Agnostic vs Atheist

There is a lot to recommend itself from Buddhist thought, and other belief systems too, and I respect and love much of it. But, for myself, if someone interprets any of it as in any way spiritual, we part ways. I look on a human life as one looks at a flower blossom. It blooms, then it's gone. Beautiful for a time, perhaps, but bound to disintegrate to the elements. If that's not enough- -so? Perhaps we want too much when we fantasize gods into existence.

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Edgar, as you know by now, my thinking about death is much the same. I don't need a god or an afterlife because I do not see that my mortality is a problem. When I die I will be as I was before I was born--no problem.
And if I die five, ten, fifteen or twenty years from now, the moment of death will seem to have come with equal swiftness. If I have any fear in this regard, it is the fear of not having lived well enough, of not having taken advantage of this marvelous opportunity. So far I've done pretty well. I had an enjoyable profession; I've had two great marriages; I'm enjoying my retirement (with no financial difficulties and) with the time to paint and play music all I want; I have lots of friends, some physical, some cyber, but all great. When I die, I will have no grounds for whining. If I am in not too much pain, I should die with a gratefufl smile.

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I've always admired your viewpoint, jl.

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I am interested in all the philosophic discussions and am always inculcating different bits into my view, but I remain an I with a view. It never ceases to amuse me, being I with a view. Perhaps I can view that I as you do your I, JL, but not very often; I am too distracted by my pleasure in what is around me. Intense life of a blossom. I see myself as one, not as no one.

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In case no one has said this yet about Atheism:

I didn't chose Atheism ...mainly because they have no holidays.

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If anyone's said that before, I missed it...

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whew

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Some of the philosophical concepts that are discussed here are difficult to grasp for a lot of people. I think M.C. Escher brilliantly illustrates the subject-object conundrum in his drawing, "Prentententoonstelling" (1956) (Print Gallery).

$http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/images/scan450.jpg$

In the illustration Escher masterfully employs the Droste effect.

Some of the people at Hendrik Lenstra of the Universiteit Leiden and the University of California at Berkeley made it a project to visualize the mathematical structure of Escher's illustration. Through the mathematics, they've been able to fill in the whited-out center dot. It is a spiraling repetition of the illustration.

$http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/images/blow1.jpg$

They even made animations in MPEG and AVI file formats of the illustration. You can set Windows Media Player on loop and see the repeating spiralling effect.

[URL=http://]Animations of the filled in print[/URL]

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I see and can relate to these parallels between the topic subject and the drawings of Escher. great connection

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It won't open for me.

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edgarblythe wrote:

It won't open for me.

Won't open period - there's no URL, which you can see by mousing over the link and looking at the status bar down at the bottom left of your browser (assuming you have enabled it).

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Well that sucks.

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Whoa! Sorry about that. Here's the URL:
http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/index.php?menu=animation

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JLN,

Yes to all of the above.

The concept of "myself" starts with sociolinguistic conditioning as "an actor" like "other actors" (this is the "free will angle") and perhaps moves on from there via meditation to mutuality of existence. The concept of "ultimate truth" with or without "an omnicient knower" is expression of the psychological search for "closure". Godel showed there is no chance of that within "logical analysis". Such "open-ness" is illustrated in the Escher examples and the fractal geometry as used in "systems theory".

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When I open infrablue's link, I get a web site, but a box pops up, advising me to install an active x control. Then the internet shuts down and I have to go online all over again.

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megamanXplosion wrote:

Atheism seems to be completely misunderstood in this topic. An atheist is a person who does not believe there is a god. This applies to those who merely do not know if there is a god and also applies to those who claim to know for certain there are no gods. Both positions are atheist positions because they both assert that the person lacks the belief that there are gods. There are essentially two subcategories of atheism: positive and negative. Negative atheism is one where the person does not know for certain that there are no gods but the person doesn't accept the proposition that they exist. Positive atheism is one where the person claims to know for certain that there are no gods (a positive assertion is made.)

Agnosticism is different from atheism in the sense that agnosticism is philosophical while atheism is theological. The agnostic who says "I don't know for certain there are gods but I believe there are/is" is an agnostic theist. The person doesn't claim to have knowledge (hence agnostic) but the lack of knowledge doesn't preclude the choice of belief (accepting an unproven assertion.) The agnostic who says "I don't know and I won't choose a belief because beliefs rely on the acceptance of unproven assertions" is an agnostic negative atheist. The person is a negative atheist because the person doesn't assert that gods do not exist but the person also doesn't believe (accept the unproven assertion) that they do exist. The agnostic who says "I don't know if Gods exist but I believe they do not" is an agnostic positive atheist. This position is similar to the agnostic theist in that the person doesn't claim to have knowledge but belief (accepting unproven assertions) isn't excluded.

There is no such thing as an agnostic that isn't also a theist or atheist. Agnosticism is not a third-party in the theological groups because theism and atheism are all-encompassing. One must choose one of the following positions: claim to know there are no gods (positive atheism), not know but believe there are no gods (negative atheism), not know but lack belief in gods (negative atheism), not know but believe there are gods (theism), or claim to know there are gods (theism). There is no middle-ground between these choices. Those who try asserting that agnosticism is a middle-ground are confused because they have erased the boundary between philosophy and theology. If they haven't done that then they have wrongly defined atheism so that only positive atheists are left. Many people define atheism wrongly by asserting that an atheist must claim to have knowledge on the matter and then, based on their false definition, they present one of those false dichotomies like "you are with them [and their false claim to knowledge] or against them--be an agnostic if anything!" It is impossible to only be an agnostic. Agnosticism is a philosophical position and not a theological one. Of the three theological positions (2 for negative atheism and one for theism) above, one must apply to "the agnostic." There is no way around it. Most agnostics, as far as I can tell, are negative atheists and just don't want to be labeled as such.

What about a person who has never heard about the concept of God ? Are they atheist or agnostic ?

Lets face it, the concept of gods comes largely from our religions.

If someone has no religious experience whatsover, how do words like god, theist, atheist, agnostic, positive atheist, negative agnostic atheist with sprinkles on top have any meaning to them ?

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Who of us has purview to that, at least over a series of years...? I get your point though.

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ossobuco wrote:

Who of us has purview to that, at least over a series of years...? I get your point though.

Not many I imagine...but I'll bet it applies to someone somewhere.

Outside of a religious context the word god should be a non-word.

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CerealKiller wrote:

What about a person who has never heard about the concept of God ? Are they atheist or agnostic ?

"All children are atheists, they have no idea of God." (Baron d'Holbach in Good Sense 1772)

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megamanXplosion wrote:

CerealKiller wrote:
What about a person who has never heard about the concept of God ? Are they atheist or agnostic ?

"All children are atheists, they have no idea of God." (Baron d'Holbach in Good Sense 1772)

Rather a sweeping statement.

Doesn't seem to apply to people who know there is a god or people who do not know there are no gods.

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Agnostic vs Atheist

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