Quote of the Day (plus an argument against said quote, because Richard Dawkins is an ASS)

[edenfalling]

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
---Richard Dawkins



I resent some man who doesn't know me from Adam coming down from on high and telling me what my religious beliefs are, as if he knows them better than I do!

I am not atheistic about any god. I am agnostic about all of them. In fact, I have been known to swear thusly: "By all the gods that anyone ever held holy..." which tells you something about my attitude toward all views of the divine.

This is not to say that I believe in such gods in the way Dawkins means (and may I say he has a horrifically reductive view of religion? he's as bad as fundamentalists, just in the other direction!), but I am open to the possibility that they might exist -- it is, after all, impossible to prove a negative -- and I do believe that they were real to their adherents, in the same way that I believe all currently worshipped deities are real to their adherents.

(We can debate subjective vs. objective reality some other day.)

Anyway, I do try to respect everyone's religion or lack thereof, but holy fuck, sometimes people get my back up!

*spits in Dawkins's general direction*

Comments

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, thing is the people who conflate science with atheism are guilty of a bit of *science* fail; I'm an agnostic and not an atheist specifically because of my scientific training. Given the available, *solid* evidence (i.e. none) either for or against anything existing beyond the material universe, the end result is one has to conclude . . . that one can't conclude *any*thing. I think the Universe could/can run just fine without a Creator(s), but at the same time that doesn't mean there *isn't* one.

*shrugs*

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I agree. But you can't deny that a lot of the noisiest atheists do just that. "God's existence can't be proven scientifically, therefore S/He does not exist!" seems to be their rallying cry. Nevermind that they can't disprove God/dess's existence either... they've never seen that burning bush, nor heard it talk to them, therefore it's just a pretty myth, no more real than the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and all religion is bunk.

Me, I figure the sheer universality of a belief in Something Bigger indicates at least a possibility that there is something more than the physical. It could just be the human love of making up stories and our dislike of things we can't explain, but that's a chance I choose to take. Worst that happens if I'm wrong is that I live my life in accordance with principles I choose, and when I'm dead nothing happens. ;)