I think this is great, from regular commenter here NickM of Counting Cats:
The tale science tells about how we got here (and got to the point where we could ask such questions) is not just truer than the bronze-age claptrap of The Bible (or Qu’ran or stories about Marduk or whatever …) but more compelling. We are DNA on the right-handed scroll and it has taken four billion years to make us. We are that amazing. Isn’t that more compelling than some old shit about talking snakes and a job done in six days? Is it not a truly grand narrative? The truth is so much more beautiful than the lie. It is also the truth and that also goes a long way on it’s own.
Ah, c’mon folks … I have heard enough from creationists about how if we’re merely risen slime we’re still slime and that in some unspecified way we are therefore still tainted by the slime. But what slime! This piece of slime can be moved to tears by the music of Palestrina, this piece of slime can be amused by the plays of William Shakespeare, this piece of slime can parse HTML and FORTRAN. This piece of slime can factorize quadratics, do integration by parts and hold an opinion on the Copenhagen Interpretation. This is one hell of a piece of slime and so, dear reader, are you.
I am proud to be slime with post-graduate qualifications. I am stardust (so are you) created in the forge of supernovae (is that not cool?). I am atoms in motion (so are you). I am victory (so are you). I am almost everything you are and you are almost everything I am. We share half of our DNA with cabbages after all.
I entirely agree with all this, but I do not stick it up here to insist that all of you do. I know that all of you do not, which is fine by me. Especially if, from what you do believe instead, you draw political conclusions with which I strongly do agree. I stick it up here because it puts a particular point (call it the “glory of slime” argument) in answer to a common objection to Darwinian atheism (the “sliminess of slime” argument) with exuberant eloquence. Even many of those who think it tosh will at least agree that it is very well written.
The Cat Counter acknowledges the sliminess of slime, but then trumps it with the grandeur. But I bet, when he wrote his bit, that he had, rattling about somewhere in his head, this, which acknowledges the grandeur but then trumps it with slime, or in this case with dust:
What piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how
express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
While Hamlet emphasises also what fine and beautiful athletes we are, NickM concentrates only our mental glories. An interesting omission, maybe? There are all kinds of memes floating about now to the effect that although many of us dirt-bags are clever, we are not that beautiful, a blot on the world even, compared to many other more exotic looking animals, who now seem to us much more express and admirable in form and moving. Maybe this is something to do with how we have evolved to admire how we look only when young, yet are clever enough now to have contrived for millions upon millions of us to be shuffling on unattractively into old age instead of reverting to actual dirt at forty and being replaced by younger and prettier dirt-bags.
Well written, apart from the “it’s own” bit obviously.
I’m not so sure it is that well written, as I’m struggling to quite understand the point. The idea that we emerged from “slime” and that we are a glorious achievement strike me as pretty uncontroversial. The only controversy I can see is describing the Bible as “bronze-age claptrap” – oooh, well done.
If you are an atheist, you can rejoice in being slime, and marvel at what slime can become.
If you take the book of Genesis seriously, you can rejoice in being the dust of the earth, and marvel at what the dust of the earth can become.
Seems much the same to me.
By the way, I’ve listened to a lot of creationists in my time, and have never heard about “how if we’re merely risen slime we’re still slime and that in some unspecified way we are therefore still tainted by the slime.”
I am proud to be slime with post-graduate qualifications.
I think this is great. It encapsulates everything I’ll ever need to remember when reading the posts of a regular commenter.
I am mostly nothing – empty space between atoms. We came about by chance not choice. Our achievements are not the crowning glory of the slime but our existence is. The slime cannot have had any notion of what it was and what it could become, create or experience.
Young Mr Brown said “Seems much the same to me”.
I think the talk of slime, while fun, is just a distraction compared to that first paragraph about the narrative.
The real problem with rejecting creationism is that it leaves no one to blame when things go wrong.
Great Post.
That the laws of Physics could result in slime becoming aware of its own existence is a miraculous tribute to the setter of the laws.
Or then again, just to the laws.
Into the mystic; only now more informed.
ADE
I’ve always been partial to the theory that says that the primordial soup that existed on Earth three billion or so years ago needed a little something to get the life formation process started. This came from an alien UFO that went into orbit, took some sensor readings and before it left emptied its sewage holding tank.
We are all star shit !
Thanks Nick for makinh nostalgie de la boue understandable.
I’ve always been a fan of panspermia, if for no other reason than it scuppers a lot of the arguments against finding alien life out there.
If the makings of life spread through this arm of the galaxy a few billion years ago taking root where ever conditions were propitious, then there should be a decent supply of alien lifeforms within a few hundred lightyears, and some of them could have developed intelligent life on a roughly similar basis to ours and at a similar stage of development. (i.e. somewhere between stone age and transcendant.)
Why I find this idea attractive is another story.
I once read a scifi novel that postulated the emergence of life very shortly after the Big Bang, and why not, since all the space, time and energy in the universe was present then as well.
As to the metaphysical side of things; I’ll stick with agnosticism. Yeah, it’s a cop-out, but I find it more rational than any theism or atheism.
But I would suggest that the glory that we call civilization is deeply bound up in the various religious beliefs of mankind over time, and much of our art and science arises out of our desire to either know God more deeply or prove that He doesn’t exist.
The real problem with rejecting creationism is that it leaves no one to blame when things go wrong.
Absolutely.
Although, I don’t see how this is a problem.
Kevin B,
When it comes to the origin of life Panspermia simply pushes the event somewhere else, somewhen else, but has nothing to say about the nature of that event.
While panspermia may have happened, it contributes nothing to an explanation.
Augh! I was really enjoying your post until you brought in the Withnail quote.
Now all I can think about are the wolves at London zoo.
Amazing what the slimy mind can do, isn’t it?
I enjoyed the NickM post immensely. I also enjoyed his post about Iran. Lots of good stuff in there about the Israeli air force.
CC
Well I did suggest I kind of liked the idea of life evolving shortly after the Big Bang in the endless transitions of matter to energy and energy to matter that were occuring at the time. And it wasn’t entirely tongue in cheek.
It seems entirely possible to me that life, for some definition of life, has evolved many times, and those matter/energy/matter transitions have spread it throughout the universe in some form or other.
Of course that original life would have evolved, lived, and been extinguished in what we, from our much more leisurely perspective, would have measured as infinitessimal periods of time, but in the compressed space/time of the immediate post Big Bang universe, represented the entirety of history. (Iwish I could remember the Author’s name who presented these ideas, but my mental and physical Dewey decimal system is somewhat dilapidated.)
The Big Bang is the main source of my agnosticism. I can accept that Chemistry can turn into Biology, but when nothing turns instantly into everything, I have a bit of a problem.
The NickM quote gets at the heart of the debate – which is that there isn’t one. It’s an empirical question whether there’s a God or not, and it’s an empirical question where humans came from. The debate, however, centers on sentimentality like “my story is more ‘compelling’ than yours.” What a waste of time. If you feel the presence of God in your life, bully for you, but that is not an argument. And if you feel a sense of wonder at the fact that you are slime, bully for you, but that is also not an argument. These are both subjective feelings, and that’s why this never gets anywhere. These are personal issues and should be left out of politics.
I would argue that atheism is the rational reaction when confronted with a thesis that requires you to alter your life and/or view of the universe with no supporting evidence given. Agnosticism says “you’ve told me a fairy tale and given me no reason whatever to believe it other than your good word. Um – OK, maybe.” I think the only reason why we have that reaction in the case of religion is because so many people do believe it. We wouldn’t, for example, have the same reaction if asked to take unicorns on faith. Generally, you’d just say “um, no, not ’till you show me one (or evidence of one).” Ditto, to be fair, astrology and ghosts and ESP and other things that people are willing to be “agnostic” about. In actuality, the burden of proof is on the believer (in God, ghosts, unicorns, ESP, whatever). So – until that burden has been met – and it patently hasn’t – I’m an atheist.
It was lovely and that gets me somewhere. Reading Shakespeare doesn’t get us anywhere either, but a life without it? Not for me, thanks.
Bravo, Nick!
NickM: “Ah, c’mon folks … I have heard enough from creationists about how if we’re merely risen slime we’re still slime and that in some unspecified way we are therefore still tainted by the slime.”
Oh, that’s not all. It’s supposed to be good thing, according to theist ethics, that we’re fallen. It’s because we’re human that we’re evil.
I’ve had way more than enough of that, too.
Brian: “While Hamlet emphasises also what fine and beautiful athletes we are, NickM concentrates only our mental glories. An interesting omission, maybe?”
One of the most profound concepts that I took from Ayn Rand is her synthesis of the Mind/Body Dichotomy. In all the whole history of philosophy, I am not aware of anyone who resolved this so comprehensively as she did. It’s an enormous issue, and she worked it like no one else, ever.
Joshua, this may be a crossed comment thing, but if the fairy tale is: “Well there was pool of slime, (or whatever), and the sun beat down on it and it was struck by lightning and all these odd chemical reactions took place and suddenly some new self-repilicating complex molecule appeared and eventually evolved into us, but we haven’t succeeded in proving it in the lab yet.”
Well, I’ll say yes, I can take that on faith.
But when the fairy tale is: “There was nothing – no space, no time, no energy – then suddenly there was a big bang and lo and behold there was everything. All of space, all of time, all the energy in the Universe. And we’ve got all these equations that can tell us what happened after that.”
Well, forgive me if I say hmmm.
Reading Shakespeare isn’t an empirical issue, and Shakespeare doesn’t demand that you alter your epistemology in any way before enjoying his plays.
KevinB –
Actually, I agree with you that there’s something fishy about the Big Bang. And Quantum Mechanics, actually. I don’t feel educated enough to comment on either.
But it’s a false choice to say that disbelieving in God requires one to believe in the Big Bang. I don’t think anyone needs to take a position on the origin of the universe at all, actually.
The difference, of course, is that the arguments for the Big Bang can be reconstructed for you (admittedly, after you’ve had some training). Are there even any arguments for the existence of God that do not suffer from obvious logical flaws? I have never heard any.
More to the point, if the religious crowd is right, then God seems like the kind of thing that should be experienceable in some way. I mean, if He created and permeates all things, etc. etc. So, after 34 years on this planet, it seems like the kind of things I should have run across by now, and yet I haven’t. Much like with unicorns or the Loch Ness monster. If they were there, surely there’d be some poo lying around or something, and yet no one’s found any. So I don’t believe it. The Big Bang at least has the virtue of not being the kind of thing that I would expect to encounter (aftereffects of) in my daily life. It only lives in theory. So I’m more comfortable with agnosticism on that point. The burden of proof is on the believers – the people who believe in the Big Bang claim they can prove it, I’m skeptical and happy to leave it at that. In the case of religion, there doesn’t seem to be any proof or any good idea of what the evidence would be. So I pass.
Joshua, the reason I am agnostic has nothing to do with the story, at least not the religious one. The reason for me is that I allow for the possibility that there is a higher being, who’s scientifically plausible story simply hasn’t been told yet. Like my grandmother used to say: “I haven’t been up there and haven’t seen what is or isn’t there, so what do I know?” (It sounded much better in Russian:-))
Never even thought about basing my choice of personal philosophy or religion on how cool it was, or how cool I/we am/are.
Now that I think about it, it’s pretty juvenile. Slime is also, I am sure, quite proud of itself.
Yes, a boisterous, joyful attitude to take towards the universe and it’s creation, whatever the prime agency involved in it’s creation may be. But not very deep.
Been lurking for a long time and find discussion here very thought provoking. And funny. Great combination.
IMHO, All these proofs or dis-proofs of God are ludicrous. What is faith? Faith cannot be approached through reason. Before reason, faith. After faith, reason. Viz Augustine and Aquinas. Goodness and intelligence do not spring from the same same place, and may, and often do, exist in opposition. Many good people are not intelligent and many intelligent people are not good. I see faith as a challenge to lead a better life. To emulate Jesus. We are constantly effing it up, but we hope that tomorrow we will be better if we repent and start anew at that challenge. Love of God and neighbour sustains us – that is our love of God and our love for our neighbour. Atheism is at is base very solipsistic. They see themselves freed from the chains of belief. I see that they are severing the bonds of faith hope and love, which are, in the end, what can make one soar, not belief in one’s own credentials. Except for the very sainted few, there is always doubt, there is always unbelief. It is a part of faith. That is why I tend to agree with those who mock agnosticism. It’s a bit like having everyone tell you what they are up to before deciding what to do….
Alisa-
I see what you mean – but that was the point with the unicorns. There’s nothing particularly scientifically implausible about them existing, it’s just that it seems like if they did there should be evidence for them by now, and there isn’t. Now, maybe it’s that unicorns are really, really magical and can only be seen by virgin girls or something, but making that leap requires me to radically alter my perception of my experience of the world, and as no one has given me a compelling reason to do so, I choose not to. I don’t know to an absolute certainty that there is not magic and that there are no unicorns, but the total lack of evidence for them coupled with the fact that their existence would require revisions to how I understand reality leads me to conclude that they’re not real.
It’s the same with God. As you(r grandmother) say(s in Russian), I’ve never been “up there” and seen whether or not there’s a God, so I don’t know to an absolute certainty that there isn’t – but I’ve been down here for a long time and there doesn’t seem to be one about. If God only exists “up there” and has no effect on what goes on “down here,” then I don’t see the point anyway. If He does either exist down here and/or affect the way things down here should work (which is by far the more popular claim among religious types) then there should be some compelling reason to believe in Him, and yet there isn’t. There is neither observable evidence that He exists, nor is there any rational argument that he must. Ergo – the rational assumption is that He does not.
How is atheism “at its base solpisistic?” Atheism is based on the idea that the world is out there, real, and consistent. That is not solipsistic. I do not see faith, hope and love as bonds any more than you do. What I do see and you don’t is that Jesus is just a story. Perhaps you can base love on a story – in fact, I think you probably can. But you cannot and should not base claims about empirical realtiy on a story, which is where this discussion started.
To the pole the Creationists climb
Saying if latitude re placed time
There must be a big hole
To the north of the north pole
Where God leans to support the incline
Joshua, I think that I made my point incompletely. I need to add that when I say “higher being”, I don’t necessarily mean the kind we have been presented with by the various religions. What I mean is not only do I not know whether he/she/it exists, but I also don’t know what is he like, what has he been up to for the past gazillion years or anything else for that matter. He may have created the universe, or he may have not. Ditto his involvement/influence in earthly affairs or lack thereof post-creation. For all I know he may have been idle until 2009 years ago, and then suddenly sprang into action for whatever reason.
As to his/hers/its observability, neither Relativity nor QM had been observed until fairly recently. Neither had they been known to leave any poop about, AFAIK:-)
Right, but as soon as they were proposed, they were vigorously debated, and conclusive evidence for them was sought on the understanding that if not found soon, the theories would fail to be adopted. No one was asked to take these theories on faith. Rather, quite the opposite was true: they were only proposed because they were seen as potentially useful (and verifiable) explanations for things people had heretorfore found puzzling. In this since, there was poop. Well, metaphorical poop. People reasoned that if there was poop lying about there must be an ass around too, and QM was that ass.
Well, yes. All I can add is that this leads me to the conclusion that the religionists have been (and still are) damaging their own case. They have been doing it by both presenting a scientifically implausible story, and by demanding faith. Had they not been doing this, there may have been many more agnostics, if not believers. OTOH, if there would have been more believers, they would have been of the more rational bent, and religionists are not necessarily interested in those. Neither are they interested much in agnostics. Hmmm. Interesting, I have never thought about it this way. Sorry for thinking aloud…
Oh, I agree Joshua. My point was that whatever tales people tell me about life, the universe and everything, I reserve the right to say; “Hmm, I think you might be onto something there.” or “Nah, I don’t think so.”
As to ‘proof’. Well astro-physics, particle-physics, metaphysics and philosophy have been grappling with the concept of proof of anything for a long, long time.
My own philosophy tells me that yes, we’re here and not the figment of some god or computer’s imagination but I’m prepared to accept that I’m limited to experiencing the universe through my own senses, and that this might not expose me to all the information out there, even though I read a lot of stuff by much cleverer people than me.
So it’s rational to me to doubt.
Whilst our knowledge of the universe has moved on in leaps and bounds since Thomas Henry Huxley wrote this piece, I still find it quite descriptive of my thoughts on the matter.
Kevin B: amen to that.
Yes, I think it’s an insightful quote – and in the linguistically compositional sense of “a-gnostic,” I am one too.
My objection to the term in popular parlance is that it has come to mean someone who actively entertains idea that the religionists might be on to something, which seems to me a complete inversion of how rational people deal with everything else in their lives. I don’t seem to need a supernatural element to explain anything I’ve come across, neither does there seem to be any profit in adopting it, there certainly is a(n epistemological) cost associated with adopting it, and supernatural explanations of things seem unlikely to be very practically useful even if entertained. So, I live my life as though there were no supernatural element to the world, and I try not to waste time entertaining thoughts that there might be. That it is logically possible that there is a supernatural element out there all the same goes – or rather should go – without saying. The possibility may or may not be remote, I don’t really know – the point is that there doesn’t seem to be any point in entertaining it, and there is certainly no compelling reason to entertain it. So atheism makes more sense than agnosticism to me. I adopt atheism as my working hypothesis in the same sense that a scientist adopts his pet theory as a working hypothesis: namely, I admit the possibility that I’m wrong – but I do not act on that possibility until circumstances have shown me that I am. Unfortunately, the way “agnostic” is used in popular parlance at present it is no longer really compatible with this worldview (well, logically compatible, but not really in implication), so I don’t regularly apply it to myself.
I spend this much time talking about it because I do not think it is a minor point of semantics. I think, rather, that the term “agnostic” has largely been adopted as a way for atheists (in my sense) to keep their heads down – to keep the conversation at parties civilized, so to speak. But this is no longer necessary. Religion is losing its force in human life, at least in civilized countries (with the possible exception of the US, but even here, really…), and I think it’s worth the push to marginalize it even further.
Joshua: no disagreement from me there. I’d only add that agnosticism for me is not a way to keep my head down, but rather to keep my head up facing both the militant atheists (which you apparently are not) and the militant religionists that annoy me in equal measure. Oh, and screw “popular parlance”, a close relative of “newspeak”.
“In actuality, the burden of proof is on the believer (in God, ghosts, unicorns, ESP, whatever). “
Careful, there! This discussion is proceeding in a direction which may be deemed by the appropriate authorities to be disguised criticism of the hypothesis (Oops! — the universally-accepted irrefutable fact) of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Now that the Obama crowd are thinking about retroactive legislation, we should be very careful about saying anything which could one day be seen as an attempt to undermine total acceptance of the One True Faith.
Gods are much behind the times, dont you think?
If they were really on the ball they’d be on the net wouldn’t they?
I mean ere we are discussing them, and they seem icapable of popping in and posting a comment or two?
God seems to appear only every couple of thousand years or so, to people who are at best semi literate carpenters or totally illiterate camel shaggers, and instead of wanting to talk up the future progress and majesty of mankind,
Wants to lay down rules on dress codes, sexual morality, and what molluscs you should avoid eating.
So God/s/esses
If you are there, dont be coy,
drop us a line
We will be all ears, guaranteed!
“God seems to appear only every couple of thousand years or so, to people who are at best semi literate…”
The Goddess Namagiri revealed the divine scripture of the Notebooks to Srinivasa Ramanujan. Does that count?
Now you are talking them foreign religions what existed before the beginning of time aintcha!
Not our true, imported from the Middle East, type religions, are you not? 😉
Wotan!
Wotan!
Why didst thy forsake me!
Before the beginning of time? Is it remotely possible that anyone here does not know the tale of Ramanujan?! Surely you jest, sir!
Anyway, if you want to cite alternative Deities, Wotan is distinctly mainstream – check out GodChecker for some proper weird Gods.
Like Mictlantecuhtli, Aztec God of Death, who is, we are told, most commonly depicted as a grinning maniac with a piece of liver dangling from his chest. You’ve just got to respect that. What a God!
Every one of the two thousand, eight hundred and fifty deities listed has been sincerely believed in by people at some time in history. If you respect religion, you’ll respect these guys! No discussion of religion is complete without inviting some of them to the party. And honest agnostics will tell you of each and every one, each and every totally bonzo story, “this could be true”.
The problem for us agnostics is that we get it from both sides.
The theists think were a bunch of atheists having a punt with Pascal’s wager, while the atheists think we’re paying lip service to their rational ideas whilst desperately looking around for a sky-fairy we can prostrate ourselves before.
In fact, as I’m sure Alisa and Nick M can attest, we’re a bunch of deep thinkers who have relentlessly studied the religions, philosophies and sciences of the past and present and found that none of them have come up with an adequate description of LtUaE.
Wherever we look, there’s a bit of hand waving- whether it’s chemistry into biology, nothing into everything, or a bit of bread into the body of Christ – there’s always a bit of mumbo jumbo.
The big problem is that when we doubt others, they tend to take it personally.
RAB, going by the Sir Terry Pratchett theory of Gods – that they depend on believers and lose their powers as people stop believing in them or gain power as more people believe in them- we can expect a rash of internet savvy gods at any moment.
And, now they have a site of their own, expect Mictlantecuhtli and his pals to start manifesting all over the place.
Thanks for that Pa.
I don’t have to be slime in order to be deeply offended by all this rampant Slimophobia!
Solipsistic as in having one’s head up one’s butt. (that’s a joke) Atheists often paint Christians as dolts but I think that it is often the other side that lacks perspective. Lack of humility leads to enlightened statements such “we’re a bunch of deep thinkers who have relentlessly studied the religions, philosophies and sciences of the past and present and found that none of them have come up with an adequate description of LtUaE.” Perhaps I failed to see the tongue firmly planted in your cheek.
Why is it that you attack only a pipsqueak god who fails to perform the parlour tricks that you demand of him to “prove” his existence. For me. there is no conflict between science and faith. No more than there is between loving your kid and doing your bookkeeping.
Pls, explain to me, through reason and logic, how, in an atheist world, that goodness should have value. As in, greater love hath no man, than he lay down his life for his brother. Perhaps you have another standard you think of having the highest value. That is a genuine question.
To be honest if you cannot be bothered to fire up the old search engine and acquaint yourself with how the myriad of godless ethical system through the ages have developed moral theories, I hope you will not be offended if I keep this comment short. Start with Epicurus and work your way forward to Rand and beyond.
RAB, in answer to your question, according to the bar at the right “Samizdata.net editors are god”. One of those gods posted the entry just above this one. Happy now?
I’ve often wondered that the claim “…we came to be what we are by chance…” is contrary to all that we know in our daily experience. The philospher who espouses such concepts does so with pen, paper, computer etc, all of which are the result of rational thought.
Whatever happened to the concept of entropy, in which all things decay, get cold, stop moving, save for some “external impressed force”?
Pa, this was low even for you:-)
Kevin: definitely, except for the deep study bit:-) And Coniston, my cheek is beginning to hurt!
Bloody hell! I have caused quite a debate.
Right. I am married to a professional writer (a translator) and she tortures me over my apostrophes. And yes, I know the rule and it hurts – right. It really hurts. My mother is a bloody English teacher as well. I just suffer from chronic greengrocer syndrome. Please give generously. I’m sure there is something they can do with stem cells.
I seem to have got you lot talking anyway. Obviously Brian, I was influenced by Billy S who stole it from Withnail & I. I saw Withnail a year before I first saw Hamlet so I can say that. More intriguingly I saw “Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead” before I saw either.
Yes, I did concentrate on the mental and ignored the physical. I wouldn’t read anything much into it apart from the gap in years and technology between me and Shakespeare. Our physical attributes were more important then. Nowadays the finest sprinter on the planet looks a bit pedestrian compared to jet fighter.
And Brian. We are not Cat Counters. We are Feline Enumerators.
I must assume then that you’re not familiar with the Scottish play.
You are just being silly now Laird.
Leave that dept to me!
I do it better than anybody.
God I must have had a few last night!
I dont even remember posting some of that.
Kevin B,
The big problem is that if you doubt me, I get an irresistable urge to explain at tedious length.
I can do the ‘nothing into everything’ one if you really like, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. It basically comes down to being told that there is ‘nothing’ to the North of the North pole, and thinking that this means there must be an edge or hole or something weirder there.
Peter Melia,
Anybody who tells you that evolution happens by chance has totally failed to understand the theory. Natural selection isn’t random. Whether organisms survive to breed reliably depends on how good their body shape is at surviving. Shapes which are not good get wiped out with near certainty, and what’s left forms the starting point for the next step. Entropy destroys the ‘unfit’ faster than it does to the ‘fit’, driving the process.
Alisa,
I apologise.
“And honest agnostics will tell you of each and every one, each and every [culturally valuable and totally plausible ethnic narrative challenging the paternalistic hegemonic Imperialist othodoxy of white Western ‘rationalism’], ‘this could be true’.”
Happy? 😉
So did anyone find an answer to the first two comments here?
Not sure I’ve come across any creationists who would object either to the idea we come from slime (well, dust), or that we are a marvelous creation.
It seems you’re doing the old trick of vigorously and eloquently de-bunking something that no-one’s actually said.
Pa, that was even lower! :-O
Alisa,
Well then, before I go totally subterranean, perhaps you would like to reword it for me how you like? 🙂
This is the sort of theism that atheists are a- to. The idea of a shy God who sets things going but then quietly retires, leaving no unambiguous signs, is called Deism. But nobody bothers to call themselves Adeist. It’s not the Deist concept of God that is generally seen as ‘totally bonzo’, but the Theist versions that the religious return to immediately the Atheists have been sent packing back to their own magisterium.
If you’re agnostic about theism, this is the sort of thing you’re implicitly accepting as possible. (After all, you have no more proof that Mictlantecuhtli and his friends do/don’t exist than Yhwh.) And I don’t see anything wrong with saying so.
Is it possible that many of you ‘agnostics’ are really atheist, but only wanting to say you are not adeist? Is vocabulary the problem here?
Pa, the only thing pertinent to this discussion that I am a- to is the idea that the only two choices I have are: believing there is a god or believing there isn’t. I believe neither, because I only believe things for which there is sufficient (subjectively speaking) empirical evidence. Neither the existence of god* nor the lack of it are things that belong to that category. I am therefore a- gnostic.
*Or that of the Tooth Fairy, for that matter. Of course there are degrees of subjective plausibility, based on other personal knowledge (or lack thereof).
Alisa,
Fair enough. So why object? You’re saying “it’s possible”. And to the extent that the absence of evidence for or against all Gods is the same, you’re saying that all of those Gods are possible.
If you don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, why describe it as “low”?
And I used to shoplift books
From the SPDK
But I gave it up
Well, even when they caught you
they forgave you.
Quoth Pa:
It is low, because it is a straw man argument. I am not discussing religion, but rather a higher being, as I think do other honest agnostics. I’m sure you see the difference?
Which higher being?
If I knew, I wouldn’t have been an agnostic, would I? Quoth myself (weird):
Even though I still find it hard to believe, I am beginning to think that maybe you really don’t see the difference? What I am discussing is objective physical reality as it may or may not exist, not the various people’s perceptions of it, all 2850 of them. Not that these perceptions are not important – they are, it’s just they are in no way relevant to said reality.
And would you not agree, then, that for all you know he has a manic grin and a piece of liver dangling from his chest?
On the scale of degrees of subjective plausibility, based on my other personal knowledge (or lack thereof), such possibility is very low indeed.
Alisa –
I see your point about “subjective plausibility.” Ancient Incan(/Aztec/whatever) gods and the Tooth Fairy are logically possible – but since they seem unlikely (i.e. your gut tells you they’re not there), there’s no point wasting time entertaining thoughts that they might exist.
What I guess I don’t understand, then, is what the point is of entertaining thoughts of the possible existence of this other nebulous “Higher Being” that may or may not exist, may or may not have created the universe, may or may not intervene in human affairs, etc. The quote you give is so non-specific and uninformative that all I can think is “untestable hypothesis alert!” If it doesn’t affect you now in any way, and you don’t need it to explain anything about the universe, then surely the point that it might logically exist is banal to the point of tedium. Sure, tomorrow it could suddenly spring into action – but there are any number of much more interesting and utterly unanticipated ways that the world could be completely different when I wake up tomorrow. I don’t see what the point is of singling out this one for contemplation. It’s no more likely, nor does it have any more explanatory power, than anything else we could dream up. (For example – we may discover tomorrow that people have the innate ability to teleport a la some Alfred Bester novels, and all society will suddenly be different – but I don’t describe myself as “agnostic” about this – even though I do admit it’s logically possible.) I can’t help but think that the only reason this one is special is indeed the social adaptation I talked of earlier. You’ve adopted it as a way of coexisting peacefully in a world that is still majority religious.
OK, how manic is the grin? 😛
Joshua: exactly, except for this last part:
The world I live in (and it includes this fine forum to a large degree – just ask my family:-)) is not majority religious. So you are correct only to the extent that personally I couldn’t care less (apart from occasional curiosity). I only begin to care when confronted by people who feel strongly one way or the other, and are simply not willing to tolerate such indifference. No present company included:-)
I see the difference, but I think you’re trying to keep things separate that are not really separate.
People believe these stories are objective reality. Objective reality is what they are about. That’s Theism. If you believe they’re wrong, that these stories are not credible, you’re an atheist. If you believe one or more of them are right, you’re a Theist. If you’re neither, you’re agnostic. But you can’t think they’re impossible and at the same time say you don’t know, and you can’t say there’s no evidence and at the same time pick one story as possible but not another, so agnosticism implies that you believe it feasible that any of them could be true.
What I think you’re trying to describe is what I just called Adeism. You believe the Theist ‘organised’ religions are clear nonsense – which is why you object to being associated with them – but you’re still ambivalent about an unknown, invisible God.
I personally don’t regard that as tenable either, but it’s intellectually respectable and you won’t find many atheists who get excited about it. It wasn’t what I was talking about. That’s an essentially atheist variety of agnosticism, not something separate from it.
It’s not something I’m intolerant of, I just think religion is funny, and I’ve no intention of hiding the fact because ‘respect for religion’ is the social convention.
If you look him up on GodChecker, you’ll see there’s a picture. (Or rather, a copy of an Aztec engraving.) Quite manic.
They may not be separate in those people’s minds, but in reality (heh) they are completely separate. Perception and reality are objectively separate, even when the former perfectly matches the latter (which never happens anyway).
As to the rest: sounds about right, although I didn’t quite understand this:
I’m faced with people wanting me to declare that I know something that not only I don’t know, but don’t think is knowable. Maybe I should just say that I don’t care either way (which is largely true) and leave it at that. I’m sure it will not end the argument, but at least it might eliminate this annoying labeling part:-)
No. You are faced with people who want to know why, out of the vast set of things that you “don’t know and think are unknowable,” you single out one and only one to insist on this point about. It’s actually a question I have more for broader society I guess. It’s a curious redundancy in the language. In all other cases when I say “I don’t believe in X,” I don’t need to qualify by saying that I nevertheless admit that X is logically possible. With religion, however, one is frequently put on the spot to do so. And in fact we have this word “agnostic” precisely so that people can be vague about this topic. When I say “I don’t believe in Astrology,” it is understood that I could be persuaded by evidence to believe in Astrology. When I say “I don’t believe in God” (=”I am an atheist”), someone will always chime up and say “Well, I’m an agnostic; I don’t know whether there’s a God or not!” And then I am left to wonder why people need to insist on this point publicly when God is involved, but not about anything else. The answer I keep coming back to is that it’s a frequency effect: there are so many people who believe in a religion and feel strongly about it that the language has evolved a concise way of avoiding the topic (in the form of the word “agnostic”). You say that’s not it for you – and so fine, it’s not. But that just means I didn’t get an answer to my question!
Alisa,
The problem is that there are a lot more positions than there are labels.
You’ve got people who believe in a particular God or Gods. You’ve got people who believe there is a personal God of the smiting and thunderbolts sort, but who are undecided as to which of the options is true. You’ve got people who believe in a wishy-washy God who doesn’t intervene much in the world – just to set the rules and prod evolution a bit and maybe deal with the afterlife. You’ve got people who believe in a God who does nothing at all. And you’ve even got people who believe in no personal God, but label their feelings of wonder and awe about life, the universe, and everything as some sort of metaphorical holiness, for which they often use the word ‘God’.
And you have people who are atheist, uncertain, agnostic, and uninterested in every degree about each of those.
Beliefs and reality are separate, but you can’t “talk reality”, you can only talk about it – i.e. to express your beliefs about it. You are trying to separate their beliefs from something you label as objective reality, but which is really only your own beliefs about reality.
It is an intellectually defensible position to say that you don’t and cannot know whether any God-story is true. There can be no evidence of what is by hypothesis unobservable. My point is simply that all God-stories are equal in this regard. The specific and detailed Gods are as unknowable as the wishy-washy ones. So if you use this argument to support the possible existence of a vaguely-defined wishy-washy God, it still applies to all the detailed Gods too. And if you want to say that your vague God could be ‘objectively real’, then you are led to say the same for Mictlantecuhtli too.
If it’s sufficiently impossible, it’s knowable. If it’s genuinely not knowable, you must be saying that it is seriously possible.
From a truly agnostic position, there is no shame in that. But while people are happy to assert the serious possibility of a generic God, they become less happy when you start to paint in the fine details of what they are asserting is to be taken seriously. For some reason, when you add detail, the unknowable becomes a lot more knowable.
It doesn’t matter to me whether any of them admit it. Given the lack of sufficient labels, I’d accept that there may well be sub-categories of agnostics for which it isn’t true. I just think it is funny, though, that when you start bringing up the specific details of less familiar but still entirely typical Gods that are not protected by our cultural conventions, that attitudes change so.
I think saying you don’t care would work better.
Joshua:
I think your answer is not only a good one, it’s also an obvious one. In fact, it’s so obvious that only now do I understand that this was indeed your question to begin with (unless I still misunderstand it?). Personally, I’d only modify it by making a point I tried to make in my previous comments: “there are so many people who do/don’t believe in a religion and feel strongly about it”
Pa:
. Well of course. If I told you that there might be a reasonable chance that for thousands of years in Antarctica there has been living a mammal that has not been discovered yet, you might think of it as unlikely, but not all together impossible. But if I told you that I think that this mammal has very little fur and body fat, you would begin to think of it as even less likely. If I then added that this animal is colored in bright red and green, with bold black stripes, it would probably make you even more skeptic. If I said that it’s favorite food is bananas…you get the point.
Saying I don’t care is fine, but it doesn’t really answer the question. As Joshua rightly points out, most people do care and quite strongly, not only about god’s existence or the lack of it, but also about other people’s beliefs on the subject. So the question normally posed, either overtly or covertly, is not “do you care”, but “do you believe”. Then, if we were discussing some strange animal far away, and I said “I don’t care one way or the other”, most people would just leave it at that. Not so when the discussion is about god.
I’m a nonfundamentalist who likes the ancient phenomenological stories and the grain of truth it presents, and doesn’t take issue with scientific theories about origins–admittedly, I am not a scientist so I have to take whatever they tell me “on faith” too. It probably means a paradox–that I am both simpleminded and incredibly sophisticated–to “believe” both things and not see them as irreconcilable.
Here’s a brain bender for us integrationists.
If we are made in God’s image and likeness,
AND we are smart slime,
does that make God smart slime? LOL
God made man in his image and likeness and since then man has been returning the favor. LOL
Slime, original sin… call it what you will… we are all tainted by something. Our imperfections give us something to work on in ourselves and something to admire in others.