RE: What are your thoughts on Richard Dawkins?
March 27, 2017 at 12:26 pm
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2017 at 1:28 pm by Simon Moon.)
(March 26, 2017 at 10:26 pm)It_Was_me Wrote: I'm an agnostic not I am not atheist nor Christian, so maybe I am a little biased.
Not to pile on what others have already said, if the question is "do you currently BELIEVE that a god exists?", and you answer anything other than "yes", you are an atheist.
All that it takes to be an atheist, is to not be convinced that a god exists.
"Agnosticism" is the position that it is currently unknown if a god exists (and possibly unknowable), it is NOT some sort of fence sitting position between belief that a god exists, and disbelief. That is the colloquial definition, not the formal one.
Not only that, but it is my contention, that fence sitting between belief and disbelief is not even possible. Belief is a binary mental state. Either one accepts a premise or proposition is true, or they do not have that belief.
Most atheists are "agnostic atheists" ( the 2 positions are not mutually exclusive), even Dawkins.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
