atheists and agnostics
i saw this notice for a meeting of the society of agnostics, atheists and non-religious people, so i decided to go. it was at a bar. i brought fellow religion phd student jason along with me. they seemed like nice people, and the level of dialogue was actually pretty lofty.
things got going when i said that i think there's a huge difference between agnostics and atheists, though the problems they have with the majority christians and such in our society are probably pretty similar. even so it sparked an interesting discussion. i myself am probably best described as an agnostic. but there are many different possible angles on agnosticism, and there may be as many atheisms as there are atheists. for instance, agnosticism can be the easiest of all religious positions to defend, a black hole that just keeps answering "i don't know," which pretty much stops all argument or it could be a stronger, and more "positive" stance by making a claim like "i don't know and neither do you. it's an epistomological question, these things just can't be known" which is clearly debatable.
the principle argument i have is with atheism, which on previous occasions i have called "the least defensible religious position," (probably an overstatement) is that 1. in practice it seems to be concerned with people arguing against the theisms of the "religions of the book" 2. epistomologically it seems unsound 3. atheists have yet to tell me a very coherent argument for the creation of life and/or the universe and 4. atheism, in my mind, has weak arguments for why religion has existed in nearly every time and place we can imagine.
but see how western we get even tossing around these ideas? "religion" is of course a western word, and a modern invention in it's present sense. anyway
i asked the atheists about how they would account for the existence of life. the response i got (dominated by one or two individuals, others were silent. it would be interesting to tease out just what the differences in their atheism are) was that there is no fundamental difference between things we say are living and those that aren't, as is evidenced by the fact that both babies and chrystals can reproduce themselves, and similar arguments. clearly making any statement around a bunch of clever rhetoricians is bound to be problematic. it all ends up being a question of the difficulties of language and categories, and hightailing the discussion to philosophical logic terms and the theory of relativity. when they finished i told them i thought it was all very clever rhetoric but that did they really truly not believe that there was a difference between living and non-living things? they said they really believed it. stalemate.
the second question i asked was why religion is so persistantly found in human societies. the answer i was given (again, by a select few) was that humans are category creating beings, and some of the associations we make (shapes in clouds, i hurt someone and it rained) have little relation to reality, and lead naturally to religious ideas.
i also debated some of the ideas tossed around, like that religion required the "supernatural." in my mind a pantheistic worldview in which all there is (materially) is synonymous with god does not require the "supernatural" and we debated that for a while.
like most conversations involving drinking and free-flowing conversation, we descended into all sorts of side conversations and jokes and even the mildly formal intents of speaking about religion and it's lack sort of fell apart. we talked happily for a while. the folks in the group said it was the most lively discussion they had had in a long time, since usually they either just all agree or they have doctrinal christians more interested in conversion than debate. i'd like to come back though. they are good intelligent folk and also even though i study religions i've never read an "authoritative" text about either atheism or agnosticism, and that would be fun to dissect.
things got going when i said that i think there's a huge difference between agnostics and atheists, though the problems they have with the majority christians and such in our society are probably pretty similar. even so it sparked an interesting discussion. i myself am probably best described as an agnostic. but there are many different possible angles on agnosticism, and there may be as many atheisms as there are atheists. for instance, agnosticism can be the easiest of all religious positions to defend, a black hole that just keeps answering "i don't know," which pretty much stops all argument or it could be a stronger, and more "positive" stance by making a claim like "i don't know and neither do you. it's an epistomological question, these things just can't be known" which is clearly debatable.
the principle argument i have is with atheism, which on previous occasions i have called "the least defensible religious position," (probably an overstatement) is that 1. in practice it seems to be concerned with people arguing against the theisms of the "religions of the book" 2. epistomologically it seems unsound 3. atheists have yet to tell me a very coherent argument for the creation of life and/or the universe and 4. atheism, in my mind, has weak arguments for why religion has existed in nearly every time and place we can imagine.
but see how western we get even tossing around these ideas? "religion" is of course a western word, and a modern invention in it's present sense. anyway
i asked the atheists about how they would account for the existence of life. the response i got (dominated by one or two individuals, others were silent. it would be interesting to tease out just what the differences in their atheism are) was that there is no fundamental difference between things we say are living and those that aren't, as is evidenced by the fact that both babies and chrystals can reproduce themselves, and similar arguments. clearly making any statement around a bunch of clever rhetoricians is bound to be problematic. it all ends up being a question of the difficulties of language and categories, and hightailing the discussion to philosophical logic terms and the theory of relativity. when they finished i told them i thought it was all very clever rhetoric but that did they really truly not believe that there was a difference between living and non-living things? they said they really believed it. stalemate.
the second question i asked was why religion is so persistantly found in human societies. the answer i was given (again, by a select few) was that humans are category creating beings, and some of the associations we make (shapes in clouds, i hurt someone and it rained) have little relation to reality, and lead naturally to religious ideas.
i also debated some of the ideas tossed around, like that religion required the "supernatural." in my mind a pantheistic worldview in which all there is (materially) is synonymous with god does not require the "supernatural" and we debated that for a while.
like most conversations involving drinking and free-flowing conversation, we descended into all sorts of side conversations and jokes and even the mildly formal intents of speaking about religion and it's lack sort of fell apart. we talked happily for a while. the folks in the group said it was the most lively discussion they had had in a long time, since usually they either just all agree or they have doctrinal christians more interested in conversion than debate. i'd like to come back though. they are good intelligent folk and also even though i study religions i've never read an "authoritative" text about either atheism or agnosticism, and that would be fun to dissect.