ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

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Those evil soldiers are doing the Nazi salute, the holy saints are replying with the completely innocent Roman salute.

unchill complicit-in-genocide pontiff bro

just some bros waving at each other

tbf, Pope John Paul's speech at the wailing wall about the Holocaust and apologizing for the Church's role in it was pretty moving

(altho calling it an apology is probably an overstatement)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3I0gXJZ6XmU/S6AzgHLfJ0I/AAAAAAAAAog/ksDTMUxjvoI/s1600-h/pope-benedict-nazi-salute.jpg

Huh? Not working? In case that image link really isn't working (doesn't look so at the moment), here it is on another site:

http://i53.tinypic.com/907x3l.jpg

(that's the Ratz man himself)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

huh.

I wonder what it is about ILX that attracts the hardcore atheist/leftist minorities

crudely? ILX is the most intelligent open forum on the internet + intelligence is attractive to free-thinking leftie atheist types = these people flock to ILX

although I'm a bit dismayed at that result - it's overwhelming and kinda helps explain why ILX doesn't have a particularly good track-record on religious discussion - personally I could have voted for any one of the bottom 3 but none of the top 3

cynicism and atheism are correlated

Optimism is not possible without atheism.

<3 these results

there's a lot more atheists than cnn polls turn up once a year is my guess shakey

Voted for Option 1 but I'm really not hardcore about being an atheist, I just don't believe in God and never have really. Not through any particularly intellectual or logical reasoning but just a combination of not much curiosity and actually finding comfort in the idea of being born, living, and dying, and that's it. The End. Stop. This is more satisfying to me than any idea of God or heaven to be honest.

shit I could have used a better word than 'flock' there

egotistical types have trouble seeing a higher power than themselves and they flock to ilx

On the contrary, believing that your insignificant monkey species is somehow superior to everything else because of some hazy invisible magician excuse is the ultimate hubris. Primitive people constructed a fancy story partly because they can't handle the fact that we, just like every manifestion of life on this planet, are nothing more than an elaborate trick by DNA to get reproduced. No higher purpose, no eternal life.

That is how I'm atheistic. How is that egotistical?

Given the demographics of ILX (and more active internet users in general) this is broadly what I would expect - educated at a higher than average level, middle class-ish, 20-40 (at a guess), vaguely left of centre etc.

Religiosity is also over-represented in polls - I imagine the main factor is the identity/cultural aspects of religion. Certainly if as many British people attended church as answered Christian (72%) the streets would be deserted on a Sunday morning (new census next year! I love censuseses).

Disappointing results, but I do think part of that was down to the way in which the questions were phrased. (I think it is *very* leading to have 4 degrees of atheism/agnosticism and only 2 poorly phrased religious answers - not to mention the lack of a "I am a hardcore spiritual person" makes it very very unbalanced.)

So it's a poor poll with leading questions to start with, which means that any results are going to be skewed.

What I find most personally concerning about these results is the high degree of *certainty* that people seem to express. Because that kind of "hardcore" certainty can lead both to dogmatism (my belief system is the only one that is correct, so you should follow it to) and arrogance (there was a good quote in Sagan's Contact about "how can you represent the entire human race when you think 95% of it are deluded or lying?") The arrogance doesn't come from the belief, it comes from the certainty that one believes one's own belief is the only *possible* one.

I'm honestly surprised that there were not more *agnostics* because that, to me, is the most intellectually *defensible* position, but the way the poll is phrased makes it difficult to pick out tolerant agnostics on the borderline cases.

Anyway, the one good thing about this poll is, when any hardcore atheists on ILX start trying to represent themselves as hard done by or a minority, I'm going to point them to this thread and tell them to eat a bag of dicks.

Re-poll with better options?

xp I can't honestly recall or imagine that ever happening here.

Gee, Ledge, look upthread, you'll find lots of examples.

Even I can't be bothered to repoll, but I just wanted to repeat that the option were biased and the results skewed.

I'm honestly surprised that there were not more *agnostics* because that, to me, is the most intellectually *defensible* position

You realise this is just hardcore agnosticism, exactly on a par with hardcore atheism or religiousness? Saying that one cannot intellectually justify either position (belief/unbelief) is itself a philosophical position, prima facie no more or less justified or in need of justification.

It's most defensible as long as you wilfully distort what atheism actually means.

But I take some of the stuff on threads like this as indicative that Dawkins and his buds are creating gaping loopholes of bad manners for defenders of faith to jump thru.

Gee, Ledge, look upthread, you'll find lots of examples.

Oh ok, I do recall people posting that they have felt discriminated against and in a minority because of their atheism, in real life. I'm sure those things are true and they won't stop being true just because of a poll result on ilx.

No, I'm saying that with a concept that cannot be proved or disproved, the only truly *defensible* answer is "I don't know/it is impossible to have knowledge." Anything else is just opinion. People are entitled to have whatever opinion they hold, but they are opinions.

It's just when people go on about "evidence-based" this and that with regard to *ideas* my brain returns a "does not compute, incompatible method" response.

It would be interesting if that made me a hardcore agnostic, because I am not an agnostic in terms of belief.

But whatever, we don't need to have this argument.

Loving LJ's "because we're clever" answer to why there are so many atheists on ILX. Maybe they're not flocking here but it just seems that way because the theists turn away.

There are many articulate intelligent engaging theists in this world. If I put myself in the position of a random Catholic googler coming here looking for some random shit I'd probably think it looked like a good board to hang around on. Then I'd discover the go-to thread for *any* discussion on Catholicism is the Irish Kiddie Fiddler Priests thread and decide I might be more welcome elsewhere.

with a concept that cannot be proved or disproved, the only truly *defensible* answer is "I don't know/it is impossible to have knowledge."

No. The most "defensible" answer to the existence of the Loch Ness Monster is not really "it is a mystery".

Onimo, you didn't read my whole post, and you didn't read the post I was replying to. My statement was emphatically NOT comparative - it was merely answering Shakey's question. Fuck's sake.

Actually, your second point is pretty much MY second point! Again, fuck's sake.

The idea that God is a concept that cannot be proved or disproved is a philosophical position, one that I do not hold and that I'm certain many religious people do not hold. Agnosticism is a move within the game, not a denial or a stepping outside of the game.

I think that's very very possible, onimo. This is not a particularly welcoming environment for theists of any stripe. Which is a shame because there are liberal, educated, articulate theists out there, but they get squeezed into a corner where they aren't welcome in either camp, when they are the people who have the most potential to *be* bridges and affect change in levels of tolerance and understanding.

NV, you are conflating "concept" with "object." You can prove the existence or non existence of an object, but not of a concept or idea. "God" "theism" etc. are not objects, they are ideas. Stop pretending they're objects, because that is a willful distortion itself.

Anyway, I refuse to waste my Saturday on this.

Would like a retraction from Onimo, please

People of faith don't treat God as a concept tho. Of course I agree that the notion of God exists, but I'm saying that an atheist position is not any less defensible than a refusal to believe in dragons or pixies as real things that exist/have existed. Nobody who came out squarely on the "there are no such things as pixies" side would be accused of being dogmatic, really.

I think there are better defences of faith than an attack on atheism. Obv I'm an atheist and no doubt that colours my opinion but I'm only interested in some logical rigour as far as the atheism/agnosticism argument is concerned.

ILX= treasure trove for the curious beast that is the psychology of atheism

Of course you can't disprove the existence of an idea, that doesn't even make sense. "The idea of God doesn't exist." Yes that is as stupid as saying "the idea of theism doesn't exist" or "the idea of justice doesn't exist" or "the idea of cheese doesn't exist". And yes, people believe that God is more than just an idea.

I kind of want to cover myself by pointing out that there is a possible conflation above, of 'The idea of God' and God (as idea). The former being 'The idea of the idea of God', if you will. But this is really a generous attempt to give meaning to meaninglessness. God (as idea) is still borderline nonsense and nothing at all like what billions of people throughout the ages believe and have believed in.

Is it an atheist position to reject the concept of God as commonly defined by religion(s) which inevitably will include some kind of moral aspect; whilst accepting the possibility that there may be a higher power which we do not (yet?) understand?

I would read that as an atheist position, yeah. Rejection of the major monotheistic religions isn't exactly the same as saying "all metaphysics is solved forever".

Really? I would totally call that a religious or spiritual position, or agnostic at best. Etymologically maybe 'atheism' refers only to disbelief in a traditional montheistic god, but these days I would assume it's taken to mean wholesale rejection of gods or god-like beings, even vaguely worded 'higher powers'.

You can choose to define it how you like but I think both meanings are perfectly possible. Dawkins doesn't have a monopoly on the word imo.

It depends on how you wanna talk about higher power, obviously. Deism isn't atheism. But I don't think atheism has to mean rejection of all metaphysics.

People of faith don't treat God as a concept tho.

See what I mean about the arrogance of certainty?

Hardcore atheists insisting that they *know* how, exactly, each and every religious or spiritual person on the face of the earth treats their faith or their personal concept or *experience* of god. (usually based on an extremely simple and reductionist reading of one or two specific kinds of monotheistic religions, and only a limited experience at that.)

You simply do not know, and you cannot speak for all those people. You do not have the right to make assertions like that, about the beliefs of other people - especially such blanket statements as this. And when you do make statements like that - especially one directly contradicting the experiences of a person-of-faith like myself, you *do* make yourself look like you simply do not understand, on a very basic and fundamental level, what it is you are claiming to despise.

Rejection of the major monotheistic religions isn't exactly the same as being an atheist, either. There's a whole freaking world of grey out there.

You can choose to define it how you like but I think both meanings are perfectly possible.

Jeez you're almost sounding like an agnostic here! Being a good ol' descriptivist I would take it to mean whatever the majority think it means.