Hacker News Reader

Comment by natch | Hacker News Reader

You're probably an atheist without realizing it.

I've met many agnostics who weren't aware that there are different types of atheists, including many who don't know one way or another but lean toward disbelief, which is very close to agnosticism.

The typical misunderstanding of atheism from self-described agnostics is that atheists claim to be certain that there is no God. Some atheists do that, but that's not the only kind of atheism.

Another problem with agnosticism is agnostics seem to believe that one cannot assign any probability without perfect knowledge. Yet you do it every minute of every day, in ever decision you make. We live by probabilities and beliefs (and disbeliefs). I don't see why certain concepts in life should be off limits for assignment of probabilities.

View on HN

"You're probably an atheist without realizing it."

You know, it infuriates me when my theist mother tells my atheist self that I'm probably a theist without realizing it. I won't take any of that "If you're a X, you're probably just a Y without realizing it" nonsense.

I think more to the point is that it's silly to define oneself in terms of the things that they don't believe in. I don't label myself an anti-Olympian because I don't believe in the Athenian gods. Socialists don't call themselves acapitalists. Atheism isn't a belief in something being true, it's a belief in other people being wrong.

"I think more to the point is that it's silly to define oneself in terms of the things that they don't believe in."

Well, I do believe there is no god. And theists define themselves as not believing in the absence of a god. I mean, I think your linguistic objections are pretty disingenious.

"Atheism isn't a belief in something being true, it's a belief in other people being wrong."

I believe it is true that there is no god. And I'm pretty sure theists have a belief that me and the other atheists (and those of religions other than theirs) are wrong.

edit: Didn't capitalize "god" intentionally.

What about an areductionist? Aplatonist? Afreudian? Arepublican?

I'm not saying that atheism doesn't exist. I'm saying that it's not the same as agnosticism. Agnostic isn't defined in terms of being anti-theist. It just doesn't really believe in the validity of the question.

It's like the classical, "Are you still beating your wife?" An agnostic doesn't think that the question is framed in an answerable way.

Atheism as a term seems to be more popular in the (much more religious than the rest of the west) US where it is perhaps a minority defining itself in terms of the majority. In places where being religious is the exception, rather than the rule, it seems less sensical for those who are not religious to define themselves in terms of not holding a belief that the minority hold.

As for the negations, do you believe that atheism would have a meaning if there were no theism? Or that there's any specific substance to the term atheism, other than (usually actively) rejecting the beliefs of theism?

Argh. Here it is: the moment the thread turns into an argument about religion.

When this poll was first posted, I worried it would. Then a bit later I saw the number of comments and knew that it had.

What a tar-baby the topic of religion is. A forum just can't seem to touch it any point without dragging in the whole thing.

If you look at the comments, they are largely free of flaming. Where disagreements did emerge, people are largely civil, much better than in other threads not even related to controversial topics.

I think this is a step towards HN being able to handle the topic maturely. Such a process is probably best done by not posting inflammatory articles. I tried to not make the poll inflammatory, though I forgot the agnostic option.

Agnosticism does fall under the broadest definition of atheism, nontheism, so it wasn't really incorrect. People just feel very strongly about their particular labels.

That's true. I think lst makes that point somewhere, and gets downvoted for it. What is your opinion of the poll, in terms of pushing the HN community towards being able to talk about such things well?

That's an unfortunate misunderstanding about atheists, unfortunately embraced by most atheists. It's like when they discovered they don't believe in a god anymore, any trace of evolution in their view of the universe just freezed. This is bullshit. I can easily call myself secular humanist, vaguely militant-atheist, zen-atheist (there's also zen-christians and zen-buddhists, don't worry), and I doubt very much I will die with the same labels.

People change, and people are different. Grouping the understanding of life of Einstein or Gates in the same category as every 15-year old who just rejected religion is a limitation I strongly hope we'll overcome in the coming years.

The reason why I cannot assign probabilities in this case is that the underlying concepts are too vague (particularly if you don't accept any one religion's terms) and there can be no empirical observations either. I guess doubting the feasibility of assigning probabilities here is exactly what makes me an agnosticist. Your argument is definately interesting though.

I am a strong agnostic... or strongly agnostic, I don't know what's the proper grammatical form. But I DO know strong agnosticism is what sums my own thoughts on god. :-)

(I don't get why you've been downmodded to -1, I have just +1'd you)

I believe that God exists, I however also believe that his existence cannot be proven empirically, what category does that put me in?

Agnostic theism

I believe lots of theists believe in God without believing in the possibility of an empirical truth. I've certainly met Christian scientists (not to be confused with Christian Scientists) who fall into this category. It would be silly to call them agnostics.

As another poster wrote, often times agnostics approach the question as one of knowledge, whereas most theists as well as "weak" atheists see it as a question of belief. We all (well, almost all) believe all sorts of things that we do not truly know.

To put a finer point on it, I DO believe in absolute truth, I just believe that the existence of God cannot be proven scientifically.

Not to put too fine a point on it, you're a theist.

Is it possible to feel strongly about being unsure?

Wow! Did I just see an Atheist trying to convert an agnostic to Atheism?

Did I just see an Atheist trying to convert an agnostic to Atheism?

I was barked at by numerous dogs. http://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+barked+%22numerous+d...

http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/on_atheism.htm

The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. [...]

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com