Is Agnosticism Bad?

[naturally]

spiritual beliefs cant be bad, rationalizing evil actions through beliefs is

good job this is a very valid statement everyone should read this so i am quoting it

at the risk of turning this into yet another debate thread i'm going to have to disagree with his statement. spiritual beliefs can often lead to people being indirectly hurt out of naive faith. for example, spiritual beliefs may cause someone to turn away from modern medicine in favor of healing through prayer, or thinking starving children need a holy book instead of food - and while they thought their intentions were good, people can easily end up dead because of them.

justifying something using religion seems generally bad to me, whether their intentions are good or not. i think that's what parkourman was saying anyway.

[rtil]

justifying something using religion seems generally bad to me, whether their intentions are good or not. i think that's what parkourman was saying anyway.

spiritual beliefs led them to think it wasn't evil, so the statement "spiritual beliefs cant be bad" as an absolute doesn't follow. spiritual beliefs can sometimes be very bad.

spiritual beliefs cant be bad, rationalizing evil actions through beliefs is

probably the best statement in this topic
if people like believing in something, if believing in a god gives them hope or happiness or whatever, then why not. It doesn't harm anyone.

just think about what you're saying. you think it's ok for people to hinge their happiness on an illusion, an imaginary friend, if you will. have you ever seen an ex-alcoholic or drug addict who "turned to christ", handing out chick tracts on the street or holding up a "you're going to hell" sign on the side of the street? to them, god is their new alcohol, their new drug. that's how they cope. it's a temporary solution to a bigger problem, because it's not real. those people need real medical attention from real people. a god can't do anything for you except what your brain allows it to convince itself of.

[Pants, the terrible]

having belief in an idea that physicially controls people's actions is... simple logic.

denial of physical force is funny to me :3

[Sinitron]

spiritual beliefs led them to think it wasn't evil, so the statement "spiritual beliefs cant be bad" as an absolute doesn't follow. spiritual beliefs can sometimes be very bad.

They don't think it is evil because they justify it with religious bullshit, just like a vegan would justify murdering anyone who eats meat or a shop owner would justify gunning down someone who steals like a sticker or something. Believing that you will get to ram a stick of dynamite up your ass when you die doesn't make someone an asshole, if they think their belief justifies cruelty or meddling with someone else's affairs they're pricks so WTF!

this discussion is gay nuke africa prolem solv

[Brii]

As long as someone doesn't use their beliefs to fuck someone else over or break the law, they're free to do as they please.

You are entitled to believe whatever you want as long as you don't try and shove those beliefs into other people. Someone may not be living "morally" or a way that we ourselves would prefer to live and may in fact be a miserable sack of shit with no use whatsoever, but if they've made the choice to live that way then we can't stop them. It's not our place.

We can't or at least shouldn't try to control other people. If they need to believe in a higher power, so be it. I'll let someone believe in a dirty hippie who claims to be the son of a god as long as they don't try to make me believe what they do or try to harm anyone for not believing it.

[psi43]

just think about what you're saying. you think it's ok for people to hinge their happiness on an illusion, an imaginary friend, if you will. have you ever seen an ex-alcoholic or drug addict who "turned to christ", handing out chick tracts on the street or holding up a "you're going to hell" sign on the side of the street? to them, god is their new alcohol, their new drug. that's how they cope. it's a temporary solution to a bigger problem, because it's not real. those people need real medical attention from real people. a god can't do anything for you except what your brain allows it to convince itself of.

I never said it was a good solution. All I said was that if people are happy with believing in god, then let them be. If someone is about to die, could be saved with medicine but says "if god wants to take me now, then let him" then that's fine for me. And please don't argue with anything like "that's pretty egoistic of that person". That's the usual response i hear and i always reply with "isn't it more egoistic to keep someone alive because you or others don't want to lose that person, regardless of that person being happy?".

All it comes down to for me is enjoying life. If some ex-alcoholic decides to stay away from drugs and turn to god instead, then that's good. Drugs make you do irrational things that may even harm other people. When turning to god, you can be sure that those people are by far less likely to physically harm people.

That being said, this is all a matter of personal belief. I still think that people who try to push their believes onto others are incredibly annoying and should definitely stop doing that shit. If you're happy with your beliefs, that's cool, but don't preach it to others. It's kind of like a glass of olives or whatever, if you like them, you're happy but you shouldn't try to force other people to eat them as well cause they may not like it.

[rtil]

i don't see how it would be egotistical to think that others can believe what they want. my only point is that religion can be psychologically damaging, especially to vulnerable and naive people, and people with addictive personalities.

[DrRumack]

i am agnostic in the sense that i believe that if there is a god it's a passive one that likely only sparked the initial creation of matter and has no power beyond that

by definition god is something beyond human understanding so there's absolutely no way we could really know one exists or that it has any power over us, so it doesn't really matter if it does or not

[Jon]

i am agnostic in the sense that i believe that if there is a god it's a passive one that likely only sparked the initial creation of matter and has no power beyond that

by definition god is something beyond human understanding so there's absolutely no way we could really know one exists or that it has any power over us, so it doesn't really matter if it does or not

this is very, very close to what i believe

[trent bortknob]

whether or not agnosticism is "bad" depends on your definition of agnosticism.

many people define an agnostic as a person who "doesn't know" (and this is correct, in a sense), and in turn define an agnostic as someone who has no opinion on the matter. usually they think that the agnostic doesn't know, doesn't care, and doesn't think about it. i'd refer to this as "de-facto agnosticism", because it's how most people define agnosticism.

however, like plenty of other words in the english language, the de-facto definition is not correct. an agnostic is someone who believes that any knowledge about a god or gods is UNKNOWABLE. any detail about a god, its existence, its traits, its location, etc, is something that humans cannot know. no one can or ever will know if a god or any gods exist or not, or what they are like. i'd refer to this as "philosophical agnosticism".

some people soften up the above definition and say that no one can ever know FOR SURE, as in, no one can know anything 100%. i'd just refer to this as agnosticism, because i think it's the middle ground between the two extremes.

one thing that has to be pointed out here is that someone can be agnostic and an atheist. they can also be agnostic and christian. that's why you might hear people say that they're agnostic atheists or agnostic christians. an agnostic atheist would say that she doesn't believe in a god, but she doesn't know if one exists or not, vice versa for a theistic agnostic.

is being an agnostic good or bad? i think this is a weird question. i don't think i could say that following any belief system is inherently bad. the most i could say is that a belief system is inherently dangerous.

de-facto agnosticism is not bad as much as it is indecisive and, in some cases, lazy. usually i think of de-facto agnostics as people who haven't made up their minds and haven't really thought it through. they are somewhat fence sitting, which could be good or bad. they may not be strong in their convictions, but at least they aren't jumping to conclusions. they could be held up because they haven't really thought about the subject, or they could be in the closet atheists who don't want to damage relationships with religious friends and family (i suspect this is probably the case for most de-facto agnostics).

philosophical agnosticism is kind of silly, in my opinion. i don't know why you'd follow any belief system that says there is something that is impossible to know. how could you ever think that you know whether or not something is impossible to know? this branch of agnosticism may or may not be bad, but i think there is very little sense to it.

finally, the softened up, middle-ground, regular agnosticism that people use as add-ons to their belief systems is sort of necessary in a very detailed definition. i think it is obvious that you cannot know most things 100% for sure, so in that sense, i would call myself an agnostic atheist. i think most people here would add the tags "agnostic" to their beliefs in god, because otherwise they're claiming to have absolute knowledge of god, which is unlikely. so yeah, most of us may be agnostic in this sense, but i tend to reject all of this bullshit because it muddles up the question.

in practice, i just refer to myself as an atheist. however, there is more to be said about atheist, so let me define this a little bit too

obviously, an atheist is someone who does not have a belief in god. to get to the nitty gritty, there are two types of atheists.

weak atheism - this is the branch of atheism that encompasses people who lack a belief in god. this is probably most atheists honestly. these are people who just have not seen the evidence yet, or maybe they were not raised religious. either way, they view all gods of all religious as concepts with no evidence to support them. kinda like santa or the tooth fairy.

strong atheism - this is the branch of atheism that encompasses people who not only don't believe in god, they also believe that there is no god. there is a distinct difference here, whereas weak atheists do not believe in god, strong atheists believe that there is no god. many point out things like the problem of evil, contradictions in holy books, the lack of a consistent definition of god, and the lack of evidence for anything supernatural.

i fall into the strong atheist category. the biblical definition of god is self-contradictory (in more than a few ways) and clearly does not exist, same with the god of islam and most other gods. all of these gods and their rules go against what other religions claim. moral claims, historical claims, etc. none of them add up. so they can't all be right. because of the lack of evidence for any of them, i think it's way more plausible that they're all wrong.

[trent bortknob]

spiritual beliefs cant be bad, rationalizing evil actions through beliefs is

this isn't true at all imo. i think it might be true that spiritual belief CAN be good, but say that it CANNOT be bad is obviously false.

look at what the bible says. the bible says that we are all born bad, we're all born with original sin. this has been true for everyone since adam and eve. it's our job to go to the invisible sky man in order to cure us of our inherent evil. without doing so we will be sent to hell to be tortured forever (which is, by the way, a ridiculous idea of justice. no matter what you do in your life, what you do is finite. it could be the worst thing imaginable, but it's still a finite crime, that will not last forever. what kind of just god would think it was ok to punish any finite crime with infinite punishment? my answer is: one that is rife with contradictions and was invented by man).

this doesn't even delve in to other views of humans and human traits that the bible teaches. then look at how it is interpreted by mormons and catholics. and this is just chrstianty!

i think it is way more reasonable to say that spiritual belief could possibly be good. spiritual faith (the acceptance of something being true, knowing that there is no evidence to support it) is by definition bad. so how can it be good?

i think some spiritual beliefs like buddhism are very non-intrusive on other people. you never hear of buddhists who kill nonbelievers or buddhists who invade other countries trying to spread it. buddhists are confident enough in their own religious to leave other people alone and just focus on their own beliefs. i think this is admirable and responsible. of course, buddhism being a nontheistic religion, this is about as close as spirituality gets to atheism, but whatevs.

spiritual belief certainly has been used as justification for terrible acts by evil people, and of course, evil people can and do use whatever they want to justify their actions, even naturalistic or relativistic viewpoints (both of which are part of the worldview of a lot of atheists). but this does make spiritual belief innocent.

[emanhattan]

part of me feels im gonna get my ass beaten after this but here I go also im writing this really fuckin fast so im not actually double checking all of my arguments bahabhahbabahb

Im with scrib on this one. im prepared to believe that there is a god  but i think he may or may not give a rats ass about anything in the universe... or he just wont interact with this universe anymore for whatever reason. Hey, he can do whatever he wants right? after all hes GOD.

Is agnosticism bad? of course not. You have to ask yourself what the fuck youre being told and be honest about how you feel about it and if it makes sense

I was raised in a largely christian community and naturally my parents raised me to believe in the same things as them. things that i strongly believed and feared during part of my childhood and during catholic school. I had to put up with a lot of bullshit from many self righteous teachers, priests and people with extremely right wing ideals, associating decency, education and logiv with religion. It was bullshit. It made me skeptical about my knowledge and beliefs and kinda fucked up my worldview. I can safely say nothing killed my trust for the catholic community more than catholic church. Most of the people in there didnt even practice what they preached yet always counted with bullshit arguments to justify anything.

Yet somehow i still believe in god. you could say ive been brainwashed and i wouldnt blame you. I think that amongst the agnostics im definitelly amongst the theist side. But i have no proof and i dont feel like i need it. my thoughts are my own and I dont go around preaching people to believe the things I do.

NOW

im gonna get a bit deffensive. is religion bullshit? Believing in something just because it makes you feel good and throw away all information seems fairly silly to me and i have to agree with the agnostic/atheist posse on this one.

but Bashing religious people JUST CAUSE, calling them out in public, vandalizing places that are sacred for them or deliberatedly provoking them simply isnt cool. And in the same way religious people feel entitled to do bad things in the name of religion, some groups bash religion because they think ITS COOL. Ive been to communities where extreme poverty, lack of food and water and hopelessness is simply a situation out of control, im talking about people who literally need to build their houses out of scrap logs in the middle of nowhere with limited nails and no electricity, where the cold of winter could easily make you sick and kill you. marginated communities where people literally find no other hope than to believe in a higher power. It leaves you speechless. in conditions like that, I would just WANT to believe, and I would too... these communities are not hurting anyone and sometimes religion is the only way they can unify their strenghts and values for the good of the community. Like everything, it can be used for good or bad, and the corruption would inevitably spread in there but i think overall its better for them

I guess what im trying to say is, not all religious communities are trying to spread their fuckin beliefs troughout the rest of the world. Being an actively religious person doesnt automatically make you a fuckin idiot. id say most religious people i know are NOT creationists and dont want teachings from the bible to be teached on public schools in the US. (incidentally back in mexico they teach you both creationism and evolution along with some other reasons why life was created but they did pull of the inteligent design thing before it was called intelligent design). I will admit that I know a lot of them who are against abortion, gay marriage, etc. even inside of my own family ive been ridiculled for having opossing views.
BUT i understand why they do this. my parents, their siblings and their grandparents all come from generations when religion had a noticeably stronger pull than it probably does today. if they act like fucking assholes sometimes, try to understand its not entirely their fault.

I would say that the only straight up evil and psychopathic believers,( at least while i was still living in Mx) are chief priests, and religious people who run schools and deliberately spread hatred and intolerance towards opossing views/groups

so independently of your agnostic/theist/atheist view... please JUST BE COOL. everyone should believe whatever the fuck they want provided they dont do any harm to other people...id like to think most religious people wont.

[rtil]

I would say that the only straight up evil and psychopathic believers,( at least while i was still living in Mx) are chief priests, and religious people who run schools and deliberately spread hatred and intolerance towards opossing views/groups

this is a big part of why non-believers have a very negative image of christianity and religion in general. i look at the religious leaders of the world like the corrupt papacy of the catholic religion and their harboring of child molesters and spread of disease in africa, the political spearheads of the neoconservative movement who want to inject christianity into every orifice of govenrment, the hate speaking pastors and picketers.. those are the ones with the loudest voices.

i was a christian until was about 17. churches do some good things for communities and people. but it's a thin veil over the ignorance that is required to be preached at a church. one of the main reasons i turned away from christianity was the idea that i had some kind of moral high ground over those who didn't believe what i did, and that they all needed to be saved, and i knew something they didn't. after a while i realized it was total crap and there is no such thing. i can't be a part of an institution that prides itself on that.

then there's the aspect that we are nothing without a god. you are taught that you are born a sinner, destined to go to hell, and without god you are nothing. so when i became an atheist it was really hard at first, because your entire worldview is shattered and you feel like a piece of trash. it's a backwards way of thinking that i really think is a plague on human progress and wellbeing.

i'm not bashing everyone who is religious, though. i realize there are many different theological belief systems that don't align at all with what i am saying. but that is how i interpreted the church after many years of it being crammed into my head by the church and my school ( i went to a private christian high school). i have many friends who are deeply religious. we get along great. some of them don't even know i'm an atheist. a lot of them are really intelligent people, and have been raised in the church since they were very young, but i honestly don't believe they'd ever be religious if they weren't raised in a religious family.

but regardless of that, i will always fight against the religious who are working to push ignorance, hatred, false information and phony science, no matter how subtle or well intentioned. sometimes people's spiritual beliefs get in the way of facts, and that's never ok.

[Sinitron]

you were christian until 17?? man you're fuckin slow i had doubts about that shit when i was like 7 after my dog died and people were like "animals don't go to heaven" but that dog was a better person than most people FUCK EVERYONE

[rtil]

i told you when i realized i was no longer christian. i had doubts about my faith when i started going to middle school at 11. but years of "jesus camp" revivals and me not wanting to face the truth kept me a christian until 17. even then, i lived in a christian household and i couldn't fully get out of the church until i left my house for good when i was 21.

[trent bortknob]

i dunno i was afraid to be referred to as an atheist until i was like 17-18ish i always called myself agnostic.


let me clear this up for you agnostic types here at TBA.

when posed with the question "do you believe in god", if you answer "yes", you're a theist. if you say anything other than "yes", even "i don't know", you're an atheist.

just to clear things up

[trent bortknob]

this is because an atheist is someone who lacks a belief in a god. if you aren't sure, then you don't have a belief in a god, therefore you're an atheist.


it honestly is not as extreme of a position as people make it out to be. atheists aren't arrogant people who think that there is no chance of god existing. they just lack belief

[trent bortknob]

Im with scrib on this one. im prepared to believe that there is a god  but i think he may or may not give a rats ass about anything in the universe... or he just wont interact with this universe anymore for whatever reason. Hey, he can do whatever he wants right? after all hes GOD.

this is referred to as deism, and i certainly think it's more plausible than christianity, but there is still no evidence for it. why would you pray to a god that doesn't do anything? why would you even bring him up in any situation? he seems totally irrelevant to me.

Is agnosticism bad? of course not. You have to ask yourself what the fuck youre being told and be honest about how you feel about it and if it makes sense

just so you know, that statement has nothing to do with agnosticism

I was raised in a largely christian community and naturally my parents raised me to believe in the same things as them. things that i strongly believed and feared during part of my childhood and during catholic school. I had to put up with a lot of bullshit from many self righteous teachers, priests and people with extremely right wing ideals, associating decency, education and logiv with religion. It was bullshit. It made me skeptical about my knowledge and beliefs and kinda fucked up my worldview. I can safely say nothing killed my trust for the catholic community more than catholic church. Most of the people in there didnt even practice what they preached yet always counted with bullshit arguments to justify anything.

Yet somehow i still believe in god. you could say ive been brainwashed and i wouldnt blame you. I think that amongst the agnostics im definitelly amongst the theist side. But i have no proof and i dont feel like i need it. my thoughts are my own and I dont go around preaching people to believe the things I do.

maybe "brainwashed" is too strong of a word, but i do think you're clinging to the beliefs you were raised with, for whatever reason. it's obvious you have doubts about the whole thing, but it seems that god's existence feels right or true to you. i would say, don't trust your emotions or your feelings for matters of fact. i don't expect you to buy that, but that's my advice.

im gonna get a bit deffensive. is religion bullshit? Believing in something just because it makes you feel good and throw away all information seems fairly silly to me and i have to agree with the agnostic/atheist posse on this one.

but Bashing religious people JUST CAUSE, calling them out in public, vandalizing places that are sacred for them or deliberatedly provoking them simply isnt cool. And in the same way religious people feel entitled to do bad things in the name of religion, some groups bash religion because they think ITS COOL. Ive been to communities where extreme poverty, lack of food and water and hopelessness is simply a situation out of control, im talking about people who literally need to build their houses out of scrap logs in the middle of nowhere with limited nails and no electricity, where the cold of winter could easily make you sick and kill you. marginated communities where people literally find no other hope than to believe in a higher power. It leaves you speechless. in conditions like that, I would just WANT to believe, and I would too... these communities are not hurting anyone and sometimes religion is the only way they can unify their strenghts and values for the good of the community. Like everything, it can be used for good or bad, and the corruption would inevitably spread in there but i think overall its better for them

I guess what im trying to say is, not all religious communities are trying to spread their fuckin beliefs troughout the rest of the world. Being an actively religious person doesnt automatically make you a fuckin idiot. id say most religious people i know are NOT creationists and dont want teachings from the bible to be teached on public schools in the US. (incidentally back in mexico they teach you both creationism and evolution along with some other reasons why life was created but they did pull of the inteligent design thing before it was called intelligent design). I will admit that I know a lot of them who are against abortion, gay marriage, etc. even inside of my own family ive been ridiculled for having opossing views.
BUT i understand why they do this. my parents, their siblings and their grandparents all come from generations when religion had a noticeably stronger pull than it probably does today. if they act like fucking assholes sometimes, try to understand its not entirely their fault.

i sympathize with what you're saying, but the question "is religion bullshit" has to do with whether or not what any religion says is factual or accurate. whether or not it "does good" has nothing to do with whether or not it is true. as principal ghoul-man is fond of saying, "there's nothing more powerful than the truth!"

so independently of your agnostic/theist/atheist view... please JUST BE COOL. everyone should believe whatever the fuck they want provided they dont do any harm to other people...id like to think most religious people wont.

and lastly, this. i really don't believe this. i think people should be legally ALLOWED to hold whatever beliefs they want, but nobody OUGHT to believe in whatever they want without any reason, justification or evidence for what they think. they shouldn't just think whatever they want, even if the ideas are self contradictory or contradict obvious truths.

you should be allowed to believe what you want, sure. we don't need thought police. but SHOULD you just believe whatever you want? i don't think so.

[BlueScarab]

This falls into the same category as "Do you believe in Aliens".
It's not really rational to say "Yes" since there is no evidence for them existing except personal encounters. Which may or may not be lies or illusions.
It's not rational to say deny their existence either, since we are alive on a planet, and there are millions of other worlds.
I've read the Bible, Quran, Tibetan book of death, Egyptian book of death, Sumerian creation story, and the Bhagavad Gītā and don't believe in any earthly mono or poly theistic God. There are holes in all of them.
However it's a burden to deny God itself because the definition has such wide range that it might fit anything from a simple force to a reinforced intelligence that once bound the four fundamental laws together. It's not a fact that it doesn't exist? But it isn't a negative such as a Pink Unicorn which many fall into the trap of accusing theists of also believing. Which is probably because they were influenced into believing God has to have an anthropomorphic body to begin with.
The real question is: is the natural actually unnatural. And it's unanswerable.

[Pants, the terrible]

my thoughts on all of this:

I Want To Yiff The Sh*t Out Of you.