Well, to be fair, Adams comments on philosophy when he obviously has never studied it.
An agnostic's central dogma is the epistemological. Agnostics do not believe that the existence of a deity is knowable.
Atheism (weak or strong) is the belief that there are no gods.
Theism is the belief that there are gods.
Both require belief (or faith or personal certainity or whatever). Agnosticism denies the epistemilogical concept that the divine nature of anything can be knowable. For instance, any being of sufficient personal power is indistinguishable from a god.
"Weak atheism" versus "Strong atheism" is an argument that is mostly shitty and irrelevant. Each can be defined in a hundred ways, and it's just muddy, muddy bullshit. For instance, is Deism a form of atheism? Some people would argue it was "weak atheism." Some people would argue Buddhism is "weak atheism". It's all semantics.
This is all further muddied by the difference between personal gods, anthropomorphic gods, "spirits" versus gods (see Shintoism), etc. Hey, guess what? Labels don't really work all the time! Who knew?!?!
Regardless, both sides of this argument are stupid: - for arguing on the internet - for arguing without establishing a semantic and conceptual base of the terms they're flinging around - for engaging in this debate after studying up via Wikipedia instead of actually reading philosophers
Five minutes of Wikipedia, however, was enough for me to be clear that Adams was arguing about things that he didn't really care enough to learn very much about, similarly to how I first thought Intelligent Design must mean something rational and religious, but instead takes all the stupid parts of faith and pretends there is some way that it can be applied to science.
But that is entirely beside his point. I think his point when it comes to these sorts of topics, is to start flame wars. And people oblige him, oh how they do. I think Adams knows enough about philosophy to start a flame war.
My point was simply that the comments read like at least half of the people making them hadn't read carefully either Adams' or the Angry guy's posts.
An agnostic's central dogma is the epistemological. Agnostics do not believe that the existence of a deity is knowable.
Atheism (weak or strong) is the belief that there are no gods.
Theism is the belief that there are gods.
Both require belief (or faith or personal certainity or whatever). Agnosticism denies the epistemilogical concept that the divine nature of anything can be knowable. For instance, any being of sufficient personal power is indistinguishable from a god.
"Weak atheism" versus "Strong atheism" is an argument that is mostly shitty and irrelevant. Each can be defined in a hundred ways, and it's just muddy, muddy bullshit. For instance, is Deism a form of atheism? Some people would argue it was "weak atheism." Some people would argue Buddhism is "weak atheism". It's all semantics.
This is all further muddied by the difference between personal gods, anthropomorphic gods, "spirits" versus gods (see Shintoism), etc. Hey, guess what? Labels don't really work all the time! Who knew?!?!
Regardless, both sides of this argument are stupid:
- for arguing on the internet
- for arguing without establishing a semantic and conceptual base of the terms they're flinging around
- for engaging in this debate after studying up via Wikipedia instead of actually reading philosophers
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But that is entirely beside his point. I think his point when it comes to these sorts of topics, is to start flame wars. And people oblige him, oh how they do. I think Adams knows enough about philosophy to start a flame war.
My point was simply that the comments read like at least half of the people making them hadn't read carefully either Adams' or the Angry guy's posts.
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I am not certain why I ask the questions I do, but you've always got an answer.
Even if the answer is a question.
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