Agnostic or Atheist? (page 4)

done4good

Nice article startingover. Based on that understanding I would have to say I'm Atheist. I never really thought of it quite like that.

j

startingover

I forgot on the other thread to declare who I am.

I am proud to claim the title of Atheist.

FYI, it was a sad day for me when I heard the the Happy Heretic website (where I got the above article) was shutting down. She had a lot of excellent essays. At least I saved them. I should dig them out and post them, I'm sure most of you would enjoy them.

cognizant dissident

Great article startingover. I have been waffling between labelling myself an agnostic or an atheist for 6 months now, since I left the witnesses and watched my whole life's belief system crumble in a few weeks time. From those well-reasoned arguments you posted, I can see that it was a distinction without a difference.

I agree, none of us really "knows" if there is a god and right now it is unprovable. I am open to changing my mind as new evidence becomes available but I don't really expect that to happen in my lifetime. I may not be as strict as Kid-A in accepting only objective, measurable, empirical evidence. If I experienced a miracle I might be persuaded to believe in god based on that subjective experience of mine. Or I might just get the dosage on my meds checked. Hard to say. I definitely am not going to accept the word of half a dozen prophets, long dead, who claim god spoke to them. Sorry, need a little more proof than that. Being gullible is how my parents got sucked into the witnesses. If god saw fit to give a half dozen humans divine revelations and the rest of us mortals were just supposed to believe based on heresay, then I say, if there is a god, he is not very reasonable. One has to wonder, if they had good anti-psychotic drugs in Bible times, how many prophets would still have been having visions?

Cog

ps: James Thomas, you often ask, "Who am I really"? Do you really know who you truly are or are you just hoping one of us will?

Swan

I don't believe in Big Foot, Leprechauns, or Hobbits either. But it is always fun to dream.

Tammy

dust

Startingover, I found your article brilliant. And thanks a lot for pointing out that atheism is not a "stand" where the "obviously existing" God is rejected (it's just the absence of believing anything that hasn't been proved to exist), and where we're all in lack of moral and human feelings. That stigma has hurt a few times during the years.

I've never been a JW myself (I'm married to an ex-JW who disassociated herself to be with me), and I've called myself an atheist for quite a few years (since I was 16). Still, I feel that I "belong with God", and it was my wish that we marry in the church. Some people say that I am probably a Christian, because I feel the way I do, and belief is an emotion, not a knowledge. In fact, I never feel as close to God as after I've just spoken with a JW. And at the same time they make me feel very confident that the church is right. ;)

I still call myself an atheist, but I do pray to God and ask him to look after both my wife and my JW in-laws. It's no wonder people get confused when they talk to me about such matters. I too get confused. So I'm not really sure whether I should call myself an atheist any more.

But if I'm in doubt as to whether I should call myself an atheist (non-believer) or a theist (believer, in my case: Christian), then I... well.. then I don't know (a-gnosis). May I call myself an agnostic? Because I don't _know_ whether I _believe_ or not? :)

crazyblondeb

I think when god created man, SHE was only joking!

Seriously, I'm a pagan.

shelley

poppers

What happens when you don't define yourself in any way whatsoever?
Then you have nothing to which to compare yourself, no standards, no goals.
What do definitions and concepts do for what you really and actually are?
They help you understand what you are. We think in definitions and concepts. Without them, it's impossible to know or understand anything.
Do they free us or only put limitations on us and create separation?
They free us by defining our limitations and separating positive concepts from negative ones.
Far more important that putting oneself into some category is finding out who or what you really are.
That's impossible without categorisation. What I really am is an atheist; it's not all I really am and it doesn't stop me also being a man, being Irish, being a capitalist, being a vegetarian, being an ex-JW, being a boyfriend, a brother, a son. I belong in all those categories. They are part of who I really am. How could I even begin to understand or explain myself without those labels?

What do standards and goals have to do with what you really are? Standards and goals only define you in terms of how you think about yourself, therefore they are limitations. Do you need to compare yourself to anyone else? Doesn't any such comparison set you apart, create a distance between your idea of "you" and your idea of "other"? Any comparison is the seed of conflict.

Yes, the mind is great for thinking, that's what minds do. Are "you" your mind or does mind arise within something else, something greater than the mind can conceive. Concepts cannot grasp anything beyond themselves, they help in knowing about things, but "knowingness" isn't limited to the mind. They don't help in understanding what you really are, and in fact, only obscure the knowing of what you really are. They are like coats of paint covering a mental image. Without them arising one is left with simple pure awareness, which is knowingness itself and which is peaceful, whole, and one with everything.

How can concepts "free" us by defining our limitations? The only "limitation" we have are creations of the mind.

Any "categorization" is just another way of preventing oneself from seeing one's true nature. You are playing different roles - male, Irish, boyfriend, atheist, and so on. You said yourself that they are only a part of what you really are? So then, what are you really? Are you only what you can categorize or are you something more fundamental, something which exists prior to anything you can conceptualize? Can what you really are change or can you only change what you conceptualize?

funkyderek

poppers:

I've read your post several times and it still doesn't make any sense. But I suspect that's your intention (or at least that you find the concept of "making sense" limiting in some way). You seem to have some idea that there's a way of knowing that doesn't involve any actual knowledge, information or thought, and bizarrely, that this is somehow superior to real knowledge. But then, I can't discuss this subject - or any subject - without using concepts. While someone with your "pure awareness" (another bastardised concept) may find that limiting, it is those very limitations that allow us to distinguish between useful and useless data, and prevent the kind of meaningless rhetoric you posted.

poppers

Well funkyderek, it is confusing to the mind because what I am pointing to lies beneath and beyond the mind, so mind cannot grasp it. My intention is not necessarily to confuse anyone but to get them to consider that what they actually and truly are is not limited to the concepts one has about oneself. There is something else that gives light to the mind, that is the"support structure" to what is unfolding within oneself as well as unfolding "out there". It is this that I am pointing to, and it is this which I say is what you really are.

People are aware of things, ideas, sensations, emotions and events unfolding around them, and there is certainly nothing wrong that. But what usually happens is that the mind engages with those things and comes to conclusions: they are "positive", "negative", "meaningless rhetoric", and so on, and then the person thinks they "know" about them. But this knowing about them is relevant only from their personal perspective, but that won't stop them from informing others that what is disagreed with is total garbage. It is these descrepancies between personal perspectives that form the basis of conflict in all its forms.

"Pure awareness" is just that, awareness without anything attached to it. In other words, instead of awareness "OF" things there is simply awareness left standing on its own. Another word for awareness is "knowingness", so instead of "knowing about" this or that particular thing there is just the "knowing" itself. This knowing is ever pure, ever constant, and is peace itself. This is what you are. One can be consciously aware of awareness itself and still be engaged in the world. When this is the case there is no inner conflict, and there is no sense of separtaion which can morph into conflict with others - all there is is the sense of peace, stillness, contentment, and fulfillment.

"Real" knowledge is useful in negotiating the world we live in, and so it certainly is worthwhile. But fundamental to "real" knowledge is the "knowingness" that can also be called consciousness/ awareness. Without consciousness "real" knowledge would be impossible. What you are is consciousness itself - awareness, and this is formless. This is why it is important to know what you really are, so that the life you live won't be swayed this way and that by what's happening in the world of form, the world that is taken to be "real".

kid-A

Without consciousness "real" knowledge would be impossible.

Poppers, non-sentient animals, including dogs, cats, rats, all insects, etc etc acquire and use "real" knowledge about their environments every single second of their existence. Knowledge about locations, associative memories, food seeking, avoiding danger, this is ALL real knowledge and no less significant, from a biological perspective, as any other form of knowledge. In the same vein, non-human animals display "knowingness" simply by using memory circuits within their brains, in the exact same neuroanatomical locations as humans.

There is nothing "mystical" or "mysterious" about human consciousness with the exception that we are perhaps more aware of our mortality then other non-sentient animals (however even this could be debated). The point is, we are simply the sum collection of neurochemical transactions distributed across our brains. We can apply human creativity to come up with all sorts of romantic notions about the "knowingness" of human consciousness, etc etc. But in the end, the physiological effects of a general anaesthetic on "human consciousness" or the consciousness of a rat, are ultimately identical: cortical shutdown, and a corresponding loss of consciousness, awareness, knowingness, etc. We are ALL just complicated machines.

Agnostic or Atheist?

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