RE: Neil Degrass Tyson is Agnostic
September 4, 2013 at 8:12 pm
(This post was last modified: September 4, 2013 at 8:18 pm by bennyboy.)
Nah, this stuff about "lacking a coherent belief in the existence of a God makes you an atheist" is BS. Many people have some religious beliefs, but they aren't very strong, very relevant, or very important to them. So if you ask them if God is real, they'll say, "Hmmmm. . . maybe there's something out there. I'm not really sure, but it wouldn't surprise me." Describing those people as atheist isn't really an accurate statement of their position as THEY see it; it's semantic bullying. The fact is that they are trying to balance ideas of belief and non-belief, and cannot resolve that balance to a single conclusion.
I've heard many definitions, both religious and philosophical, for God. Some of them, like "God is the sum total of all experience in the universe" are strangely definitional but necessarily real. Others, like "God is an old man sitting in the sky," are pretty obviously false. So the question itself isn't coherent.
It's like asking "Do you believe X exists?" and insisting that everyone is an-X-ist because they are unable to form a positive belief in X. That's not how I choose to deal with the semantics-- I choose to say, "The status of my belief is unknown, because I can't process this incoherent question. For some values of X, I might believe, and for some, I might not. Explain exactly what you mean when you say X, and I'll state my belief state."
Still not with me on this? Fine. Do you believe that boobledyboo exists?
Boobledyboo =
I've heard many definitions, both religious and philosophical, for God. Some of them, like "God is the sum total of all experience in the universe" are strangely definitional but necessarily real. Others, like "God is an old man sitting in the sky," are pretty obviously false. So the question itself isn't coherent.
It's like asking "Do you believe X exists?" and insisting that everyone is an-X-ist because they are unable to form a positive belief in X. That's not how I choose to deal with the semantics-- I choose to say, "The status of my belief is unknown, because I can't process this incoherent question. For some values of X, I might believe, and for some, I might not. Explain exactly what you mean when you say X, and I'll state my belief state."
Still not with me on this? Fine. Do you believe that boobledyboo exists?
Boobledyboo =
