On being on the fence.
Offline I was listening to a radio talk show. They read a report of a study that showed that hard core religious people(regular prayers, church goers) were more likely to not cheat on a spouse. While the mildly religious were just as likely to cheat as anyone else.
The DJs went on to discuss how he thinks people who are on the fence about religion are pretty untrustworthy people. He would rather associate with either hard core Christians or hard core atheist. The people in the middle and on the fence are pretty dishonest with themselves, they make up what they believe, pick and choose what they like and don't like from the bible. He went on to talk about that the bible is pretty clear that lukewarm Christianity is worthless:
Revelation 3:
14"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. 15I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
The bible is actually pretty clear about commitment to Christ is pretty hard core or else it is worthless. I find myself in agreement with this. If you really believe the bible, your only purpose in life is making it to heaven, if you're an honest person, you ought to be a total hard core religious nut. Non-religious people ought to think you're a total freak. Giving tons of money to church, living a totally repressed life to avoid any sin.
Seems like this is an area where we can agree with hard core Christians. This living on the fence is worthless, meaningless and dishonest. It's just pulling out your religion drug or Jesus is your lucky charm when you need divine intervention. The fence sitter must have tons of doubt, but are dishonest in pretending religion is true. The hard core religious have heard the lies so often it becomes their truth.
I think maybe the change we want should not be moving everyone from being less religious, but rather toward getting people "off the fence" to either be unapologetically atheist or hard core Christian/Muslim/etc... Maybe instead of fighting the hard core Christians for now, we could actually be allies in this cause. If people on the fence are viewed as dishonest and intellectually stupid and lazy, perhaps the current zeitgeist of "It's OK to be a religious moderate" could change.
Then once religion was relegated to hard core freaks living on a cult compound in Texas, they would eventually burn themselves up or destroy themselves with inbreeding, then the world would be rid of religion.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
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Oh goody. Another bar-b-que! I'll bring the hotdogs.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Exe I do believe you have hit the nail on the head. God him/her -self would have to sit at my kitchen table with me before I'd believe, and even then I would have a lot of questions about his/her accountability, starting with 'what the hell do we need you for?'
Wishy washy fence sitters irritate the crap out of me.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
I fully sympathise with sitting on the fence.
Darth Anakin: "Either you are with me or against me!!"
Obi Wan Kenobi "Only Sith talk in absolutes!"
TBH it's the most honest opinion to have until you've done some proper looking in to the subject, and is the right position for someone with little interest in religion.
Perhaps I see things as too black or white, but in my opinion, one either believes, or one does not. I see the middle ground as intellectual dishonesty and self delusion. This applies to those who call themselves 'agnostics' as well...
Agnosticism applies to what we KNOW, not what we believe. Since no one KNOWS one way or another, agnosticism applies to us all. The question then is do you BELIEVE.
LC >;-}>
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.
With that definition of Agnosticism, it's a definition but I wouldn't call it the definition, and it's not what many people mean by agnostic.
I think a good definition that captures a common use is as follows:
When you hear a proposition you might be for it, against it, or having no strong opinion either way.
Having no strong opinion means that you find the arguments on both sides having potential and neither side being decisive.
So atheist would be someone whose heard the arguments and found that the argumetns for theism fails so we have strong opinion against theism. Theists are the opposites. Agnostics see potential in both sides, haven't seen a reason to accept or reject the position of God's existence.
So I think that agnostics can often mean, quite accurately, that they simply admit to not having an opinion either way as neither side has convinced them and it's all open to them.
Ofcourse, there are also lots who use the position agnostic rather than atheist because they think they cannot disprove God and those people have missed the point.
When someone says they're agnostic, I think we have to listen to the context on why they're calling themselves an agnostic before we pass judgement.
After all, the whole point in language is that we try and understand the speaker as best we can.
Has anyone here a linguistic argument as to why the word 'agnostic' should be used in a particular way?
Personally, I think that this is a terrible idea. Where do we get the notion that the majority would fall onto the 'reason' side of the fence if forced to pick sides?
Historically, making people 'choose a side' has never been such a great idea. The U.S. was nearly brought to a state of full-blown civil war when Vietnam essentially divided everyone into two warring camps, the Cold War and ensuing near-nuclear-holocaust inciting Cuban Missile Crisis as a result of the global community drawing a line between democracy and capitalism, the Second World War's many atrocities (by all parties) were a result of lines being drawn... the examples ramble on forever.
All that encouraging moderates to fight will likely do is (go figure) start a fight. Frankly, I don't think it's one the atheistic demograph is terribly likely to win at this point. If they want to ride the fence, let them. It's only the fundamentalists that demand absolution in certain issues and engage in broken record debating of concepts like evolution. Our job should be to educate, not play into the hands of fundamentalists by becoming bitterly adversarial.
Demanding a 'no neutral zone' world isn't reasonable or realistic, and I'd much prefer a world full of thumb-twiddling moderates to bomb wearing fanatics and mysogynistic, homophobic lunatics that advocate insanity.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
There's one thing I heard in church that's always stuck with me:
"No one likes a fence sitter. Christians will call you backslidden and the world will call you hyprocrtitcal.'
In theory, I agree. I don't like fencesitters,moderates, liberal christians,whatever you want to call them. I think they should pick a side and be serious about it. If the fundies are right, the moderates are going to hell anyway so they might as well be atheist. I see moderates as intellectually and morally lazy.
In practise however, it would be foolish to want to only have fundies. Moderates may be annoying in their own way, but generally they aren't threating humanity's continued existence.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Fanatics get the attention, fanatics make the noise and fanatics get the credit/blame for what any group does. But.... it is the moderates, the fence sitters that form the majority who in their complacency allow the fanatics their way, and form the solid foundation on which fanaticism thrives that are truely to blame.
LC >;-}>
{I want it noted that I avoided using the 'N' word...no, not THAT 'N' word, the one with jackboots and swastikas...}
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.
I'm not in favor of "making" people do anything. I'm a non-violent, freedom loving person. It's just in talking and associating with people, stop accepting fence sitting as anything but intellectually dishonest. Sam Harris talks about this, how religious moderation gives cover to religious extremism.
In the examples you cited, the moderate communists and (Ns) gave cover to the extremists. The reason these atrocities were allowed to occur was the apathetic majority enabled extremist to have their way. We're in this Iraq war because most Americans did not choose war or no-war, but instead were passive moderates on the issue.
I don't think people would choose religious extremism because it is insane. Most people want to be happy and live in peace. So as long as people are free to choose, I don't think there would ever be more than a fringe of crazy religious extremism in any society. It's a suicidal choice.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Hiel Schiklgruber!
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
I'm not sure how I feel about the topic of fence-sitting.
I see what you did there.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
my personal philosophy is this: always try to learn as much as you can and stick hard to what you know is true, BUT if you don't know shit about something, by all means speculate, but don't bank on it and don't be an asshole about it to other people.
i know evolution is a hot topic here. i believe in evolution. i believe in it because it seems logical to me and a lot of people who are experts in the physical sciences tell me it jives with the evidence. the way they've explained it to me makes sense.
however, i myself won't argue about it in detail because i don't know all the evidence myself. i don't know the evidence because, frankly, physical sciences bore the shit out of me. my brain just doesn't work well on that wavelength. i only have so much time on earth and i want to devote it to studying what interests me, so i haven't the time to get a thorough grounding in evolution. so if some fundie comes and tells me evolution is wrong, depending on how forceful he is, i'll probably either shrug my shoulders or tell him to fuck off, but i won't try to argue it in-depth with him because in the end that would just make evolutionists look bad. now, if he wants to argue european history or biblical criticism or ideal metaphysics v. dialectical materialism, we're on.
so, i hate fence-sitters who are that way because they're just plain sycophants, but i also hate know-it-alls who think they know everything about everything, act like dipshits to people, and then justify it with "well, at least i'm taking a side." yeah? how did you pick it? flip a fucking coin? because it takes more than a newsbite or a watered-down discovery channel special to make an informed choice.
there is only one thing i think ALL people should be up on: current events. when someone tells me they don't read or watch the news, i just wanna backhand them. or at least take away their right to vote.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson