@TheMiddleWay, yep, we agree, and since there’s no way logicaly prove an absence of anything, the hardline atheist position is indefensible by default. Is that how you see it as well?

@OwlInASack, totally agree. I don’t engage in these arguments often but I’ve yet to witness a confirmed 7/7.

@TheMiddleWay "The original poster" "posted" a question about religion being the root of evil. You guys are way off topic! Perhaps you could make your own post? Call it "the difference's between"

@TheMiddleWay, nice point ref site stat 16%. That is significant. All groups will have their outliers/fringe and that’s fine. Just not sure it’s worth getting so bent out of shape about it like the OP.

I give up. Can’t find a damn thing to disagree with you about despite my best effort!

@Aaaaaatheist
The OP argument is not religion being the root of evil but one of epistemological certainty. Don’t fear, we’re right where we should be.

@Acree thank you! My sentiments in equal measure.

@Acree, @OwlInASack thanks! I'm just super happy that everyone discussing this.

I learned about paragraphs in the second grade.

Looks like I’m in good company

I do because unlike polished short bits insulting people I prefer content. And I do not need paragraphs to read words. Sure its nice but really?

I know. I hate that about myself. I DID make it into paragraphs...but I have no excuse.
And I've decided I'm going to answer my detractors if it takes all night. They're going to say all kinds of horrible things about what was just an appeal for nuance, balance, and open-mindedness.
I tried to be fair and reasonable, but some people build these ideological prisons, lock themselves in, and refuse deliverance. Or something like that.

@Quarm If you think I insulted you, I'm sorry you feel that way. All I was saying was, atheists convinced beyond question their opinions are unassailable should consider lightening up and not take themselves so deathly seriously. Within the halls of reason there is room for many schools of thought. Instead of looking for THE truth, maybe they should think a little more like agnostics and be open to the notion there IS no truth, only opinion, about most things.

@Quarm, @BohoHeathen A "religion" can be defined loosely as a belief system to which one invests supreme importance. But narrowly, atheism us a quasi-religion, or an " anti-religion" with all the trappings of the real thing. Agnostics, on the other hand, SIMPLY DON'T KNOW if there's a god or gods, or what that very word might mean, except to say, "Who knows?" Each individual agnostic is rebellious against the very IDEA human beings know ANYTHING about such matters. If there is anything to comprehend, it is so far beyond what our brains can fathom, we can be said to know nothing. I am satisfied the "God" of Yahweh and Allah and the Father and all the rest are pure fiction. Do I KNOW that? I'm teetering...I'm so tempted to say, 'Yes, I'm 100% sure." In fact...damn! Yes, okay? Of THAT I'm positive! Same with most of the other theological underpinning of the whole rotten edifice.
But that's it! That and other similar fables like Midas, the goose and the golden egg. I'm sure lots of other things. Like the 2nd Amendment makes sense. Not that I don't approve of gun ownership! I do!
Anyway...

@Storm1752 Dude I was not referring to you was referring to all of these people acting like because you did not write in paragraphs your ideas are somehow less valid or interesting. Too me they are being lazy and insulting a combination I detest in any person(s).

@Quarm Thanks.

I qualified ANYTHING. Of course some things are impossible. I said that.

@Storm1752 I love how people keep harping on the paragraph thing like that discounts your thoughts. I actually agree with everything you wrote.

@Quarm The paragraph thing is not a critique on the contents of the words, but a comment on their presentation. No one is saying otherwise.

If someone can’t be bothered to present text in a way a grade school student is expected to, then I can understand why someone would want to skip it entirely.

@indirect76 I do not disagree except this is the internet and basically a chat room. And I have seen plenty of people refer to the paragraph issue with the obvious intent to discount/ignore the content of the persons post. Too me that is lazy. If you do not want to read it why even comment? Or if your only comment is an insult what is the value of that?

You're entitled to your opinion; I respectfully disagree, and I base that on MY definition of 'atheist,' which I'm quite sure you disagree with. And this goes back to the familiar debating points...I won't go there. To ME (and I'm speaking only for myself, based on actual verbiage used) an atheist is SURE many things are false he cannot prove to be false. I'm not talking about the familiar no-brainers like heaven and hell, miracles, etc., but other things they can't possibly know. I SHARE many of those OPINIONS, but not others. There's room for open-minded discussion. What REALLY bothers me is the grim, unbending certainty. It's depressing, JUST AS DEPRESSING AS RELIGION. To me that "proves" it's wrong.

@Storm1752 So I actually tend to agree with you on this. I would not assert that god does not exist, something I would call an anti-theist. Then you go on to say things I can’t get behind. You tend to paint with a large brush without recognizing that there are lots of varying viewpoint for people that hold that position.

You have a point at the core of what you are saying, unfortunately it’s hidden in this massive wall of text. My opinion is that it’s not an effective way to communicate.

Here is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery that I think applies.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

I don't believe there's a "god." Do you think I'm insane?

@Storm1752
I’ll assume that’s rhetorical

@Storm1752 I think the entire human race is too one extent or another insane. That is the price for self aware intelligence.

@Quarm Certainly a valid perspective. Under the circumstances, I wholeheartedly agree. BUT if we're all insane, doesn't that invalidate the word itself?

@Storm1752 Maybe though their are degrees. Like our functional sociopath of a president.

Yeah, I need to chill. I nervously sip on my glass of water...I gotta relax, take a pill, drink a warm glass of milk with Pepto Bismol...lay down and apply a hot water bag to my cold, clammy head...ahhh...
Thanks. Feeling much better...now, what was that you said? Something about this site NOT being primarily for agnostics??? Well, see, nobody told me! I thought, well, "Agnostics.com," pretty clear on THAT one! Hehehe...no? Damn! Fooled again! In that case, allow me to stand corrected. Again. For the, like, hundredth time this month alone. Appreciate it. I'll just slink back into my cave now. I take it all back.
Bye.

In other words, "intelligent design" can't be proven or disproved, so no certainty. Opinions, though, are welcome. My opinion? If God is impersonal energy and THAT equals mass multiplied by an inconceivable speed (an equation impossible to understand), fine. I'll buy it. I don't UNDERSTAND it, but that's okay, too. The physical laws of materiality are orderly and compatible with one another, but how did it come into being? The Big Bang? Where did THAT come from? We can study it forever and never get any closer to the answers to these unanswerable mysteries.
That, to me, is God.
That's why religion is so faulty. If human beings want to devise laws, etc., don't say God bestowed them to people on a mountain. In that case, new scientific revelations can't affect them. That's stupid.

@Storm1752" Intelligent design cannot be proven or disproven" ?: Doesn't evidence come into it somewhere. You should read "The blind watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. We may not be able to prove or disprove the existence of some "god" or "higher power" but there is absolutely no evidence for intelligent design. In fact evolution shows the opposite.

@Storm1752 Intelligent design Mmmmm. Please give me your wisdom on the laryngeal nerve in a shark, a man (Home sapien) and a giraffe. Can you please explain how it is an intelligent design. (Yes, I'm an atheist so you need not waste time on that, just the expiation on the nerve will completely convince me on intelligent design.)

@rainmaker-47 Never thought much about it, except it's bs.

@Storm1752 Not bullshit. I understand you may not have given it thought. Man, sharks and the giraffe all have the laryngeal nerve. So can you please explain how it is an "intelligent design".

@rainmaker-47 I don't believe intelligent design is a thing. What are you talking about. Just because there is harmony in the physical laws...how could it be otherwise. Doesn't mean a God created it.

In my opinion there are no gods, no heaven or hell...I said that. Hell is impossible according to ANY reasonable scenario. A "God would be incapable of creating such a place. We both know this. For that matter, God would be incapable of creating this world. If there was a "God" earth would be a paradise. It isn't, thus, no god.

Why not make up your own religion? If God exists as an omniscient being we have no hope of conceiving of what that means with our limited understanding of the universe. So it does not really matter. What matters is action and effect.

@Storm1752 the hell? Now you sound like an atheist. I'm sure those words were somewhere in that wall of diatribe. Now I'm even happier I didn't finish it, since it appears you don't even know what you were bitching about.

@Quarm Why not, everyone else seems to make crap up.

@1of5 I love the Pastafarians, the Satanists. I am a firm believer if you cannot laugh at yourself your taking things way too seriously.

Are you saying I'm narcissistic? True. In my own defense I would only add, everybody is to one degree or another. I am the most important person in the world, to me. To everybody else I'm unimportant, irrelevant, not worth mentioning. Even my circumspection is calculated to draw attention to myself. If I give change to a beggar on the street, it's to make ME feel good about myself. So, yes, nailed it.

@Storm1752 They say admitting it is the first step to recovery.. but seriously, it seems like those higher in the narcissistic spectrum are the kind of people who try to divide people. It's shit like that the leads to racism, nationalism, and bigotry. You'll probably be happier in life if you stop acting like half of America with building a wall to divide.

Or perhaps agnostics feel they are as similar to theists as they are to atheists...

@Storm1752 , One thing that occurs to me is that many people who were indoctrinated from baptism on up often have to let go of their belief a little at a time.
My parents sent me and my 6 younger brothers and sisters to a Catholic grade school and then a Catholic High School too. After I graduated, I only went to church for family functions and holidays. When I moved away, I did not join a church. In my mid-20s my mom asked me if I was still "practicing" my faith; I told her I was still very spiritual, but not religious. I may have mentioned looking into my options...
Ten years later I was calling myself a Pagan or a Heathen. It was another 10 years before I embraced the Atheist/Agnostic term for myself.

I did not go the Unitarian route that some do ~ those who still crave regular community, I'm thinking. I guess I'm more of a loner.?

@Lb12star Never liked the words pagan and heathen. Too reactive. I tried UU...left me cold, like anything religious. Why do anything to mimic the Godophiles? And why go pick up trash to "prove" you're "good?" Just silly, like your parents are watching.

You self-identify as an atheist. Your right. I used a very specific definition based on my subjective ideas: someone who is SURE God does not exist. I don't believe God exists, if you mean a personal God who answers prayers. But I'm not sure ANY God doesn't exist. However, I'm 100% positive hell doesn't exist. Why? Because ANY definition of "God" includes "goodness," and "justice," and a hell contradicts that. If you want to define God as evil, vindictive, sadistic, etc., that's different.

So you're another agnostic with a crush on the word atheist. Your perspective is negative and pessimistic, but when pressed you admit you don't really know. Agnostic.

@Storm1752 I haven’t defined “God”at all. I’m reasonably certain that there is not some magical, all powerful, loving being that created everything, including war, famine, cancer, etc and just sits around watching the horrors progress. However, my views would certainly change if I was presented with evidence to the contrary. I’m able to admit that I don’t know everything and still be an atheist. What gives you the right to judge who and what atheists are? It seems to me that you posted here trying to pick a fight so that you could claim to have proven your point when atheists are understandably offended by your characterization of us and lash out. Every person is different and cannot be lumped into sweeping generalizations. I’ve met religious people that are truly awful people, but I also know religious people that are good and try to practice the love and acceptance that they preach. It would be unfair of me to lump them in with the bad ones solely based on my poor experiences. IMO, you could use a bit of self reflection and try to figure out why you are so angry at people that you don’t even know and want to tear others down for having a different view than you.

Someone who has an open mind to everything which cannot be proven false. God as a concept cannot be, but the God of religion can be, because it is a self-contradiction which cannot be reconciled.

@Storm1752 so your mind is open to the tooth fairy, leprechauns, unicorns and every god ever worshiped by every civilization that ever existed? hmm. and by the way, atheist dot com was taken. i'm not saying that's why this site is called agnostic dot com, but it's possible. my mind is open to that possibility. meanwhile, name notwithstanding, this is not a site exclusively for agnostics. in fact, it has a mirror site called humanist dot com. meanwhile, the site cites some principles, and the first two are:

1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.

so while being open-minded is a good thing, it is also important to understand the odds. the odds of there being a deity are so staggeringly low that some of us don't feel like calling ourselves agnostics because that might imply that we think there MIGHT be a god, or even care whether or not there is one. here is what isaac asimov said on this subject:

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” while i myself have since the age of 15 called myself an atheist and never have called myself an agnostic, still i feel as asimov did. i do not find what he said negative. i do not find atheism negative. (i find rants that pick on atheists rather negative.) by the way, there is no such thing as atheist orthodoxy. it's not a religion.

g

@Storm1752 Perhaps you could define "open" then.

In lacking belief for OR against any deities, you could say that my mind is therefore "open" but I think it's more accurate to just say that I don't form beliefs that I can't substantiate. It isn't a question of being "open minded" but of having basic standards of intellectual integrity.

Or maybe the "shrug".....

@bigpawbullets I didn't say I was creating the Bible, here. That was made up over centuries. And how could they make up the "Egyptian Captivity" out of whole cloth and not get called on it? Pretty impressive. A towering figure like Moses? Solomon? David? ANYBODY??? Nope. Just some guy in a tent. Probably high on peyote, or something. Simply awe-inspiring how they duped, and continue to dupe, millions. Absolutely, literally, unbelievable.

During lean times, I confess, I DID steal Snickers bars from the 7-11. Yummy.

Classy

And paragraphs. Don't forget the paragraphs. Better too many than not enough.

Midget porn? Ummm...I won't reject it out of hand. Show me evidence it "exists" and I'll accept it. Otherwise, I'll have take your word for it. I'm not comfortable with that. Now, is it "hot?" I will postulate, sight unseen, it is not.

Okay. Thanks.

I've heard of these. I'm going to read them. Carl Sagan wow how much more could one desire to achieve in a lifetime?

Thank you! That WAS instructive! I only read the first few lines because something came immediately to mind: why not just call yourself agnostic? How do you define the difference? Do you see the word 'atheist' as more assertive, aggressive, and even 'dominant?' In a word, masculine? Virile, direct? Because it is MY assertion the difference is superficial, at best, UNLESS you insert the word, "sure." As in, atheists are SURE there is no God. None of this wishy-washy "don't know" stuff...
Am zi correct? What's the main difference in your book?

@Storm1752 I think I explained that quite thoroughly. At the risk of repeating myself, atheists don’t believe, agnostics don’t know, or so it seems to me. No real atheist will EVER say ‘there is no god’. Saying that you’re sure that there is no god is empty, foolish posturing. Those that do say that haven’t quite got a handle on what atheism means (from the Greek - ‘no god&rsquo. Atheism is based solely on the lack of evidence. That lack generates the belief that there is no such thing. But the belief is evidence based, not blind faith.

There is no evidence for god, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Show us the evidence, and we’ll believe. Atheism is a more robust philosophy than agnosticism, which is riven with doubt, due to many of its followers getting diverted by ‘strange ocurrences’ and the like. As I said, the atheist position is simple. No direct evidence, so we don’t believe. We don’t get side-tracked by ‘mysteries’. But nobody actually knows. Quite possibly never will.

I find your leading question at the end quite condescending: you provide a range of alternative reasons for calling oneself an atheist that don’t bear any relation to anything except your own unfounded beliefs and prejudice. And not knowing something is not wishy-washy; we don’t know, nobody does. It’s the most accurate phrase to use. But we don’t base our atheism on not knowing - we base it on a total lack of positive, testable, and repeatable evidence. Not knowing is the result of not believing.

You should read the rest of my first reply, if you haven’t already.

I do. I was writing you something so amazing, cogent, and dead-on fantastic it took my breath away, but I somehow touched the wrong part of the screen and it went, 'Poof!'
So allow me to synoposize. First, I love you. Sincerely. Without reservation. ALMOST as much as I love myself. Which is lot. Despite what others think. I could go on forever about the esteem in which I hold myself. I love you like that. This is because I'm deeply flattered. Thank you.
Second, I don't talk to my family. Not because I dislike them. I don't. I wish them well. Sort of. If I DID talk to them, the subject probably wouldn't come up, because they're not religious, maybe even agnostic themselves.
The only family I talk to is my 96-year-old mother, a deeply pious Catholic.
I used to engage her in spirited debate but lost interest because 1) the result was predictable and boring, 2) I saw no point in upsetting her. She asked me last time we talked about something on Catholic TV about the New Atheists. She was REALLY asking me if I was one. I'm not, but close enough for me to sidestep the whole subject. Why bother? She was a good mother in her own way, no need to freak her out. The rest of them do that, blaming her for their dysfunction and unhappiness. I don't. In fact, I'm happier now than I've ever been.
Hey, I'm taking down your information. I'm going to look into your group. Right now I'm tired! Been a long day. My email is michaelstortz179@gmail.com. Send me something about it, please. Let's talk.
I DO agree with everything you said. If I didn't I'd say so.

Very unlikely, in fact.

Tell me about it.

I'm speechless.

I'm learning that. It's so much better than post's of people's food! For once I don't feel like the intelligent person in the room.