Gnostic Atheism? WTF?

[vorlon13]

Somewhere, out in the multiverse, is there a universe where, for example, Joseph Smith is correct about gold plates, Moroni, and blacks and native Americans turning caucasian if they believe in him enough???

[Sejanus]

Do you get your posts from here http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/ ?

[RobbyPants]

I've never met one. I'm surprised that one exists.

I've met people who claim to believe God doesn't exist, but if I talk to them long enough, I find they were just making too strong of a claim initially and they believe it's non-falsifiable.

I think if you get any atheist to talk long enough about it, they'll all admit to being agnostic about their atheism.

[ThePinsir]

I'm starting to fall toward the 7/7, gnostic atheist position. Here's why.

I think (this is my opinion!) that we can prove the non-existence of fictional characters. Say Superman. I have absolutely no reservations making the positive claim "Superman doesn't exist" and taking on a burden of proof for that statement. I can trace the origins of Superman comics, and so on.

So, I THINK, it is with Gods (especially Yahweh). We can trace the history of this fictional being back to the pantheon of the ancient Canaanites, just like tracing back to the earliest Superman comics.

Really, if I can say "Santa doesn't exist" or "faeries don't exist" or "Superman doesn't exist" - then why the hell can't I say "God doesn't exist"??

Secondly, it is not impossible to prove a negative. If something can logically not exist, you can prove it doesn't exist. For example, I can make the positive claim "There is no such thing as a triangle with 5 sides". Such a thing is logically impossible. Likewise, I think I can make the claim "There is no such thing as a perfect, loving, omniscient deity who would allow people to be tortured forever and ever".

[DeistPaladin]

So, I THINK, it is with Gods (especially Yahweh). We can trace the history of this fictional being back to the pantheon of the ancient Canaanites, just like tracing back to the earliest Superman comics.

Certainly if we're specific about which god. Yahweh has too many internal contradictions to exist. The book that claims his existence is too discredited. I am a gnostic atheist with regards to Yahweh as described in the Bible.

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I've met people who claim to believe God doesn't exist, but if I talk to them long enough, I find they were just making too strong of a claim initially and they believe it's non-falsifiable.

So the claim "there is no god" is simply a reaction to living in a society saturated by beliefs in Jesus and Yahweh, the same as if we lived in a society that believed in unicorns and that our morality comes from unicorns and if you don't believe in unicorns you're a bad person and...

[ThePinsir]

Certainly if we're specific about which god. Yahweh has too many internal contradictions to exist. The book that claims his existence is too discredited. I am a gnostic atheist with regards to Yahweh as described in the Bible.

Fair enough. I guess agnosticism toward a deistic god is a logical position, but I think it's just a cop out, really.

Also, being (or claiming to be) a gnostic atheist makes for good conversation, and trolls theists, as indicated by the OP lol

[RobbyPants]

I think (this is my opinion!) that we can prove the non-existence of fictional characters. Say Superman. I have absolutely no reservations making the positive claim "Superman doesn't exist" and taking on a burden of proof for that statement. I can trace the origins of Superman comics, and so on.

Technically, you can't prove that statement (or at least, not in any practical sense). I could counter that Superman might be flying over the far side of Neptune right now, and you couldn't prove me wrong.

Now, granted, believing that Superman is doing that, let alone that he even exists is completely stupid. There's no basis for it, so it shouldn't be accepted without evidence. Still, it's not the same thing as proving he doesn't exist. Of course, the gnostic and agnostic a-Superman-ist would both live their lives as though Superman doesn't exist. This difference really is only seen during debates, and that's about it.

Secondly, it is not impossible to prove a negative. If something can logically not exist, you can prove it doesn't exist. For example, I can make the positive claim "There is no such thing as a triangle with 5 sides". Such a thing is logically impossible. Likewise, I think I can make the claim "There is no such thing as a perfect, loving, omniscient deity who would allow people to be tortured forever and ever".

Well, I'd say that you can set up the theoretical positive in a way that is very impractical to disprove. My Superman-on-the-other-side-of-Neptune example from above could theoretically be disproven, but not easily. This is why apologetics get increasingly vague in the face of skepticism.

Hell, I think some negatives are impossible to disprove. The only way to "disprove" the current Christian notion of God is to literally die and not see God or either of the afterlives we've been promised. Of course, we can't really report our findings back to the rest of the world.

Certainly if we're specific about which god. Yahweh has too many internal contradictions to exist. The book that claims his existence is too discredited. I am a gnostic atheist with regards to Yahweh as described in the Bible.

Yeah, the Bible makes many testable claims that have been proven false. Now, a Christian can start to morph their god into something sufficiently different and nonfalsifiable to make it impossible to disprove, but they also have to move away from the Bible to do so.

Bonus points for those who claim their new version of God is still totally Biblical. At least my wife, who believes in a very watered-down version of God admits that he's only based on the Bible.

So the claim "there is no god" is simply a reaction to living in a society saturated by beliefs in Jesus and Yahweh, the same as if we lived in a society that believed in unicorns and that our morality comes from unicorns and if you don't believe in unicorns you're a bad person and...

Exactly.

[Bob Kelso]

I heard someone say the other day that they were a "Gnostic Atheist." To start with, I didn't know that there was such a thing, because that is completely illogical. He went on to say that "I'm a gnostic atheist because I know for sure that there is no god." This form of belief defies all logic, and here's why: It is impossible to prove a negative. This is a well known logical principle. Therefore, you cannot be logically sure that there is no god. That would be completely absurd.

The same thing applies to belief in a god, it is currently impossible to prove. However, a complete assurance in the non-existence of a god or gods (AKA Gnostic Atheism) is more illogical than the complete assurance in the existence of a god or gods (AKA Gnostic Theism, is guess) because, while it is currently impossible to prove either of them, it will NEVER be possible to prove the non-existence of a god. There is still a chance that we will one day find proof of the existence of a higher power. There will never be proof that such a power cannot possibly exist.

So from where does this notion of Gnostic Atheism come? Is this a widely held belief? Why do people believe it at all?

Gnostic atheism and gnostic theism are in the same boat as far as I'm concerned. Atheists aren't these magical creatures who can do no wrong or be incapable of being intellectually dishonest, they're people.

[DeistPaladin]

Yeah, the Bible makes many testable claims that have been proven false. Now, a Christian can start to morph their god into something sufficiently different and nonfalsifiable to make it impossible to disprove, but they also have to move away from the Bible to do so.

More frequently, they'll morph what the Bible "really means" to do so.

I started my political activism in free-thought about 10 years ago quoting the Bible and showing how absurd it is. I can't believe I actually thought it might be an effective tactic, seeing as how I was hardly the first to do so. My whole "Skeptic Bible Study" channel on You Tube was devoted to this.

I've now grown uneasy with the topic because I familiar with the run-around that will ensue. Recently, when Bill Maher confronted Ralph Reed on Real Time with what the Bible said, I groaned and face palmed before Ralph could even respond. "Oh fuck, here we go..."

What always ensues is the same. "When the Bible says... it really means..." Fill in the specifics with working backward to the desired belief tortured obtuse interpretations based on confirmation bias, ad hoc hypothesis, claims about cultural context and translation issues (as if translation errors weren't still errors), cherry picking, and when all else fails, just shamelessly make stuff up like a fan fic author.

The dance continues as you try to pin them down on what the words written on the page actually say. Maybe you actually spend the energy to do the legwork needed to debunk their claims about cultural context or translation issues. They brush you off with psychological projection that you are reading the text in a "biased" way and that you have an "agenda" to disprove the Lord's Word (as if skepticism was an agenda and not the consistent application of critical thinking to all claims and not giving your own beliefs special protection from scrutiny).

To give you an example, they'll read Moses' command to his troops to "kill all the women that have known a man and kill all the boys but leave the virgin girls for yourselves" (paraphrased, but I'm sure you know the verse). To any normal person, this sounds like an order for genocide and sex slavery of the virgin girls. In any war crimes court, a recorded order of this nature would be damning.

But no, you see, Moses never said "have sex with the virgin girls". He just said, "keep them for yourselves". That could mean keep them as house maids. Why did they need to be virgins then? Well, they needed only the pure to be taken into their tribes and stuff or something.

And then to support your conclusion about what the passage means, you point out the rules for war, detailed in the OT, where if you take a captured woman and desire her, you must give her six months to mourn her family, after which point you may have sex with her. If she doesn't please you, you must let her go and can't sell her. To a normal person, this sounds like instructions for how to rape your sex slaves, though certain "niceties" apply, like giving her 6 months to mourn her family which you had ruthlessly slaughtered.

But no, to the Christian, the woman is courted and married. The verses say nothing about her wishes or consent regarding the "marriage". This is sexual slavery with the marriage label slapped upon it to try to sanitize it. But yet, they still think that her consent to be married to her captor is somehow implied.

It amazes me how well they can intellectually contort themselves and perform mental gymnastics to arrive at the conclusions they already made. People read what they want to read in the Bible. The god they revere is always a glorified self-image.

These debates are so frustrating. It's ironic that being around atheists is when I feel most comfortable in my deism, for I see the rationality and morality that I expect from God's Gift of Reason. Talking with Christian apologists makes me think perhaps we were lucky to get this far in the first place.

[Clueless Morgan]

Epistemically speaking, there is some non-zero chance about being wrong about everything we ever claim to know, even if that non-zero chance were 1x10^negative-trillion, so IMO anyone claiming to be a gnostic anything is overstating their claim to knowledge.