"I cannot say God exists" still doesn't answer what they believe

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

The same argument is used by religious people against atheists. You must believe in "something" when really agnosticism and atheism is simply the absence of theistic belief. A-theism, non-theism.

edit: which is also why a "brights movement" makes no sense to me. I can understand organizing political coalitions to keep religion out of schools etc but attempting to group people based on a common LACK of belief doesn't make any sense and is leading atheism to become some sort of social group almost analogous to religion minus God

dawkins isn't about uniting under a lack of belief. he is for uniting under science, or if nothing else the scientific method itself. and it happens that many people who prefer logic and the scientific method don't have a particular religion title to call their own (hence the name Brights--i get the email newsletter btw).

so don't get caught up in semantics about agnosticism / atheism / etc. just know that dawkins is not impressed by people who prefer to resign themselves to the idea that since they don't know the answers to questions of existence that they should not think about them. focusing on the day-to-day monotony of life is fine if that's your thing, but you won't be getting dawkins respect, nor mine.



by the way, i thought you like dawkins, why are you now trying to find something to complain about? lol

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

I'm not. I'm playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion. I don't think those two annoyances with dawkins would qualify me as a dawkins hater. I've said it before: I think you can like something/someone and still criticize it. Of course I like dawkins enough to not have many criticisms.

Why do people need to unite because of a lack of a belief? I still don't get it. They don't belong to a religion because religions are inherently illogical and irrational (including eastern religions). I still don't see why that necessitates forming a big club-like thing. It should be the mainstream way of thinking, and the way to usher in a second enlightenment certainly isn't by segregating those who self-purportedly use logic and reason from the mainstream.

I'm not the only critic of this. Christopher Hitchens (author of the recent and awesome "god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) is a personal friend to Dawkins and another outspoken atheist. He sees the entire thing as futile and arrogant while still keeping his respect for Dawkins. I try to follow his example. (By the way, Hitchens can really only be described as an intellectual badass. He's a virulent critic of Mother Teresa and wrote a book bashing her called "The Missionary Position". )

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

I'm not sure what you're going for here

like you say, logic should be the mainstream, but it's not.
if that sentence ^ brings people together in any way, i don't see how that's a bad thing.

they aren't copying religion by forming a group. they are trying to strengthen themselves. groups make ideas public, and they provide fellowship to otherwise isolated brains. how is this bad? there is no contradiction to hosting the Brights, nor is there contradiction in frowning at topic-avoiding fence-sitters, no matter how hard you look. if you don't know what you believe, say you don't know what you believe, don't say you're agnostic, that's saying you believe something but don't "claim to know." if you don't know what you believe, there's nothing amidst that particular topic to be agnostic about. like i've said, in the end, it comes to semantics. from experience i have seen that most people differ in their opinion of what agnostic means. to you, it means one thing. to dawkins, it means something else. what dawkins dislikes isn't the same thing as what you are thinking of.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Dawkins uses the term "fence sitters" in "The God Delusion". It's pretty early in the book where he discusses it--I'll try and pin a page number down for you but he makes his case pretty clear I think

about the meaning of agnostic

here is what yahoo dictionary has to say:

NOUN:
1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
3. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

okay so 1 and 2/3 aren't even the same thing. yahoo has 2 different definitions. 1, for instance, applies to me. 2/3 do not.

as you probably gnost.. i mean as you probably know, -gnostic means knowledge / to know. agnostic means to not know. "to not know" is still viably compatable with "to believe" which describes my own believes: i believe the entire spiritual realm is fake, but i am agnostic in reference to that belief. that's definition 1. that's what dawkins and myself consider the true definition, according to Greek, and from that definition, if you were to ask a fence-sitter what they believe, if they said "ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW!" (def. 1) your response would be to either ask the question again or give up with a sigh.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

too much info. to really post and quote out but made for some good reading...it even had video!

http://religion.netscape.com/story/2007 ... l-the-same