The Atheist Blogger

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.

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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.

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.

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