Beyond god and atheism: Why I am a 'possibilian' | Hacker News Reader

Beyond god and atheism: Why I am a 'possibilian'

newscientist.com

11 pointscwtann26 comments

It's called agnosticism. It's not new.

"...in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."

-Bertrand Russell

Here's a link to that Russell essay by the way. It's a good one.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8299499/Am-I-an-Atheist-or-an-Agno...

What happened to being a good old agnostic? I think that in attempting to fight against being pigeonholed as either a believer or a denier of god/gods, he lights on the notion that somehow being a better (or real) scientist by being open to possibilities is an alternative. With respect, there's already a reasonable alternative to being either a believer in or denier of god/gods: agnosticism. The open mind stuff just makes you a good scientist.

Edit: Oops, markstanbury beat me to it.

I don't think agnosticism can really be called reasonable anymore. We now know so much about the universe that believing in any specific deity, or even just a general sense of the supernatural, seems akin to believing into Russel's teapot. Being atheist and being open minded are not mutually exclusive.

I don't quite get agnosticism. It's perfectly reasonable for me to say "Superman doesn't exist" so why isn't it reasonable for me to say "God doesn't exist" ? They're equally sensible statements...

It's actually more sensible for you to say "God doesn't exist," because at least it's possible to get two people to agree on exactly who or what Superman is.

Let's assume that someone said to me that there is pink elephant toy behind my couch. That would be weird cause I don't own one, and it would be behind my couch.

But I would not be so stupid to go and tell everybody that I certainly absolutely believe that there is no elephant toy behind my couch. And I surely would not bet on it. Maybe someone broke into my apartment, and I don't know about it. (or I was wasted and thought it was funny)

I would simply take a stand that I don't know until I look there.

Thats atheism, except that it's kinda hard to go and look.

If you ascribe a very low probability to the existence of a god, then I'd say you're justified in just calling yourself an atheist. And vice versa for theists. The big problem I notice among a lot of people who identify as agnostics (or "possibilians", if you prefer) is that they're treating lack of absolute certainty as synonymous with lack of any certainty.

Of course we can't be completely certain. But the same goes for most everything else outside of mathematics, and I usually don't see people being so exaggeratedly careful to withhold judgement like this except on really touchy, emotionally charged subjects like religion. This is a double standard.

Probability and religion are not well suited terms to use together, probabilities are for stuff you can measure, religious stuff is usually something you cant measure.

The math would go something like this X is gods existence with given definition of god, Y is all the possibilities where god may or may not exist. Then probability of god is X/Y and you should get somekind of percentage for it.

Example, Let's define god as creator god, plus there is the possibility of no god, wikipedia has 109 different entities for creator god and there is roughly eight(?) different breeds of atheism. So we have 109/(109+8)

We get 93,2% probability of god existing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creator_gods

I'm not really trying to say anything about gods existence. I'm trying to say that don't use math where it's not applicable. To me probability is highly mathematical concept.

That's just obvious misuse of probability, and if you made such silly assumptions in a probability class you would be hard pressed to get any partial credit. Who says that all the god-possibilities in Wikipedia are equally likely? You could misapply probability to the proposition that various forms of transportation would come crashing through my wall, and come up with a fairly high probability of some form of automobile crashing through my wall. The fact that you can do math wrong doesn't mean the math doesn't apply.

However, if you see (for example) someone turn into a pillar of salt, and hear a booming voice from the sky proclaiming itself god, then that should make the existence of that god more probable in your estimation. Ditto for cars crashing through walls: if it happened more often, then this evidence should raise your estimate of the probability of suddenly having your wall knocked down by someone's car. This doesn't have to be complicated; it's actually very straightforward.

To you, probability may be a highly mathematical concept that doesn't apply to everything. To me, probability is how we express uncertainty. It's a powerful way of describing the way the universe works, and we ignore or misrepresent it at our own peril.

I like his take on this. I normally describe myself as an atheist but only because I don't believe that any of the religions I've studied are true. But I am open to other possibilities and I think this guy describes that well.

Is there anyone outside of a mental institution who isn't open to other possibilities? There has to be something seriously wrong with you if you are willing to state a priori that you will not consider unequivocal evidence of a new phenomenon, should it appear.

While it's true that few would explicitly state that, there are certainly people on both sides that feel free to ignore inconvenient evidence.

Not exactly a shocking revelation, but humans aren't purely logic-driven beings.

Could you name some inconvenient evidence that people on the atheist side tend to ignore? I'm not claiming that there isn't such evidence, but often when people criticize "people on both sides", they're committing an equivocation fallacy because it sounds wise. I'm curious to see if you did, too.

The argument from morality is the first that comes to mind. Few atheists are willing to really embrace the moral nihilism that a materialist philosophy seems to require.

Few atheists are willing to really embrace the moral nihilism that a materialist philosophy seems to require.

My dog does OK with a philosophy of pure materialism, I figure I can, too.

Unless your dog is uniquely talented, it is incapable of holding any philosophy, materialist or not.

And yet he doesn't kill and eat my family the moment I turn my back. He doesn't need philosophy as a source of morality, and he doesn't need faith... he only needs socialization.

I think you're confusing moral nihilism (the philosophical proposition) and moral/immoral behavior. The two are not directly correlated.

Perhaps; can you elaborate on the difference? What exactly would be the property of a social animal -- dogs, humans, whatever -- that allows it to restrain its own baser instincts? In humans the term morality is often used to describe this property, but I'll admit I don't know how correct that is.

Well, to cite Wikipedia, "Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral."

The primary opposing viewpoint is moral realism, which holds that statements like "Intentionally killing an innocent person is immoral" are both meaningful and capable of being evaluated as a truth claim.

In general, I believe the ability of a social animal to restrain "baser" instincts would be referred to as social cooperation. For humans, a moral realist would say that while morality is closely related, it also can't be reduced to merely social cooperation.

For humans, a moral realist would say that while morality is closely related, it also can't be reduced to merely social cooperation.

Sure, I'd buy that. But I will also stand by my assertion that what you're calling "social cooperation" is sufficient for a workable morality to emerge. At no point is there a necessity for religion.

There are lots of people like that. It's very common and normal. Regardless of what people are willing to state, many will simply not consider unequivocal evidence of new phenomena if it contradicts their beliefs. They may recognize that the popular thing to do is claim to be open minded, and then disregard the evidence anyway. They may not even realize they're doing it.

There are loads of Christians who proudly proclaim that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that could possibly change their minds about anything related to their faith. Even peripheral doctrinal issues, like whether or not prayers for healing work. They see this as virtuous, an ideal of unwavering faith to which they should all aspire.

(Note that I'm not saying this is unique to Christians, or that it applies to all or even most Christians. Here endeth the disclaimer.)

Atheism is in response to theism. One can be a believer and be agnostic, likewise you can be atheist and agnostic as well.

The existence of god is as yet unverifiable in the same way the existence of Bilbo Baggins is unverifiable. So what?

I think this is a good example of meta-contrarianism. (see hn discussion/link at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730731).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com