my life

Diana,

I never thought about the different interpretations of “atheist.” What I usually thought of when I heard the word was someone who lacked belief. It never occurred to me that there might be several possible reasons for it.

Would you care to add “agnostic” to the mix and see how it cooks down? (Grin)

Your remarks about “lack of belief” remind me of something Carl Sagan said. Because of his chosen field, many people expected him to believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But he didn’t believe it because he didn’t have enough evidence to support the belief.
An atheist according to your first definition seems to me to be someone who has reserved judgement.

Dave

Agnostic? Now who’s opening the can of worms? :D

Without going to the dictionary, because I don’t have time, I think of “agnostic” as the opposite of “gnostic,” as it was originally meant (I’ve read that the word was coined as a joke, incidentally; a man was asked and didn’t want to say “atheist,” so he claimed to be “agnostic"). “Gnostic” means “knowing,” and refers to those who claim to know their deity (or of his existence) through mystic means; “agnostic” means “not knowing.” Technically. ;)

Also, technically, I suppose that means the word should be pronounced AY-nostik, too.

Most people use the word, however, to mean that they are undecided on belief.

I have never understood how anyone can be undecided on belief, though. Belief seems to me to be a black-and-white proposition: either you believe or you don’t. I honestly don’t understand how you can sort of believe. In my view, if you cannot state that you believe, then you do not. For example, I cannot state outright that I believe–*diana scratches her head and tries to think of something she’s “agnostic” on*–in Bigfoot. Therefore, I do not believe. Maybe that isn’t a really good example, but I can’t think of anything better at the moment. UFOs? I don’t believe.

That’s just me, though. I’ve been accused of being too black-and-white before, and perhaps this is another example of my inability to see the grey clearly visible to others. Many people call themselves “agnostic” because they don’t believe (my first definition of atheism), but believe the word “atheist” to denote a more hard-nosed approach (second or third definition).

But perhaps most people use the term “agnostic” to mean “I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t want to think about it and I don’t want to talk about it so just leave me alone.” And I can certainly respect that.

But to me, “agnostic” is about what you know; “atheist” is about what you believe. The two are not mutually exclusive. I am, technically, an agnostic atheist humanist. I do not know there is a god, I do not believe there is one, and I believe that humans create their own greatest good.

Just like “atheist,” you’re better off asking the person who self-labels as “agnostic” exactly what he means by it. Like so many other words in our wonderful language, it has several different accepted definitions.

Carl Sagan. You have good taste. :)

d

Diana,

Good taste? I don’t know about that. But I’m a big fan of astronomy and cosmology. Before I became a Christian my god was knowledge, and I’m still fascinated with learning. There’s a lot to learn about the universe, and Carl was a very good teacher. (It’s too late now, but I’m only a couple of hours’ drive from Cornell University where he taught.) Plus I’m a nerd, and things like the Hubble Space Telescope and radio telescopes turn me on.

You’re right about clarifying what someone means when he calls himself an agnostic or an atheist. The distinction between what one knows and what one believes might be lost on some people.

I think there is a state between belief and unbelief. I don’t know what to call it - sort of an “I don’t believe but I wouldn’t be surprised” state. (That’s how I feel about UFOs - I haven’t seen any evidence that leads me to believe we’ve been visited by aliens, but I don’t have any disbelief that would be shattered if it happened.) Belief requires a decision. Sometimes the decision is easy because we have clear evidence, other times we make the decision based on subjective evidence, or no evidence at all (i.e. gut feeling). I think the middle state comes from not having made the decision.

Dave

Mornin’, Dave. More food for thought. You’re always good for it. :)

I was going to argue that I don’t think belief is the result of a decision, then I looked up “decision” to make sure we were talking about the same thing. Glad I did. The two applicable definitions are “the act of making up your mind about something,” and “a position or opinion or judgment reached after consideration.” I see the first definition as applying to choosing what you’re going to wear today or something like that, and it is the definition I automatically gravitate to (hence my initial disagreement). However, I suspect you mean the second definition, in which case I agree.

Belief is something you wind up with when you’ve been presented with enough evidence to reasonably conclude that X is true. Without that evidence, you can’t convince yourself that X is so, no matter how hard you try. The disagreement in various people’s (and peoples’) beliefs seems to come from what any given person considers to be valid support for proposition X.

For example, a common argument for belief in God is “all this couldn’t have just made itself!” For many, many people, this is a powerful argument, and is sufficient to bolster their belief in God. That is, they didn’t just decide one day to believe in God; they believe in God because their reasoning supports the idea.

I cannot accept “all this couldn’t have made itself!” as a valid argument for the existence of God, though, so I lack that hook upon which to hang my belief.

Concerning the “state” between belief and unbelief…isn’t “I don’t believe but I wouldn’t be surprised” still a state of unbelief, though? Concerning your UFO position, perhaps the difference in agnosticism and a-UFOism is that you lack evidence but, based upon your understanding of the vastness of the universe, you still believe UFOs are possible (maybe even probable). Yes?

Let’s apply this to the leprauchans. They are magical creatures who grant wishes if caught, and who distribute gold (I think–my mythology is rusty). Based upon your knowledge of the universe, do you think these creatures are possible? If not, you are comfortable with the statement “lephrauchans don’t exist.” If you think they are possible, you would be uncomfortable with the bluntness of the statement “leprauchans don’t exist,” right? It seems to ignore something you believe is at least a distinct possibility.

Before I continue, would you classify yourself as agnostic or a-leprauchanist? (Or both ;)). Why?

d

Diana,

Thanks for clearing away the clutter. You’re right - lack of belief due to lack of knowledge is still lack of belief. (But it’s curable. (Grin)) Believing something is possible isn’t the same as believing it is true. That’s where I’m at on the UFO question. So is that agnosticism, then?

When you talk about “valid support” you hit a point I wanted to make in yesterday’s lecture, but it was late and I forgot. We make what decisions we must based on the information we have (including emotions, intuition, experience, and even previous decisions we want to stay consistent with). In many cases the available information may be enough to convince one person but not another. The evidence that leads me to believe in Christ is probably pretty unconvincing to anyone else.

(I believe that’s God’s intent, BTW. If we had incontrovertible proof that God exists then belief in Him wouldn’t be faith, it’d be science. That’s not what God wants.)

When it comes to leprechauns, I have to profess agnosticism. This might not be a fair example, however. Believing in spirit creatures like angels allows me to admit the possibility that some may have appeared to humans in a form that led to the leprechaun myth. Same with ghosts. I must confess that this is not based on my knowledge of the universe, it’s based on my beliefs. My knowledge of the universe doesn’t contradict it, though.

Dave

Thank you for the reply, Dave.

Thanks for so succinctly explaining the Faith Catch 22. That was my initial argument against the rationality of theism, and remains one of my favorites. It fascinates me that this precise argument is seen by theists as a defense of what they believe.

I think a lot of people make decisions of belief based on emotion, intuition, experience, and previous decisions we want to stay consistent with. That’s a very good point. The only time I find emotion to be a good basis for a belief is when it involves only how I feel about someone. In other words, emotion is only good support for emotion.

Intuition is a tricky one. I trust my intuition concerning what sort of person I’m dealing with. My intuition, however, is based upon my knowledge of people and their non-verbal cues. Or even their verbal cues–how they express themselves, the things they find important enough to talk about, the questions they ask and the questions they don’t ask. My intuition has nothing to go on and therefore nothing to say about whether X exists or not, though.

Experience. Hm. I believe some things based upon experience. I believe there’s a water bottle on the desk next to me, ferinstance: I see it and drink from it; people walk by and make unsolicited comments about it ("Got enough water there, Captain?"). I’m quite sure it isn’t a figment of my imagination. It seems pragmatic to concede that this water bottle actually exists.

Let’s say I have an experience, though, that I can cannot explain. (What experience that might be, I don’t know.) But I could attempt to explain it with the supernatural. However, this doesn’t help me; it merely moves the unexplained one level back.

Then there’s the effort to remain internally consistent. It interests me that your knowledge of the universe doesn’t contradict your beliefs. I believe everyone feels this way. No matter how much I may want to believe in leprauchans, I’m a hard a-leprauchanist. I do not believe in them because–by the physical laws of the universe with which I am familiar–they cannot possibly exist. I think my worldview is internally consistent.

So do you, though. I began with the things I cannot pragmatically deny, and reasoned from there. You also began somewhere in your reasoning and worked from there. Did you begin by deciding that magic was possible, then based your belief in God on that, or (more likely) decide that God exists, then in order to avoid contradiction, based your belief in magic in general on that?

I’m guessing here, of course. There may be other possibilities I’ve overlooked. I’m curious where you began in your reasoning process, and why you decided that was a dependable truth.

d

Something I missed yesterday:

Believing something is possible isn’t the same as believing it is true.

Profound statement, that. Well spoken. I’d say this is what agnostics mean in the common ("I’m not sure what I believe” sense) use of the word. If they believed the proposition impossible, they’d have no problem stating their belief that there is no god.

I think it confuses matters to use the term “agnostic” in this sense, but then…it’s a living language and I’m not the only person responsible for its care and feeding. :)

d

Diana,

“Care and feeding…” That’s good! Some time back you talked about dictionaries that try to define (dictate?) language vs. those that try to describe it. A Ph.D. candidate friend of mine told me those are “prescriptivist” and “descriptivist.” She was an English major; I suppose she knew what she was talking about. I just thought it was funny that a book that takes years to publish would try to set the rules for something that changes daily.

I came to believe there was a higher power when a series of events in my life happened in a way that seemed a little too convenient to be coincidence. Another friend (an evangelical Christian) explained to me the biblical view of why it was happening and what I should do about it. I tried it and it worked. Thus encouraged I studied the Bible some more, finding more useful information. (Especially about people. I’m a tech nerd; I don’t get people, I get electronics. Ask me about the “mark of the beast.” (grin)) I concluded that the Bible must describe the higher power I had come to believe existed. I took the Bible as the authority on God, and decided to believe what it said.

That wasn’t an easy decision. Some things in the Bible make sense, others fly in the face of what I’d learned over the previous thirty-mumble years. I resisted for a long time, but finally realized that it didn’t matter today what I believed happened 6000 or even 4 billion years ago. I still live my life the same way.

That’s how I can believe in what you call magic. Not that I believe there are magical creatures like leprechauns, but there are spirit beings (angels good and bad) that can appear to humans in different guises, sometimes to deceive them.

When I mentioned those four inputs to the decision-making process, I didn’t mean that all four are used every time. Some obviously don’t apply to certain decisions, although some people will use them anyway. (Ever wonder why those gas-guzzling SUV monstrosities are so popular? Tell me emotion didn’t play a part in that buy decision.) Also, when I said “experience” I meant over the long term, not a single event. When you recognize that you’ve been here before and the last time you did X and it hurt, that makes you lean toward doing Y. I think intuition is similar - on a lower level of consciousness you recognize patterns and their likely outcome. (My wife used to have excellent weather intuition, then we moved to New York and it doesn’t work any more.)

I think you’re right about internal consistency - we choose to believe that which matches our world view. But sometimes we end up changing our world view to match what we’ve decided to believe.

That’s enough typing. I’m going to go watch the Thunderbirds. They’re flying a practice run over Rochester right now.

Dave

Mornin’, Dave. :)

Great response. Thank you.

I didn’t intend “magic” as an insult; it just seemed like a down-to-earth general term that applies to all beliefs outside the sphere of the scientifically demonstrable, and we can all agree on what it means. I was looking for some way to express the observation that all non-scientific beliefs fall into the same realm, divided in our minds only between those we believe and those we think are rubbish.

So…you believed in magic first, then built your belief in God on that. I’m curious what series of events was too convenient to be explained through natural means, and what your friend thought you should do about it, and how you determined that “it worked.” Of course, this may very well be beyond the scope of this conversation, too (not to mention unpardonably nosey). It’s just that I hear explanations like that from time to time, but when they’re broken down into specific facts, they don’t sound like anything that requires supernatural explanation. Every story of this sort I’ve ever heard could be summed up with “stuff happens, and sometimes it happens to us.” So…maybe it’s best if we don’t pursue this line of thought at all.

I agree that emotion, intuition, experience and consistency aren’t used with every decision. I was just saying that there are reasonable times to use them, but they are all too often just distractions to sound decision-making. Buying SUVs is a good example of that. And yes…experience applies to more than the here and now, of course.

I take it you find evolution more credible than creation, but you resolved this cognitive dissonance by choosing to disregard the bits in the bible you simply couldn’t take as literal. Is this accurate?

d

Diana,

I wasn’t offended by the way you used the word “magic.” It’s a good catch-all term for what you described.

I’d rather not discuss the details of what happened to me in a public forum like this. I don’t mind taling about it, but the blog is a little too open. There’s some really weird people out there you know. But your summary of “stuff happens, and sometimes it happens to us” is pretty accurate. I meant to say earlier (I thought I had, but I can’t find it now) that my reasons for believing are probably not very convincing to anyone else. There was some emotional input to the decision, which in my case can make for some pretty weird results. (I don’t handle strong emotions well.) If it had happened at another time I might very well have come to a different conclusion, but it was plain to me that what I had believed up to that point wasn’t helping.

I think I may have misled you, but not on purpose. I believed in God first, then magic. Before that I believed everything had a scientific explanation. Since then, I believe there are some things that can be supernatural in origin. Sorry for the confusion - I’ve been writing in fits and starts and it’s hard to keep a thread from getting tangled.

Also, I resolved the cognitive dissonance by choosing to believe the bits in the Bible that seemed incredible. I figured if I’m going to take part of it as true, I should accept it all as true. (I think that comes from the part of my personality that led me to be an engineer. I deal frequently with technical standards, and you can’t just pick and choose the pieces you like of a standard and still claim to meet the standard.) I believe that evolution works, I just don’t believe it’s how we originated.

I appreciate your listening to me ramble without trying to convince me I’m wrong. You seemed to be curious about how a person comes to believe in God. (Or maybe I was just reading that into your words? If so I apologize) I thought I’d pass along the experiences of one person who’s been down that road.

Dave

Good evening, Dave.

Yes…I’ve been trying to understand how you arrived at your belief. It’s a breakthrough, by the way, that I was able to pursue that end without attempting to prove you wrong. Obviously, I believe you’re wrong and you believe I’m wrong; I’ve found conversations to that end to be pointless, and am tickled to have managed to not argue my POV while attempting to understand yours. Quite a breakthorugh. :D

I don’t mind at all that you’d prefer to not discuss the personal aspects of your conversion. I understand.

You said earlier in this thread that your personal reasons for believing are probably not convincing to anyone else. I was pondering on that comment during my walk this afternoon, actually. I understand that emotion tends to insinuate itself into decisions concerning belief, and thus no person’s “proof” is truly understandable (or convincing) to anyone else. You don’t just have to be there; you have to be that person.

I understand the “thread getting tangled” problem, naturally. Particularly in a discussion of this sort, it’s almost impossible to maintain any given thread of discussion, as so many immediately blossom. No worries, mate.

On the subject of evolution, have you decided, then, that it is working now, but isn’t how we began?

Your approach to believing the bible makes internally consistent sense. It does make sense to take it all as true if you take any as true (unless you wish to contradict the choices of Catholic types while the canon was being compiled).

Here’s the bit that led me to the conclusion that you believed in magic first: I came to believe there was a higher power when a series of events in my life happened in a way that seemed a little too convenient to be coincidence. You said “higher power,” but it seems to me that you had to first determine that the series of events was not explicable without the “supernatural” (i.e., magic), and thus, God was possible. That was how I went there, instead of the standard “belief in God” assumption. Does that make sense?

I very much appreciate your clarifications. :)

How was the impromptu Thunderbird practice, btw? I’ve seen them a couple of times, only. Once was the obligatory flyby for an Academy graduation (precisely on the moment of the mortar toss…how DO they do that?), and the other a demonstration at an air show at Peterson AFB many years back. They are a marvel, indeed.

d

Diana,

I see where I started the confusion over magic. (Thanks for catching that. You’re good!) Up until that unfortunate series of events (if I may borrow the phrase) I didn’t believe in magic or a higher power. In my mind they were different, although I can’t clearly explain the difference right now. Probably from old assumptions I formed when I was young and never bothered to re-evaluate. When I began to suspect that a higher power was involved, that didn’t imply to me that magic was part of it. But using the broader definition of magic that you’ve described, then yes, I believed in magic first. (Although I know a number of believers who would be offended to hear what God does called magic. C’est la vie.)

About evolution: you have it. Sometimes I think of the physical world like a machine that God designed and built. (There’s that engineering mentality again.) It’s a very well-built machine; its parts can adapt to changing conditions, repair themselves, replace themselves, and generally keep working together. Evolution is part of that system. But an observer can’t really tell if the machine was built and started a thousand years ago or a billion years ago. The machine shows signs of wear, but without knowing its initial condition it’s not possible to estimate its age.

The Thunderbirds practice was more of an advertising run - they were only over the city for about 10 minutes. I’ve seen them probably a dozen times over the last 20 years, although not always from the center of the show. The were regulars at an annual air show at an AFB (later an ANGB) near my home in Ohio. We were about 5 miles from the base, and when they flew a show they frequently formed up for a pass within sight of my house.

I’d love to be part of their ground crew, but there’s no way I’d even consider being a pilot.

Dave

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Dave. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I also appreciate your not trying to convince my I’m wrong. ‘Tis rare indeed. :)

Yes, my choice to use “magic” risked offense. I couldn’t think of a word that encapsulated all non-natural thinking that didn’t, though.

“Supernatural” doesn’t encapsulate all non-natural thinking, in its common usage. Not only is the definition a source of serious philosophical argument, but we understand the word to refer to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil, and as something that transcends nature. Technically, I think it includes myths like leprauchans and fairies, but we don’t generally understand it that way within the context of a religious discussion.

If you cruise out to Onelook.com, you’ll notice that “magic” rather consistently uses “supernatural” in its definition (ex, “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source"), but “supernatural” means something like “not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws.” The implication is clear: “supernatural” is real magic while “magic” is fake magic.

The irony is that supernatural and magical denote the same thing. They both refer to things outside science’s ability to detect. But here’s the $20,000 question: How do you determine which is which? ;)

(To further confuse matters, the bible assumes the existence of witches, and in so doing, assumes the reality of magic, thus giving it the same connotation as “supernatural.")

“Superstition” was another choice, of course. A quick definition: “a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation” seems to cover the possibilies pretty well, but it’s insulting, which is why we all use this term to label the mistaken religious notions of other people as opposed to our correct religious beliefs (along the lines of “junk is the stuff we throw away, and stuff is the junk we keep").

If there is a word that provides a blanket definition of “things outside of nature” without passing a belief judgment on them, I don’t know it.

d

Diana,

“…things outside of science’s ability to detect” is, to me, a sketchy way to define something because science’s abilities change constantly. 500 years ago radio would have seemed like magic even though it has a basis in physical laws. Clarke’s Law says “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It doesn’t say it IS magic.

Superstition covers a lot of territory, but I think the root of its definition is in the practitioner’s ignorance. It doesn’t have to include anything supernatural, just a mistaken sense of the cause of an event. (Which, of course, could apply to any number of religious behaviors.)

I don’t know any other term to describe that which is not subject to known physical laws. I guess we’ll have to keep using “magic” for now.

The Bible’s references to witches are almost always prohibiitions against witchcraft. (Sometimes the word is translated “enchantment.") The term is a little vague (and I don’t have a Hebrew lexicon to help define it better), but the few specific people that are named as witches or enchanters were usually engaged in fortune telling or (in the New Testament) casting out evil spirits for fun and profit. Both of these were usually performed only by prophets and later by apostles. (Prophets weren’t really fortune tellers, they predicted the future to authenticate themselves as true prophets. Their predictions weren’t meant to give anyone an advantage.) I suspect the prohibitions were to reserve these functions for God’s own people.

Dave

Clarke’s Law? I thought that was Heinlein. Hrm. But…yes. Valid quote, and good point. However, haven’t people of ages past explained things they didn’t understand with appeals to deity (i.e., magic)? Aren’t we doing the same thing today (we just have fewer things to explain than they did 500 years ago)?

You are, of course, correct in that the bible references witchcraft are to condemn it. My point was only that the bible doesn’t really leave room to for witchcraft to be a false belief.

Deu 18:10-11 There shall not be found among you [any one] that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, [or] that useth divination, [or] an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

Exd 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (We have this one to thank for the Salem horror.)

Act 8:9-11 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.

2Ch 33:6 And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

Gal 5:20: lists “witchcraft” as a sin of the flesh.

1 Sam 28: King Saul seeks the advice of a woman who has a “familiar spirit.”

So anyway…the bible quite clearly states that witches, familiar spirits, wizards, enchantments and sorcery are real. So I wonder why we define magic as “supposed supernatural powers"…? (I’m also curious how many Christians honestly believe in witches, etc?)

d

Diana,

You’re right, witchcraft isn’t a false belief if you believe the Bible, although most of the practitioners back then were charlatans. Those that did manage supernatural performances did so with the help of demons (familiar spirits), although they may not have realized it. I think that may be another reason - possibly even the main reason - these activities were forbidden. They gave an entry for demons into human affairs. (That’s why you hear an outcry against Harry Potter books and Dungeons & Dragons games - some kids have gotten to where they believe the fantasies with disastrous results. I can’t say I agree that fantasies like these should be banned, however. Generally we’re capable of judging the difference between fantasy and reality.)

I can’t say how many Christians believe in witchcraft. I’m confident that not all of them do. Surveys have shown that a sizeable percentage of people that call themselves Christians don’t even believe in the devil as a distinct entity.

A literal interpretation of the Bible does call for believing in supernatural events, miracles, witchcraft, magic, angels, demons, and all kinds of things that are outside of science’s view. That’s how I can be an agnostic when it comes to leprechauns. Not that the Bible speaks of their existence, but it is possible for familiar spirits to appear in many guises, and the guise of a leprechaun is not ruled out.

Dave

Good responses, one and all, Dave. Thank you.

One question: where do you get the idea that most practicioners “back then” were charlatans?

Seems like I’ve heard this before, but I’m not sure how it might be supported.

d

Diana,

I was sure I had seen something in the Old Testament about how to distinguish between a true prophet and a false one (who was to be punished by the ever-popular stoning). But so far I can’t find the reference. I’ll keep looking, though.

Saying “most” might have been an exaggeration. The references I -have- found don’t explicitly say the sorcerers and witches were fakes.

There I went assuming things again. Thanks for catching me. (Grin)

Dave

Dave,

I wish to thank you for a most interesting discussion. I thought you should know that my friends have enjoyed the point-counterpoint, and admire your intelligence, wit and behavior. FWIW, I concur completely.

Now, onto a mindless subject of some sort…. :)

d

Diana,

Awww, gee, thanks. (Grin)

Dave

By the way, PD, the general term for all religious belief, thus ’supernatural’ is ‘myth’. I’m sure you know that, but didn’t see the use of it in your discussion. Daddy

Hi, Daddy. I thought you might be out there lurking somewhere. :)

“Myth” had a couple of problems. First, it simply struck me as too insulting, as I was looking for a word that encompassed both those things you believe and those things you don’t. People react poorly when I say they believe in myths.

Second, it didn’t necessarily involve the supernatural:

noun: a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people

A myth is often thought to be a lesson in story form which has deep explanatory or symbolic resonance for preliterate cultures, who preserve and cherish the wisdom of their elders through oral traditions by the use of skilled story tellers.

Some definitions say “typically involving the supernatural” or “fictitious,” incidentally, but it doesn’t seem to be a given.

Sometimes, there’s no polite way to make a point, because the point itself is somewhat insulting, and I think this is one of those times. But I feel the point needs to be made: it’s respectable (and even desirable) in our society to believe in the “supernatural,” but you’re a card short of a full deck if you believe in “magic"–as Dave pointed out, some people are offended by the implication that they believe in “magic,” too. But both words are, in denotation (as opposed to connotation), the same things; they refer to things that are in violation of natural laws and unprovable/un-disprovable through science.

My point, perhaps not so subtly made, was that there seems to be no basis for accepting A as true but rejecting B as fanciful foolishness when in fact the evidence for both is the same. When you say you believe in God, you are saying you believe in an omnipotent being. When you say you believe in an omnipotent being, you’re saying you believe the being is capable of doing things in violation of natural laws. When you say you believe things in violation of natural laws can happen (or did happen), you’re saying you believe in magic.

I was just reading last night how we all categorize “facts” in our heads. The writer (Sam Harris, book: The End of Faith) was explaining that he and his fiancee were traveling in France and had planned to visit the American Embassy, but decided to avoid it due to bomb threats, etc. Meanwhile, they located a hotel which was offering a free upgrade to a suite for staying there for the weekend, and they were asked if they’d like a view of the street or the American Embassy; they both opted for the American Embassy view, as they expected it would have lovely gardens surrounding it. Until a friend told them they were crazy for choosing that hotel, because it was next door to the Embassy and it was the Fourth of July, did they realize that they’d been simultaneously trying to get close to the very place they were trying to avoid. He said this is because we assign different associations to ideas under different circumstances, and the ideas take different routes through our heads, making it possible for us to do such things without experiencing cognitive dissonance (until someone points out that you’re sleeping right next to the bomb target, I mean).

I think we do this with the ideas “supernatural” and “magic.” They mean the same things, but we associate them with different things, making it possible for us to simultaneously accept the truth of the “supernatural” but reject the idea of “magic.”

Once you’ve accepted that you believe in magic, though, you’d probably feel a bit silly saying so.

I can’t remember where I read this (it may have been The Happy Heretic), but Catholics the world over feel that attending a mass officiated by the pope is a deeply spiritual, moving experience. But would it be as deeply spiritual and moving if the pope said the same things and made the same motions wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and flip-flops? Or would he just look silly?

We do this with words. We dress up certain concepts in fancy trappings that presume to give them respectability. “Supernatural” is just “magic” wearing a robe and carrying a staff.

d

American Heritage: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Infoplease: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Dictionary.com: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Ultralingua: 1. One who denies the existence of any deity.
Online Plain Text: 1. A godless person. 2. One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
Webster’s, 1913: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
Rhymezone: someone who denies the existence of god
Webster’s, 1828: One who disbelieves the existence of a God, or Supreme intelligent Being.
LookWAYUP Translating dictionary: someone who denies the existence of god.

Interesting that one might construe some of these definitions in such a way as to reach the following conclusion:

Atheist: Do you believe in the Buddha?

Xian: No I do not. The bible teaches us that there is only one god. So he cannot exist.

Athiest: The definition of an atheist according to Ultralingua is, “One who denies the existence of any deity.” Welcome aboard.

Maybe I’m just putting a fecetious slant on the meaning of the word, “any” in this case, or maybe this ambiguity highlights some of the slanted language inherent in the definition.

If the latter were true, such a definition would cause xians the same difficulties in proving a negative claim.

Also it is a well known fact that the media loves to slant the view of the public with headlines like this:

Reporter: Mr. President, is it true that you were caught in a hotel with a 16 year old girl?

President: Wh - what? Where did get such a ridiculous idea? Of course that’s not true.

Headline: President denies sex romp with cheerleader.

Reporter: Mr. President, is it true that the UFO’s at Area 51 are using neuclear power that is threatening the ecosystem in Nevada?

President: Uh no, that’s not true.

Headline: Presiedent denies UFO’s at area 51 are neuclear powered.

Guess the theists caught on to this idea …

Theist: Do you believe in God?

Atheist: No.

Headline: Athiest denies the existence of God.

Maybe we should just say, “No comment.”

Very nicely said, Neil. :)

I believe Stephen Roberts said it best: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

d

Thanks Diana,

That means a heck of a lot coming from you.

When I post on your threads I am always gritting my teeth in anticipation of having my logic torn to shreds by someone smarter then me.

Speaking of which, you were right about most of my questions being covered on IIDB, my involvement there helped me cover a hell of a lot of philosophical ground in a short space of time.

Happy 4th of July to all my Yankee friends and allies.