--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@...> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > Hey Curtis, I always thought it was an agnostic who doesn't know whether > > > or not God exists, and that an atheist flatly denies the existence of God. > > > > This is a common misconception about atheism. It has to do with people's > > difficulty in understanding that atheism is not a positive belief, but is > > the absence of belief. So people try to fit it into their own formula of > > belief systems by saying "atheists believe that there is no God." The > > nuances between the positions have more to do with how equivocally they > > state their opinions. > > > > EVerything boils down to sound-bites for you guys. > > I have met plenty of people who express a positive belief that God does not > exist. > > In fact, the nuances of atheism have been divided into hard/soft, etc by > people who go in for defining such things. > > What you really mean to say, Curtis, is that YOUR brand of atheism is an > absence of belief, which of course, at least somewhat approaches the agnostic > world-view, which is that one can't possibly decide such things given the > inability to test them properly. >
I can't believe the human race is still having the conversation at all. If I said the sun was a large bowl of tapioca and that we should worship it as such and then, when it turned out to be something else, I wouldn't keep insisting it was *still* a bowl of tapioca but just in some mysterious, ineffable way that causes it to also be measured as something else. I'd just move on and accept that porridge isn't the source of all things (I'm in the middle of breakfast at the moment if you were wondering) Thing is, all concepts of god that the human race grew up believing, in the absence of good data about the natural world and our place in it, have turned out to be rubbish but for some reason that doesn't stop people changing the discredited belief we started with into something we can't quite test just yet (or continuing to believe it in a completely irrational and bloody minded way). It's time to give it up dudes! Smell the metaphysical coffee. Man's need to believe in things says more about him and the time he lives in than any creator being he invented. > L >
