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Why I am an Agnostic but not an Atheist.

I do not belief in the god, the Jewish-Christian bible is telling about. This god is by no means more trustworthy than the gods of Greek mythology. Many commandments within the bible are unjustifiably cruel and have to be rejected for sensible ethical reasons.
The most convincing argument against Christianity is that with threat of rigorous punishments it demands to accept as an indisputable truth, what actually and honestly must be considered at least quite questionable. To my mind this is a severe “sin” against thruthfulness, while Jesus Christ claims, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

For several reasons I do not believe in the doctrines of other known organized religions, esoteric or whatever unjustified claims either.

But I also reject the ideology of naturalism. Based on epistemological considerations motivated by the startling findings of modern physics, especially of quantum mechanics, I acknowledge that there is an infinite number of possibilities about, what might be behind the apparent phenomenal reality. And even though, there seem to be evidence that all mental events are represented in the brain by physico-chemical processes, we can not be sure whether there is an afterlife or rebirth of some kind or other. For instance maybe Buddha was wrong, when he denied a persistent pure empty self beyond our thoughts, feelings etc. – beyond our whole character, which perhaps depend on the machinery of the brain as it seems to do in case of special injuries, diseases like Alzheimer, influences of drugs and so on. So it could be that a pure empty soul without personality is incarnated somewhere in this or another world. We even can not exclude that mental phenomena, or immaterial events are quasi only seemingly reflected in an illusory material mirage and that we are waking up in a completely different reality after death or even just the next moment. Please remind the miraculous experiments with entangled particles, the paradoxes of relativity etc., which would have been regarded complete nonsense 100 years ago. So be careful about common naturalistic prejudices.

Since, as already mentioned, at least theoretically there exist an infinite number of possibilities, we can not act according to a fortuitously chosen scenario but have to try to do our best in compliance with our momentary perhaps partly specious temporal mundane experiences. But it makes a difference, whether one shares a mere naturalistic world-view and a priori excludes any form of afterlife or whether somebody recognizes potential hidden dimensions of existence.

Beside fanatics like Islamist terrorists spreading tendencies towards a global unscrupulous greedy power-hungry capitalist oligarchy along the lines of the Eastern European model or with mafia-like organizations in behind are endangering our open society. The NSA-scandal, assassination of journalists and illiberal political developments in Europe are severe warnings. Today’s technological capabilities are liable to evoke a dystopian future, which dwarfs George Orwell's horror visions, as might be anticipated to some extend by the Chinese “Social Credit System”.

Immanuel Kant wanted to fortify moral by postulates of practical reason regarding freedom, god, and immortality. However, challenges of dissonant religious traditions within a globalized world today seem to undermine that path. Moreover the already mentioned fanatism and the inclination of organized religions towards substituting humanist ethical behavior by rituals evince the perils of this approach.

An existential comprehensive metaphysical agnosticism adds a new existential weight to global cross-generational ethics without providing any option for rituals or other substitute actions. Hopefully the people building the powers that be will act more according to the principles they pretend to share, if they realize the given fundamental uncertainty of life and its possibly not completely accessible purpose. (Do you see the difference to an arrogantly proclaimed purely self-determined meaning of life?)

I have delineated my epistemological and other arguments much more detailed in an essay called “Believing veraciously” (In contrast to the dishonest form of belief demanded by most religions).

The text is available for free by using the following links (English, German, bilingual juxtaposition):

Files (PDF, ePub, html etc.) with a rough slightly revised second edition of the English translation of my text titled “Believing veraciously” in ZIP-folder may be downloaded by using the following link:
[drive.google.com]
For direct online reading use:
[ia801504.us.archive.org]

A ZIP-folder with divers file formats (PDF, ePub, html etc.) of the bilingual version with the juxtaposition of the slightly revised second edition of “Believing veraciously” and the 21st edition of “Wahrhaftiger Glaube” is available here:
[drive.google.com]
For direct online reading use:
[ia801500.us.archive.org]

German files (PDF, ePub, html etc.) of the 21st edition of “Wahrhaftiger Glaube” in a ZIP-folder may be downloaded by using the following link:
[drive.google.com]
For direct online reading use:
[ia801503.us.archive.org]

The ZIP-folders also contain explanations about the suitability of the divers file formats, since it is important to read annotations within the foot-/end-notes (although many of them just consist of references).

johannesweg 3 Apr 11
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Though it seems unacceptable to some people here, there exist Agnostics, who think that both mere naturalism and certain forms of supernaturalism are serious possible options. As I declared in my original post I believe that both views should be considered in ethics in order to promote a more veracious behavior.

In Austria the position of Agnostics, who declare not to be Atheists, is widely accepted. The citizens elected a person, who declared to be such an Agnostic, in the last three presidential elections. I personally do have some doubts, whether both (the first one was reelected one time) are real Agnostics, but perhaps only pretend to be so, to be more acceptable for religious people. Nevertheless it shows that our society is quite secular, since even religious people had no problems with voting for candidates, who do not explicitly believe in god.

In one of my answers to comments here, I mentioned the abstract hypothesis of “intelligent design”, which was even propagated by the highest representative of the Catholic Church in Austria, because he feared that the Church’s reputation in Austria might be impaired by reports about crude American Creationists positions, which look quite ridiculous to most of our people.

This does not mean that I personally do fully agree with that hypothesis. If some sort of intelligence were involved in the evolution of humans (a limited form of Darwinism even is accepted by most members of Christian churches in Austria), then it must be a quite error-prone form in the face of my problems with vertebrae and hernia, which demonstrate a quite bad anatomic design. I personally believe that hypotheses containing an almighty, omniscient, and absolutely good being can be dismissed by empiric evidence and rational reasoning fairly well. (However, a cogent argumentation isn’t as simple as some Atheists might think.) But there is still plenty of room for the potential existence of less wise, less potent or bad (sadistic, sadomasochistic) divine beings.

To sum up once again, there is a significant chance for the existence of supernatural things, beings, and dimensions in my opinion, but mere naturalistic views also constitute serious hypotheses, as far as they are not ideologically considered as the only reasonable option.
So I am neither a Theist nor an Atheist.

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There is evidence that the universe could have been created without the help of divine intervention but it's true we cannot prove there is no god. However if you're 95% sure there is no god, why not just round it up?

Because of inconsistences in the bible etc. I do not believe in Christian doctines. Similar issues prevent me from believing in other organized religions like Islam, Hinduism or even a secular Buddhism. But modern physics (e.g. the violation of Bell's inequality) shows that reality does not agree with our intuitive world-view. The experimentally proved strangeness of quantum mechanics (which admittedly is often misused for obscure esoteric and other claims) should be a warning to everybody to be careful with prejudices about what might be behind the phenomenal world. There aren't only two options (the Christian god exists or does not) but in fact there is an infinite number of possible options, which are in agreement with scientific findings (the bible is not really). Naturalistic ideologies (but not 19th century's materialism) are potential solutions to metaphysical questions. Nonetheless there exist a vast number of viable realistic alternatives. Since quantification of probabilities needs a sound model about all given options, their weighting factor etc, for which I do not see any serious base, I do not understand, how you could estimate properly a likelyhood percentage concerning the existence of "supernatural" things or beings.

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Atheism isn't a positive claim, it is a non belief of one. IMO all agnostics are also atheists since they do not believe in the god claim. At the same time, all atheists are agnostics as well, because no one 'knows' if one exists, including nostics and theists. They are just dishonest about it.
Most atheists are open to new evidence, as much as most agnostics are.

As far as reincarnation goes, it is total BS, and doesn't deserve any consideration.

Atheism is the claim that gods in general (not only those proclaimed by organized religions) do not exist. This is quite a strong claim as it rules out an infinite number of options.

If atheists would take Occam’s razor seriously to the same extend, which they demand from religious people, they would also have to refrain from ontological or other metaphysical assumptions about the fundaments of reality behind the phenomenal world in form of an ideological naturalism. But I agree that Occam’s rule is just a pragmatic recommendation for a lean functional design of theories in everyday business of science. Therefore e. g. Hitchens has to be blamed sharply for misusing it in the context of speculations beyond practical explanations of empirical issues.

In contrast to this Russell’s analogy with the famous celestial teapot justifiably exposes the problem, who is in charge of showing evidence for a certain concrete claim, which momentarily neither can be disproved nor verified.

OK, if I allege that there is a spaghetti monster, it is my task to bring arguments, why others should believe in this special averment. But be careful. If someone claims that there are no hidden supernatural things or beings at all, this person has to defend that assertion too. It makes a difference, whether one asserts that an arbitrary concrete scenario has to be considered as a serious option without any cogent evidence, or whether somebody warns not to neglect completely a vast number of alternatives to an unproven world-view like naturalism.

Let's use the same argumentation on reincarnation.

There is no evidence for reincarnation so far and there exist some religious ideas about it, which exhibit logical inconsistencies or disagree with scientific findings, but it is possible to imagine scenarios, which do not violate valid logical or empiric confinements. And once more there exist many viable options including those similar to Buddha’s view, who denied a permanent self (cf. his anatta teaching) or Hindoo-like forms, which in opposition do presume exactly such a self (atman).

If overall considered there are, as I conceded, an infinite number of possibilities, - without additional information and cogent evidence - every single option in probability calculus is pragmatically assigned the same weight. So the likelihood of each option is practically zero (as every finite number divided by infinity yields zero). But for example the number of feasible reincarnation scenarios is also infinite. So you would unavoidably need some additional information about weighting factors etc. for being able to estimate the relative probabilities of the reincarnation scenario group and the naturalistic scenario group. So please provide cogent arguments for saying that reincarnation is just BS.

Lo and behold! Now we see that theses arguments contain many positive unproven metaphysical claims resting on ideological naturalism (which in addition is often elaborated to an intuitive materialism that definitely collides with modern physics).

"Atheism is the claim that gods in general (not only those proclaimed by organized religions) do not exist."
That is completely wrong my friend, and is very likely the root of your lack of comprehension about being an atheist.

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Ayyyyy! I love long winded rambles full of thinky thoughts.

A lot of folks invoke half understood theoretical physics to lend weight to the notions of mystical realities. To be clear, most of the stuff people invoke is some of the most speculative and tenuous stuff in the body of physics... there is nothing close to a consensus about which (if any) of this stuff is accurate. People are constantly sharing bad understanding of theory to support woo notions. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, AKA Shrodinger's Cat, Aka The Oberver Effect is a classic example of this. The "waveform" of particles does not collapse merely from observation. Think of a coin spinning through space, you will not know what the "state" of the coin in any given position unless you "catch" and "observe" it in a heads up or tails up position. It is not "observation" that interfers with the particle... it's your dang measurement apparatus that does the diddiling!

As for a larger unknown "something" that may or may not exist beyond our minds? We cannot know for certain... but my postulate is that the same pricipals that organized our minds into a form which brought rise to thought and identity needen't be restricted to the homo sapien scale. I can see how we could just be neurons, or "cells" in a giant brain-body... thing. I mean we are for sure... it's called society. The question is... how "aware" is the social body? If it was "aware" would we know, or would be so simple that communication with a more sophisticated strata of awareness would be impossible? Like trying to talk to one of your skin cells.

I think your comment about the neccesity for ritual is on point. I think it's easy to dismiss religion with a hand wave as ignorant superstition. I'm not suggesting any of the dumb myths are real... but I think the fact that every single culture has some kind of religion to be indicitive of more than abject stupidity and superstition. I think folks do have "revelations" which they try to explain as best they can in the available language and culture, after whence they are immediately misunderstood and their stories are repreated to justify killing other people somehow.

Dear Anemynous,
I do not use Quantum mechanics like esoteric freaks to lend weight to speculative notions. But you have to admit that e.g. the violation of Bell’s inequality in the context of EPR-experiments excludes many intuitive imaginations about reality. In my philosophical essay I refer to modern physics only in order to demand a higher degree of epistemological unpretentiousness.

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I have simplified the tug of war between atheism and agnosticism with one word "freethinker."

How about "secular"? I think that covers my feelings. I might be into nature worshiping too, if I just had to worship something. My people, the Baltics or Lithuanians, were big into that.

It is not just about a word or feeling. I do have reasons not to believe in the Christian or Islamic god, but I think that there is a reasonable chance for the existence of a divine supernatural being, though I do not have any concrete conception about it.

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I'm confused about this post? Or maybe I'm too dumb to understand all these words that I had to look up? What does all of what you wrote have to do with you choosing to be an agnostic?

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Okay, but there's no logical, inescapable connection between what you believe and the reasons you cite.

There's a large leap between the quantum entanglement principle and the conclusion that there's an afterlife. You can cite quantum mechanics phenomena ad infinitum, but you still believe what you want without evidence. Your welcome to believe what you want, but there's no compelling evidence.

JimG Level 8 Apr 11, 2018

I am agnostic about afterlife. In my philosophical essay I state that I'd prefer for good reasons, if there is none, but that I am not sure about it.
I used the example of quantum mechanics not in order to make obscure claims but to show that things might be feasible, which people (like Einstein) thought to be impossible before.

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There is a lot there, but just sticking with Agnostism. I think Agnostism is a type of atheism. Both are without a belief in theism.

Agnostics seem to play up the uncertainty that we have as to weather there is some form of theist God(s) . I'm uncertain of a lot of things, but I'm without belief until there is evidence.

Some atheist do profess certainty in the null hypothesis (no God) which has cause many to think that all atheist are just as certain, but simply based on definitions and custom, it's not true. I'm not certain there is no God, but based on all the evidence I've seen, it's not worth considering unless there is something new. That point of view and certainty of no God(s) look really similar to an outsider.

JeffB Level 6 Apr 11, 2018
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This is the thing ,agnostic is what you know or not know I should say.As and agnostic all you are saying I don't knowif theiris a god?so you can choose to be a theist ,and act like you believe since you don't know you can't really believe, or be and atheist and say I don't believe because of lack of proof

Shep Level 4 Apr 11, 2018

I thought it meant that it was unknowable

Due to veracity I can not claim abitrary things. This would be a severe misunterstanding of my position. I have to dismiss religious doctrines lacking evidence like Atheists, but I do not claim that there certainly are no superantural things, beings dimensions etc., because naturalism either is an unfounded speculation. My special "belief" is based on critical epistemologicals deliberations.

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I see myself as an Agnostic because I just don't know anything for sure except that no religion can possibly be valid. It all comes down to energy in my mind and not even a great mind such as Hawking is capable of comprerhending any creative power so I just ask my inner self what best serves humanity in any situation and try to do whatever causes me the least dissonance. Our spiritual selves just have not been quantified as of yet but we are just now getting into quantum mechanics and eventually some great mind might find some answers.

Though emotions and intuition are important for one’s personal life, in my philosophical essay I tried to adhere to rational arguments leading me to a humble acknowledgement of the insignificance of my remaining knowledge.

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I am a skeptic. If there is no evidence, facts or data to support a claim (and god(s) are just claims) then that claim is rejected until and if some evidence, facts or data is produced to support the claim. It is ALWAYS the responsibility of anyone making a claim to present evidence, facts and data to support their claim. Hitchen's razor applies, any claim presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. IMHO

In my essay I also disscuss Occam's razor and Russell's celestial teapot.

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