The Atheist Blogger » agnostic

Calling All Homosexual Heathens

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:34:16 +0000

Are you gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered? Have you rejected Gods of all kinds? Then Reed Braden (Homosecular Gaytheist) might have proposal for you! Reed plans to create a collaborative blog of gay atheist activists, where issues that affect both minority groups will be discussed, a kind of Skepchick blog, only where the chicks like other chicks, and the guys like…well, you get the picture.

The idea has already got the attention of Greta Christina, as well as some other atheist bloggers (myself included). If you are interested or just want to find out more, go and join the facebook group!

If you have not already added me on facebook as a friend (and please do, it helps feed my ego) then you can easily access my profile by going to http://facebook.com/atheistblogger.

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The Atheist Jew Can’t Keep His Hands Off Me

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:03:31 +0000

The Atheist Jew has tagged me yet again in another meme. This one is pretty interesting, and came at a good time, since I have either been too busy or unable to think of articles to write recently. However, when my course involves playing around with Lego robots; getting them to solve mazes and stand up on two wheels, and Cryptography (code breaking) you can hardly blame me.

Onto the meme!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

This question has two answers. The day I “officially” became an atheist would be the day I first put down “no religion” on a government form (Data protection act in 1999). That’s the first time my non-religion was acknowledged by the state, however I think this question is more aimed at the time I first realized I was an atheist.

That was probably around the age of 9. I had been thinking about the question for a while, thats all I can remember about the how. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking about, but it probably involved trying to combine the Bible with science (it doesn’t work). I was very scientific from a young age, and I frequently read children’s encyclopedias instead of “bedtime stories”. Learning about how we see colours differently in dark light is much more interesting than any story that begins “once upon a time”.

I also remember that the day my realization occurred was a Sunday. This is deeply ironic because the only reason I remember the actual day was that it occurred in a Church service. If it had happened on a Tuesday, I would never have remembered. Such is the power of religion at ingraining things into the mind I guess.

During the church service, the priest probably got up and said something about the Bible and how the Earth was created, or some other complete nonsense. I started thinking about this, and how there are so many flaws in the whole “God” idea. Much like comedian Ricky Gervais, 10 minutes later, I was an atheist. Of course, being such a young boy, I was slightly nervous about these new feelings I had, so I turned to my mother and said “I don’t think I believe in God”. She told me it wasn’t the kind of thing I should be saying in church, and that she would talk about it later.

She never did, and my atheism has only gotten stronger since that day.

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

Not really, probably because I’d never really heard of the term until much later in life. I guess I’d been an agnostic since the day I got interested in science. If there is anything science has taught me, it is that there are things so complex in the universe we may never fully understand them. The best way to gain knowledge is by continually testing and challenging ideas, and looking where the evidence points.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

Sometime before that Sunday services all those years ago probably. Not that I haven’t had a few “crises of non-faith” since then of course, where I have prayed simply out of fear. I didn’t think anyone was there, it was more of a test to see if anyone was there. Of course, after several experiments, the scientific method held true, and I stopped my pointless praying.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

No, the Bible did that quite effectively.

Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

Yeah, I’ve only very recently become a proper “skeptic” towards a load of things. I’m still a recovering conspiracy theorist to be perfectly honest, and the truth is, there are only so many times you can look at 9/11 footage and say “Why is there no wreckage?” or “Those were bombs exploding in the towers” before you realize you are talking absolute crap and the people who put these bizarre theories together know nothing about proper science.

Of course, I still like to humour these things.

Do you want to be wrong?

Of course I do! I say this to Christians all the time but they never take it in. I would honestly love nothing more than to live forever in some form of paradise, but if I have to adopt a flawed belief system to do it, I refuse. I fail to see why a God who supposedly gave us the ability to reason, would want us to abandon that reason in order to pass some sick test and get into Heaven…

Now my turn to tag people:

and Splendid Elles

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1,500 Flyers

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:43:52 +0000

On Monday 22nd September, several thousand new students will arrive at Royal Holloway, University of London, in order to register and join societies. The godless members of our student organisation “Atheist & Agnostic Alliance” will be there too, handing out flyers in order to grab as many new members as we can. Statistics says roughly 30% of students are non-religious, so I’m hoping we can get quite a few.

As part of our affiliation with the UK Brights, we have 1,500 flyers that present a “friendly” message, as well as something that isn’t “in your face”.

Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Flyer

UK Brights are also helping us organise an awareness week later in the year. I’ll be taking my camera along to registration and get some pictures of the group in action. No idea how many flyers we will hand out on the first day, or how many will end of torn up in bins on campus. Hopefully a few people will stop to chat, either in support or to try and convert us from our heathen ways.

Edit (in response to a complaint): http://the-brights.net, http://brights.meetup.com

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Socrazy Gadfly

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:51:38 +0000

To think that blog carnivals are meant to bring people of similar beliefs together. Such philosophies seem to have been completely lost when I hosted the Carnival of the Godless two days ago. SocraticGadfly had an article on the Pew Survey which claimed that 1 in 5 atheists believed in God. As he pointed out, 50% of “agnostics” made the same claim.

The quote which started the debacle was this:

Hey, idiots. If you believe something, you can’t agnostic about it!

As many people probably know, this isn’t true at all. Agnosticism is defined as “an intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge”. Simply put, the position on whether certain things can be claimed as absolute truth or knowledge.

Ergo, if you believe in God, you can be agnostic about it if you don’t claim absolute knowledge of God. These types of people are referred to as agnostic theists or agnostic deists. I’ve covered them before in my article about agnosticism.

I myself am an agnostic atheist, not believing in any gods, but not claiming that my belief (or disbelief) is absolute truth. You only have to change one word in SocraticGadflys sentence to make it correct:

Hey, idiots. If you know something, you can’t agnostic about it!

However, this isn’t what he said, and in the interests of using the correct defintions, db0 (Divide by Zero) from The Antichristian Phenomenon (which coincidently had an article in the same carnival) corrected SocraticGadfly in the comments of his article.

His response was to claim that agnostic theism was a subset of theism, not agnosticism. In fact there is no real subset at all. Theism and Agnosticism are completely different things. One is about belief, the other about knowledge. Agnosticism can be applied to everything, so technically if there were a subset, everything would be a subset of agnosticism.

SocraticGadfly didn’t stop there though. Pressed by db0 to reconsider his own definitions in light of actual dictionary definitions, he lost all sense of reason:

You’re a theist, and on the edge, if not past it, of being a theist troll.

…

you’re lying, to me and to yourself, when you claim you don’t want to argue about this. You do.

…

If you don’t understand that, understand this: I just banned your IP, as you’ve gone past the edge of being a theist troll.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but that behaviour seems similar to that of young earth creationists or IDiots. Call your opponent a troll, say they are lying, and then ban them. It’s utterly despicable behaviour from someone who wasn’t trying to argue with him, but correct him on a dictionary definition.

Later, when Gadfly claimed that db0 had said he was a theist, I saw he had simply misread what db0 had actually said which was

Indeed, most of the time when I said that I was agnostic people assumed that I was a theistic agnostic. I eventually had to explain my irreligion as “Atheist” to avoid misconceptions. Then if people need a more detailed explanation, I explain that I am an Atheistic Agnostic.

Gadfly has issued an apology for his mistake, but not for his attitude, and he is still under the impression that he is correct, even when 2 other people have come forward to challenge his definitions. Gadfly has shown no rational thought whatsoever. He’s now freely admitting to using definitions from a book published 28 years ago which says this about agnosticism:

It is usually applied, however, principally, to suspension of belief with respect to God.

Just shows how times have changed. I’d originally posted this article a few hours ago, but then decided to take it down to give SocraticGadfly a chance to say something / apologise. In my opinion, he has given a shallow apology for something that should have never come up in the first place, and he has kept to his own out of date dictionary without looking at dictionary compilations (dictionary.com does a good job of this). He is still insulting many people who agnostic atheists.

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Labels Are Annoying…

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:28:45 +0000

I was born an atheist, just like the rest of humanity. I was christened when I was 1 and became a Christian. When I was 11 I renounced my faith and became “uncertain” in the existence of gods. A little less than a year later I had converted fully to atheism. 9 years down the line, and I was wondering if “sitting on the fence” was a worthy term for agnostics, and when I had researched the original meaning of the term I realized that I’d been an agnostic atheist all along. A few weeks later, through some persuasive arguments from Kieran Bennett, I realize that whilst I’m agnostic about a so-called “unknown” god (i.e. the non-religious “creator” or “deist god”), I am gnostic about every other god humanity has ever believed in. Now I have no idea what I am. Technically speaking I’m mostly a gnostic atheist since I’m only agnostic about one particular god, but since I’m not fully gnostic I can’t label myself that. Furthermore, due to some recent conversations I had come to label myself as an apathetic agnostic atheist, or “one who doesn’t believe in gods, understands he can never be proved right or wrong, and really doesn’t care either way”. Of course this label is borderline ridiculous in common conversation.

Thus I deduce that labels are annoying, yet I can’t label myself “anti-label” since that would be hypocritical. Therefore I’m doing the most obvious thing. I’m reverting back to a single word:

Atheist

If agnosticism comes up in conversation someday I’ll just run for the nearest exit. I’m keeping my label as simple as I possibly can…

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Kieran Bennett: Why Atheist And NOT Agnostic?

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:45:51 +0000

Atheist blogger Kieran Bennett was asked the question “Why are you atheist and not agnostic?” and replies in essay format. He argues that whilst I am correct in saying that agnosticism has nothing to do with gods, I am wrong in thinking that “gnostic atheism” is irrational, and it is in fact the agnostic atheists who are the irrational ones.

I find this a bit incredulous, but I think his argument stems from the semantics of the word “god”. Kieran says that every god that exists today can ben traced back through history to it’s human origin, and we can also explain why such gods have so much power over people (fear, comfort, etc). However, I do not think that any of these gods are gods that the agnostic atheist would claim are unknowable.

In essence, the agnostic atheist is as certain as the gnostic atheist about most gods humanity has ever come up with. What we are really agnostic about is a god that humanity has not just dreamt up, the god of deism. Ok, so perhaps this god was dreamt up by a human, but it very different from it’s brothers and sisters. The god of deism is an attempt at explaining the reasons for the origins of the universe. Instead of an all-powerful being, we have a semi-powerful being, able to create but not to interfere, thus letting science do all the explaining of existence and the universe.

The idea of agnostic atheism is that science has yet to come up with a complete explanation for why and how everything is here. Deism is an attempted explanation of that.

Of course nobody can ever prove it, so I can see why people like Bennet would see it as irrational. However the further we go back through science we see cause and effect; everything that has ever been has a cause. Even if we find something that caused the Big Bang, we need something that caused the cause. Either this results in an infinitely long chain that has no end, there was a cause that caused itself, or something other that the natural laws of physics were at work.

The gnostic atheist subscribes to the first two, and the agnostic atheist subscribes to all three, reasoning that we do not yet have an explanation, so surely all factors should be up for debate.

Read the article and decide for yourself.

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What Is Agnosticism?

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:06:09 +0000

It seems that there are more people confused about what agnosticism means than what atheism means, and I’d like to take the chance to explain what it is, as well as dispel some common misconceptions.

Just like atheism and theism are different sides of the same coin (the belief in God coin), agnosticism and gnosticism are different sides of the same coin (the “knowability” of belief). If you have a belief in anything, you are either gnostic or agnostic about that belief.

Misconception: Agnosticism relates directly to belief in God

Whilst the modern use of the word “agnostic” is usually attributed to people who say they are “unsure” of the existence of God, it is neither a good usage of the word, nor a “direct” usage. If you are truly agnostic, you have to claim that everything is unknowable, right down to simple proofs like “1 + 1 = 2″, or “Humans need oxygen to breathe”. Such a view is rather silly, and I challenge any true agnostics to give up oxygen for a day or two and see how they feel about it afterwards.

I’d wager that everyone in the world is a gnostic “oxygenicist”. We don’t need to question the validity of the claim that oxygen is needed. It’s a known fact.

Personally speaking, I would further classify myself as a gnostic “gravitationalist” since the theory of Gravity is probably not going to be disproven. It’s a sound theory, and much better than anything flat earth theorists can come up with.

Misconception: Agnostics neither believe or disbelieve in God

Firstly, it is impossible for the above to occur; belief in God is a yes or no matter. When I was young (and we are talking pre double figures) there was a funny saying we had: “Yes means yes, no means no, and maybe means no”. It was related to the answer your mother would give you if you asked for something. If she said “yes”, the chances are you would get it, and likewise a “no” would get you nothing. A “maybe” was interpretted as a “no” wrapped in false hope. If your mum said maybe, she meant no.

The same rough principle can be applied to belief in God. If you ask person whether or not they believe in God, a “yes” means they are theist, a “no” means they are atheist, and a “maybe” (more commonly a “I’m not sure”) can be interpretted as a no. I may not be correct 100% of the time, but I have met more than enough professed “agnostics” to know that they no more believe in God than I do.

What we really have to understand is the concept of agnosticism in relation to belief in God.

There are 4 main positions on belief in God:

	Agnostic	Gnostic
Atheist	Agnostic Atheist – Does not believe in God, but recognises that God is an unknowable being.	Gnostic Atheist – Does not believe in God, and thinks that this belief is the ultimate truth (knowledge).
Theist	Agnostic Theist – Believes in God, but recognises that God is an unknowable being.	Gnostic Theist – Believes in God, and thinks that this belief is the ultimate truth (knowledge).

Both agnostic positions are rational, whilst the gnostic are irrational. Claiming absolute knowledge of a God is ridiculous, since neither way can be irrefutably proved. The only rational positions are those of agnosticism.

On Dawkins’ scale of belief in God, 1 being “knowledge of God” (Gnostic Theist) and 7 being “knowledge of no God” (Gnostic Atheist), Agnostic Theism comes in at 2.5, and Agnostic Atheism comes in at 5.5, which is where I place myself on the scale. I think Dawkins is rather silly to claim that he is rational and yet rate himself a “6.9″.

In reality, a rating of 4 (halfway) can never be achieved, unless we attribute it to deism which can be viewed as a true halfway point between theism and atheism. Deists believe that there is a God who initially created the universe, but has no further control over it, and does not meddle with humans or the natural laws. They reject religious literature, and argue that our ability to reason is our greatest attribute.

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The Atheist Blogger Book Club

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:44:10 +0000

I’ve been playing around with this idea for a few weeks now. Initially it started as something for my campus group (Atheist & Agnostic Alliance) to do once a month, but I’ve been thinking about expanding it online first to see what the reaction is. The idea will work thus:

On the 1st of every month, a vote will be held to select a book relating to atheism, agnosticism, belief, religion etc. For cost reasons we will try to only pick books that have been published in paperback, and that can be found in libraries.
Over the course of the next month, we read the book individually.
At the end of the month we “meet” in an IRC channel (like a chat room) which ewanm89 is setting up on the server. It will be a safe environment and well moderated so that anyone of any age can participate. I will provide more information about how to get access when we get the channels set up!
In the channel, we will discuss (for as long as we want) the book that we read over the month. I will then publish sections of the comments on the forums in a new thread, where people who either missed or couldn’t participate in the chat can post their comments on the book.
We will also collect titles of other books and set up a new vote to decide the next book to read.

The idea of this is to get more people reading good books about atheism and belief, and for our opinions on such books to be shared amongst ourselves. If the online book club is a success, I will be including it in a monthly activity for my own campus group, and possibly other campus groups could do the same.

If you are interested in joining the book club, please join the forums and introduce yourself. You can submit book ideas in the new Discussions forum, which will also be used for the discussion of books read in the club.

Please start suggesting book titles for the first vote, which will be held on 1st May.

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A Quick Poll

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:05:54 +0000

I’ve recently installed a poll plugin for wordpress seeing as it may come in handy for the future. I may even start having weekly polls on various topics if it gets popular. Anyway, this post is really to test the feature out so I know how it works, and more importantly, if it works!

So, the simple question: Are you atheist, theist, or agnostic?

I get quite a few visitors to the blog, and some people leave comments suggesting they belong to certain religious groups, some not. This is an anonymous poll to see what percentages of people read the blog, that’s all.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.