Atheism-EN

Sara, sympathetically, said in a comment :

I'm not religious, I am agnostic, not because I play it safe, but because I do not care one way or another. I do not give importance to any god or religion to waste time to find whether or not, just pass me on the side. If it does, congratulations sir. god / goddess / gods, if there is to me irrelevant.

What I write now is not to disagree with Sarah in any way, it's just a dissertation on the various settings, since many people think that confuses and / or does not know them all. Sara, this is not specific to you, OK?

So it is: a lot of people see things as Atheist - Agnostic - Believer, equating those names to different "levels" of belief in a god or gods. But this is an oversimplification, a bit like the "Left - Right" in politics. As this last example, it is best to think of two different measures that could be demonstrated in a chart in two dimensions:

Examples:

• any believer fanatic / fundamentalist Christian is a Gnostic (there is some equivalent in Portuguese the "theist"? "Your" does not seem to be a good translation ... )
• most believers by tradition (common in European countries with state religion, such as Portugal) believers are agnostic (believe there is a God, but never would put his hands on fire for this, nor care much about the subject), or " apateus "(we already there)
• the position that I consider to be a rational skeptic who only believes in claims when evidence is to be a mixture of Gnostic and agnostic atheist, meaning I'm agnostic about a god , but I'm Gnostic - that is, say with conviction that do not exist - in relation, for example, the gods of the three great monotheisms on Earth, which have specific characteristics and often self-contradictory, and whose claims about them, both historical and scientific, are completely destroyed, you guessed it , by history and science.

Already, many people self-describe themselves as agnostic when it is actually "apathy." "Agnostic" means "it is impossible to know whether or soup," but it is not, is it? "Apathy," coming from "apathy" means "I'm a damn about whether there is a God or not." And this is the case with almost all self-proclaimed agnostic. Do not think that is impossible to know, simply, are not really interested in the subject, one way or another.

Finally, one thing that people often do not think, both "apateus" as the true atheists are agnostic atheists "fact" that is, live your whole life on the assumption that there is no god. The main difference between them and a "true" atheist does not think much about it, do not consider important, and neither do any kind of activism (which can limit the writing on the subject). But in all of their lives, they act just like atheists. I find it important to take this into account, especially when they accuse atheists of "fanaticism" or "we need as much faith as believers."

By the way, Sara - as I suspect is true for most of the Portuguese, at least under 60 - is clearly an "apathy."

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Possibly related posts:

1. "Atheists are so fanatical and militant believers as they criticize!"
2. "The burden of proof belongs to atheists"?
3. FAQ: "What is that atheists worship, then?"
4. Atheists: the most hated minority in the U.S.
5. FAQ: "You atheists are as fanatical and dogmatic as any believer. 'Believe' in atheism, and nothing you would change your mind. "

Tags: Agnosticism , apatheist , Atheism , Agnostic Atheism , Gnostic Atheism , Religion , Theism , Atheism and Theism , Theism Gnostic

Article of Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 16:26 and is filed under Atheism , Religion . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0 . You can comment on or create a trackback to here on your site.