Debate user Null on if agnostics should have to pick a side

[Dyn]

Okay I picked my side but I'm not telling anyone what it is.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

While the moral decay of society can be related to lack of religion it is not exactly as clear cut as he has expressed it.

The moral decay of society has more to do with the removal of religion from the moral and social aspects it ought to inhabit with bureaucracy and gay legal shit. I'm don't think a few people identifying as agnostic or atheist (but otherwise having fundamentally Christian values) would rot society or even their local cultures so much as the coordinated effort to undermine those values. I even think that there is a place for them in heaven if they act in such a way that is consistent with caring for their fellow man and believing in Love, Beauty and Truth, higher goods than just base animalistic pleasure. I don't want to get into it but all that being said globohomo started way before we were even born (I'd say during the period right after the French Revolution is the true birth of globohomo bullshit).

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

Huh. I would thought I was used to Null's more retarded takes by now but guess not. Well, Im agnostic. I'd like to believe theres a god, but I'm not sure. I'm not an athiest however because I figure its more likely there is a god than not. If anything, agnostic is the only honest position. Those who believe in god do just that, believe, they don"t know, which is why its called faith. Those who are sure there isnt one also dont know, though they are arrogant enough to think they do. As to the rest of that unhinged rant, it sounds like Null is starting to gain some rather cowish tendencies, which should be intetesting.

 

[LatinasAreTheFuture]

Funny thing about atheism is its appeal to nature. But my understanding of nature is that it is the substance of God.

 

[draggs]

Null should stick to doing Jon Stewart schtick about lolcows 5000 miles away

Always a bit awkward and cringe when Null gets bored and starts pontificating

 

[Tetragrammaton]

the thing about atheists is that many of them make the fact that they do not believe in god their whole identity so its essentially no different than having a religion. agnostics can do that as well but i have not seen it as often.

 

[Betonhaus]

Athiesm is generally just another form of religion. North Koreans believe that their Supreme Leader is a living god, and historically many religions had a living person be considered the physical incarnation of their respective god. In that regard, having complete faith in the Communist State or a specific political party would be a form of religion. Worshiping a specific sports team or soap opera hold parallels to how the Greeks and Romans treated their gods. Even horoscopes and shiny stone worship has similarities with Druidism. Apple fans function like Catholics when it was considered that your faith was proportional to your donations, and you could buy get-out-of-hell tickets to offset your sins.

Athiests are often just as religious as any Evangelical, just they don't consider the object of their faith to meet a very narrow classification of "god," with rituals and beliefs that don't have generations of refinements ensuring they encourage wellbeing and foresight.

In that sense, the only difference between atheists and theists is that athiests go through the bother of defining what constitutes an objecty of faith, then refuting it's existence. Agnostics generally acknowledge that they don't have all the answers, and such rightfully exist as a third category.

 

[Vect]

Athiests are often just as religious as any Evangelical,

If you see religious atheists they're doing it wrong.

In that regard, having complete faith in the Communist State or a specific political party would be a form of religion.

Right, but they're not atheist, the leader of the state is the Divine Being, so they're state religions. Every tinpot dictator has some form of cult of personality around themselves to maximize their own power. You almost can't be an autocrat without one because a population that believes the leader to be anything other than infallible is a population that knows who to overthrow when things go south.

Even horoscopes and shiny stone worship has similarities with Druidism

All three are a form of Paganism, a worship of the natural world. Nobody sues the lady who writes horoscope predictions in the paper for scientific negligence.

Apple fans function like Catholics when it was considered that your faith was proportional to your donations, and you could buy get-out-of-hell tickets to offset your sins.

I don't think buying successive editions of ubiquitous tech products due to marketing, brand tribalism and product design cycles is quite the same as paying dividends toward your eternal afterlife.

athiests go through the bother of defining what constitutes an objecty of faith, then refuting it's existence.

This is something a theist would assume of an atheist. Unless they were previously theistic, atheists don't spend brainpower conceptualizing something they don't believe exists unless, again, they're doing it wrong. God is at best, a nebulous, abstract figure, half remembered from illustrations and popular culture.

---

I think...think the point Null is trying to make is that with all the information and access the modern world has to offer, the fact that one could be undecided on a personal belief that is ultimately a yes-or-no question set the precedent for labeling a lack of a defined opinion or principle as a valid 'position'. If agnosticism is to be undecided on the fundamental, instinctive question of theism, then logically, agnosticism is the absence of an answer and therefore, a meaningless term. Implicitly, to be theistic or atheistic impacts one's worldview with a set of values or considerations, even if its very small. The agnostic, being in neither camp, lacks that foundation.

And so it follows that if the failure to commit either way to a simple principle or belief is considered a valid school of thought, then logically it's valid to avoid commitment to any form of personal belief or identity. And now, everybody gets to define everything on their own terms rather than face the harsh reality of self-discovery.

If that is what he meant, then I also don't fully agree. Maybe 'agonistic' shouldn't be treated as it's own denomination, and maybe people should have the guts to make a stand on something, but blaming it as the gateway for modern stupidity is a bit weird. It's not the same thing as insisting you're an exotic gender or sexuality that you made up for attention. For one thing, a deity is a personal conception, with whom one has a personal and spiritual connection. In practical terms, it is a mental construct created from a huge variety of factors and influences in one's life. People find and lose religion all the time because one's deity is a component of themselves - as is the rejection of one or the lack of desire to choose either way. 'Finding God' is a punch line, but the fact that people do it at all means it isn't just intellectual fecklessness. Making a decision either way can sometimes require a traumatic life event or radical change in perspective. There are also subsets of theistic agnostic, such as believing that God exists, but is inherently unknowable. The Hindu creation mantra is literally roundabout nonsense because despite having a pantheon, they encouraged agnostic thinking within their own religion, because it was up to every Hindu's personal interpretation. Skepticism is a fundamental component of religious understanding and interpration, and is what separates a healthy religious journey from joining a cult.

 

[Turtle Dreamer]

I'm autistic agnostic but have recently considered checking out a local Buddhist temple. Too faggy?

 

[Lurker]

PICK A SIDE, PUSSIES

 

[Stan]

Hmm... tough choice. Believing in God, I'd want to try and convince them too. But forcibly converting agnostics isn't a reputable way to spread the Word. It's coercive and imperialistic, so I have to vote "No".

 

[AnimeGirlConnoisseur]

Well, as people have said before on this thread, being agnostic is a little bit more than just being unsure about the existence of God. I think that some of them don't believe in God, but don't want to be labeled as atheists (not because of Christian/Muslim oppression, but simply because atheists are fucking insufferable) and some of them are just apathetic about the whole thing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see a lot of parallels between this and politics. Half of the US doesn't vote in elections. Indecision and apathy probably have something to do with this. We don't celebrate these people, but we don't force them to choose a side either. Nobody goes around and proudly announces that they don't know what policies this country should pursue or that they don't care what happens to this country. Maybe it should be the same way with agnostics.

 

[FATTESTCUNT 2.0]

Being an agnostic means that you believe it's not possible for any person to know for sure if a god exists or not.

It's not some fence-sitting position between atheism and theism/deism.

There are agnostic theists, although that position is quite rare. The vast majority of atheists are agnostic, and very few claim that it's possible to know for sure that no god exists.

I'm an agnostic atheist because there's clearly zero evidence for the existence of any god, but I don't think anyone can know for certain whether one exists or not. It's not a fence-sitting position or me having doubts, cos I would say the exact same thing about dragons, leprechauns, fairies etc. Nobody can know with 100% certainty that those things don't exist somewhere, but that's not a reason for me to believe in them.

 

[Duke Nukem]

I don't give a fuck whether or not God exists. It's not a question that anyone can answer Yes or No to, and be able to back up with evidence.

 

[Hyro]

Saying you're not religious but can't make the knowledge claim that you actually 100% know a god doesn't exist is a completely valid and intellectually honest position. Yes it's pretty much atheism, it's just a more intellectually honest and less arrogant claim than the atheists that claim they know one doesn't exist and you just cease to exist after you die despite never having died and thus having no way to know that.

It's just saying they don't like to make massive broad assumptions about existence, because they have no way of really proving that.

 

[Secret Messages]

Idk I just don't think about religion and maybe that's a copout but it feels arrogant to pick a side in a matter you haven't given much thought to. Not gonna tag him back in but didn't null once solicit sales pitches for religions via email on stream because he was undecided? Said he got a lot of letters from christians/catholics IIRC.

 

[A-Stump]

I'm agnostic I got tested for it after being non-verbal for most of my childhood

 

[AgendaPoster]

PICK A SIDE, PUSSIES

OK I choose Shiva, Goddess of Destruction

 

[Lurker]

OK I choose Shiva, Goddess of Destruction

go, magikarp! use splash attack!

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

A/Gnosticism is a statement of knowledge, A/Theism is a position of belief. You can be a gnostic atheist (There isn't a god and I'm positive it's true), or an agnostic theist (I think god's real, but don't ask me to defend or prove it).