Carl: The self defined Agnostic.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 28, 2019, at 10:36 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well Richard, if that's what tickles your tush, then have at it.
As for myself, I am quite comfortable being an Agnostic with no frills
and no justification. My reason, as if I need one, is because there
are a number of folk who want to set me straight. Just call it
unconcerned stubbornness on my part. Personally, I believe that there
is still far too much that we do not know about what and who we are to
make more than educated guesses. And we might want to examine that
"educated" part of our guess.
To my way of thinking, it's great fun to speculate about this thing we
call the Universe. But there is far, far more that we don't know
about it, than what we do know.
But speculation is a fun way of gathering cob webs, and for the most
part it is harmless. Everything we now believe to be true, could be
false. After all, we devised the language and we developed the
formulas and set the rules that give meaning to our existence. And it
does work, to a degree. But what if our senses only exposed us to a
very small portion of this existence? We just plain do not know
enough to do more than play mind games.
While I enjoy speculating, I honestly am not prpared to make any firm
statement concerning the existence of something called God.
But before I go off the deep end and begin babbling like a Baboon, I
will close...with apologies to any Baboon reading this post.
Carl Jarvis
and by the way, my middle initial, "A" stands for Agnostic!
On 3/28/19, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I voice the opinion that the discussion needs a clarifying definition of the
nouns atheism and agnosticism.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 28, 2019, at 6:45 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender
"rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Frankly, I think Carl misuses the word agnostic. First, he seems to set it
apart from atheism as if agnosticism is not atheism. Like I said, atheism
is a very simple concept. It is simply a lack of a belief in a deity. That
means that there can even be atheistic religions. But agnosticism fits
very nicely within that simple concept of atheism and so it is atheism.
Second, agnosticism is the idea that if there is no evidence one way or
another that there either is or is not a god then there might as well be
a god as not be a god. This gives equal weight to either proposition. That
is a logical fallacy itself because one chance in infinity is not equal to
absolute certainty. Now, I have put this to Carl before and he said that
he is an agnostic because he just doesn't care one way or another. That is
not agnosticism. That is just an apathetic way of avoiding deep thinking.
It is a way of saying, I don't even want to think about it. Nevertheless,
as you have pointed out yourself, every time he says something about his
position on religion he expresses an atheistic viewpoint. It is not even
an agnostic kind of atheistic view of religion. I am not a mind reader and
I am skeptical of psychology, so I can't be sure of why he persists in
calling himself an agnostic, but there was a time when I persisted in
calling myself an agnostic when I was not and I suppose my motivation
could be the same as Carl's. I have told about this before, but let me
allude to it again. At about the age of twelve I declared myself an
agnostic. Before that I had not even thought about what I was in relation
to religious thought. I was making that logical fallacy of equating the
positive and negative forms of a proposition to each other. I did not know
I was making a logical fallacy, but I was and so that made me a real
agnostic. Then about four years later at the age of sixteen I came to
understand the logical fallacy of agnosticism, but continued to call
myself an agnostic anyway for about two more years. So why did I falsely
call myself an agnostic for two more years? It was simply that from the
time I first heard the word atheist- and I don't remember when I first
heard that word - I had heard it with some very negative connotations
attached to it and I had absorbed those negative connotations. To call
myself an atheist would have been like calling myself evil. Also, at that
age four years was a pretty significant portion of my life, so I think
part of it had to do with momentum. That is, I had been calling myself an
agnostic for so long it was a bit difficult for me to just suddenly switch
labels. I got over that, though, and now the word atheist has mostly
positive connotations to me. So I wonder. Could Carl have been effected by
the same connotations all of his life so that it is hard for him to admit
to the word atheist applied to himself?
---
Carl Sagan
“ The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may
be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not
be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences
do not determine what's true. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 3/28/2019 5:48 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Carl,
I don't think I'm an Agnostic because I think that the definition of an
Agnostic is that he or she isn't sure whether or not there is a God and
therefore, is on the fence. I just think that there's no evidence of a
God in the sense that God has been described in anything I've ever read.
All I know is that right now I'm alive and from what I've learned there
is a history and a present and laws of nature or physics or whatever, and
a universe and no human being has or can have knowledge of the ultimate
cause of all of this, if there is an ultimate cause. I don't need to know
what caused the big bang. Whatever causes existence to exist, it isn't a
spirit who has a plan for me or from whom I can ask a personal favor when
things get tough. From my point of view, that makes me an Atheist.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2019 1:55 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Atheism, Labels, Faith
And all the Non Believers shouted, "Amen!"
And to those who believe thus, I would submit that they are really
Agnostics.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/28/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There apparently are different kinds of Atheism. The kind that people
keep writing about on this list, seems to be a dominant thread in the
thoughts and speeches and writings of its proponents. And it seems to
be unrelated to any value system or philosophy of life. It is, in its
essence, a logical negation of a spiritual overlord. At least, that's
what I think it is.
But then there are the members of the Ethical Culture or Ethical
Humanist Movement, and the Secular Humanists. That's where I seem to
fit in. They don't spend time and concern on the existence of a God,
however that God might be defined. For them, what is important is how
people behave toward each other, toward other living things, and
toward the natural world in which they live. Why spend time and
energy arguing about the existence of God or which is the best way to
worship, when people are dying of famine and disease, when they are
fighting each other over resources that should be shared among us all,
when droughts and floods are threatening to put an end to life? Why
not focus on how to most efficiently and painlessly change our systems
of power and finance so that humankind will be better served, rather
than quibble about which one of us is more logical or more righteous?
Miriam
