – A life centered in God” (Amazon.com). I am confident that some of your friends will be relieved of the illusion, as I did myself.
Jairo Mejia, M. Psych., Santa Clara University
Retired Episcopal Priest
Carmel Valley, California
The fact is that all positive claims of knowing that something does not exist need arguments, they can not be assumed just because of the absence of evidences.
This would hold true for all popular examples of the new atheists: there is almost certainly no teapot around Mars because teapots are the product of intelligent human beings and no man has been ever there, a Spaguetti monster could not exist because Spaguettis are a recent human (delecious) invention, they are an inert stuff which could not possibly have the properties we associate we life.
If unicorns existed on the earth, after all the knowledge we have accumulated over the centuries, they should have let evidences like bone remains.
Now, they are many things about which we have no evidence at all that could well exist: unicorns on an other planet somewhere in our vast universe, intelligent beings looking like lizards, a paralell universe with laws radically differing from our owns and I could imagine lots of further examples.
Certainly, everyone claiming we can be pretty sure none of these things exists would look completely silly, at least to my mind.
Defined as an intelligence at the origin of all things, God is not improbable as the three popular icons of atheism: his existence would be compatible with all our knowledge, and many very clever folks like Albert Einstein would be led to believe that there is an intelligence being the universe transcending our universe.
In fact, the three most virulent horsemen of theism, Dawkins, Harris and Hitchen, each recognize that it is very likely there exists a whole reality beyond our understanding conditioned by a biological evolution only caring for useful beliefs.
Nevertheless, they would go on to argue that the primitive, anthropomorphic God given by the Coran and Bible is entirely at odd with the wonderful things we may observe in the cosmos.
Belief without evidence is stupid. If you believe there’s a chance for God, then you believe that God exists, plain and simple. I take the axiom that God does not exist (as well as the millions of other things that do not exist) and ask for proof for the claims of existence. Until they can be shown to exist, they do not exist. Agnostics do not understand this, which is why they fail at logic. Something either exists or it doesn’t. There is no gray area for existence.
So if a field of science predicts the existence of synchronistic infundibula in deep space, and then 20 years later experiments reveal the presence of a synchronistic infundibulum in deep space, you’re saying that the synchronistic infundibulum did not exist until it was observed? That for 20 years the scientists were walking around failing at logic? That’s silly.
Also, there’s all kinds of gray area for existence. Altruism exists. Maybe. Free will exists. Maybe. As does the Higgs boson.
Query why anyone would care whether anyone else calls themselves an atheist or an agnostic. Is there some kind of membership threshold above which atheists get a discount at national hotel chains? If 1-0.99999…= the difference between “atheist” and “agnostic”, can’t we just agree that they’re synonyms? Wouldn’t our time be better spent encouraging all those self-proclaimed petty criminals to admit that they are guilty of misdemeanors?
For thousands of years, humans thought the earth was flat. This was “knowledge”. It was considered “obvious”. After it was shown that the earth was spherical, then the “common knowledge” altered to reflect that position. It cannot be “possibly” one or the other. The earth *is* either flat or spherical. If tomorrow there was substantive evidence for a claim that the earth was flat (again) or even pyramidal, then those we would have no choice but to examine that evidence and accept it as a replacement for knowledge. “Knowledge” changes in science all the time, this is what science does. It changes in science far faster than religion. Religion changes at a dreadfully slow rate, but it does change. Science has empiricism on its side.
If you’re agnostic, you’re either an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. Agnosticism in its purest form is ultra-rare in society.
Your comment about self-proclaimed petty criminals, as you so elegantly put it, shows ignorance in how the criminal justice system works. We have a 5th Amendment protecting self-incrimination.
See, now I can’t tell if your comments are sincere or parodic. If the latter, my hat is off to you, as this is some pretty good stuff.
Why would think it’s parodic? All that I said was factual. Once we believed in spontaneous regeneration, but now we know better. And so on and so forth.
Do not bother with philosophy or pseudoscience. Deal with facts only.
Fact: God does not exist. Zeus does not exist. Fairies do not exist.
No philosophy behind it, just yes they do exist, or no they don’t exist. No grey area.
By your own logic, a version of Popper’s theory of falsificatability, you could simply take the axiom that God does exist and then ask for proofs for the claims of non-existence. Agnostic skepticism resolves this otherwise insoluble dichotomy through an axiom of metaphysical neutrality. Stop trying to assign probablities to a matter which, while not meaningless, is impossible to resolve through the prism of human experience.