From atheism to tentative agnosticism

[Chas]

I'm not sure this is a conversion story as such, and anyway it goes in the wrong direction. So, if anything, I am here to see if anyone can show me the error of my ways so that I can go back to atheism.

I was brought up an atheist and would have described myself as such until very recently. However, I no longer have any great confidence in the truth of atheism. This is not due to any kind of religious experience. Rather, it is entirely due to reflection on the nature of morality and reason. I now take seriously that both may presuppose a god of some sort. Not, note, a Judaeo Christian god. Just a powerful supernatural agency.

And so I am here to see if I am misguided in some way. I have no sympathies with any religious groups or beliefs - indeed, I take all religions to be just so much mumbo jumbo. And I have no time for those who believe in a god on the basis of faith.

You are likely mistaken. Since there is no evidence for the supernatural, what is it about the nature of morality that leads you to believe it necessitates something supernatural?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Whateverist]

'And it is hard - hard for me, anyway - to make sense of how such features could really exist unless a god exists. This is not to say that a god exists, just that morality - if it is to be real - requires a god.
Because I think morality is real, this raises a doubt about atheism.'

What if this sense of morality exists due to the indoctrination of what is thought to be right or wrong from a societal majority standpoint, sort of the way indoctrination plays a part in religious beliefs?

It's a little hard to be sure where your post begins, searcher. If I have it right then I agree with you. Who says morality has to have any existence apart from the role it plays in our cultures? It kind of makes it sound like a platonic ideal otherwise. Do manners and tastes have to have some independent existence? Obviously no.

[Mister Agenda]

Nothing wrong with being agnostic. I'm an agnostic atheist, myself.

People survive by having functional societies. Some arrangements of society function better than others. Some behaviors foster a more functional society and some don't. We see that other social animals enforce norms not much different from our own.

We seem to have an inherent ability to empathize with the situations of others, an awareness of reciprocity and fairness. Evolution has selected those traits because they help us function better in groups. We build on those natural tendencies with reason and tradition and codified laws.

Game theory shows that some ways of interacting are objectively better in helping us achieve our goals.

I don't see a need for nonhuman agency here. I think your understandable intuition that rules are given by rulegivers has misled you in the same way that the idea that design is given by designers has misled creationists.

Rules and design can be arrived at organically, by trial and error over long periods of time. It's an observable fact.

Doesn't mean you have to be an atheist if you don't wanna, though.

[Angrboda]

Nothing wrong with being agnostic. I'm an agnostic atheist, myself.

Agnostics are wimps. I could never love an agnostic. Fuck one, sure; but love one, no.

[Whateverist]

Nothing wrong with being agnostic. I'm an agnostic atheist, myself.

Agnostics are wimps. I could never love an agnostic. Fuck one, sure; but love one, no.

Now wait a minute. Which is it you could love, a theist or an atheist? Is it the gnostic certitude that makes them lovable? (Don't get me wrong, as an agnostic myself I am quite happy to find myself in your hypothetical fuckable category, love connection or no.)

[pocaracas]

Agnostics are wimps. I could never love an agnostic. Fuck one, sure; but love one, no.

Now wait a minute. Which is it you could love, a theist or an atheist? Is it the gnostic certitude that makes them lovable? (Don't get me wrong, as an agnostic myself I am quite happy to find myself in your hypothetical fuckable category, love connection or no.)

Isn't apo a guy?

[Mister Agenda]

Nothing wrong with being agnostic. I'm an agnostic atheist, myself.

Agnostics are wimps. I could never love an agnostic. Fuck one, sure; but love one, no.

I'll settle.

[Whateverist]

Isn't apo a guy?

I'll have to ask her.

[pocaracas]

Isn't apo a guy?

I'll have to ask her.

Let me know how it turns out!

[Simon Moon]

So, the OP fell for some sort of flawed presuppositionalism.

Meh....

Not impressed with people believing things for bad reasons.