The Theist - Agnostic - Atheist Poll

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 Mr ProgFreak wrote:

 Dean wrote:

I don't think saying "'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one" is that difficult for an athiest given that most theists, agnostics and atheists can say that there is no Ra, Horus, Apollo, Zeus, Perseophone, Baccus, Freya, Odin, Loki, Eostur, Pan, Ceres, Demeter, Kali, Sedna, Quetzalcoatl etc... with a reasonable degree of conviction.

It's really difficult to find the right words though, isn't it? For example, if I said "I don't believe in God" that would trigger a certain response by religious people, claiming that I simply lost my faith, or am in a phase of rejecting God. If I said "I know for a fact that God doesn't exist" then religious people would dare me to prove it to them, which leads to the "gap problem" which works either way (theist/atheist), depending on how you use it.

I think that the most important message that new atheism should convey is that especially with the judeo-christian god there are so many examples of logical mistakes and false statements in the holy books and scriptures that for a clear-thinking person, looking at all the data without prejudice, there is no way to accept it as true. And that of course is highly controversial with religious people and perceived as an "attack", even when all we are doing is to encourage people to look at the evidence and draw their own conclusion.

Of course by using the word god with a capital "G" and in the singular you are immediately limiting yourself to one god, the one of the Middle Eastern religions, so in effect you are attacking a religion rather than refuting the concept of a supreme being or pantheon of supreme beings. 

The "proof" vs. "belief" argument is pointless - it isn't an argument, its an excahnge of statements and contradictions, which is why Dawkins phrased it as he did. However I'm not that enamoured by the idea of a partial atheist - that's an agnostic.

 Negoba wrote:

One problem I see with Dawkins' scale and all this is that you haven't defined what "believe in God" means. Often what is held up is a straw man, school age religious concept. Dawkins and his ilk don't deal with modern adult religion.
That's the explanation I've been reaching for all morning but have been unable to put into words. Thanks. 

 Negoba wrote:

You can criticize the metaphor arguments for being too soft, but once you dig into how language works, everything is a metaphor at some level. The words we use to describe concepts like black holes are woefully inadequate so we use analogies, ideas, characteristics. Well guess what, divine concepts are like that too, so we do our best. Just because my explanations are inadequate doesn't mean the object I'm trying to describe isn't there.

And the converse is also true. 

As I have said during the course of many an argument here on the PA - metaphors and analogies are only valid at one level, delving deeper they are bound to fail so defeating the analogy is not defeating the argument. Therefore if the only way to explain an idea is through metaphor then the only way to counter the idea is by reducing the idea and not the metaphor used to describe it.

Poll Question: What are you?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Theist	26	[30.59%]
Agnostic/Deist	13	[15.29%]
Atheist	46	[54.12%]
This topic is closed, no new votes accepted