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July 8, 2015 at 5:54 pm (This post was last modified: July 8, 2015 at 5:55 pm by Silver.)
Quote:BILL MOYERS: Does that mean you take your stand on the side of faith?
MARGARET ATWOOD: No, no having been raised a strict agnostic.
BILL MOYERS: A strict agnostic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Strict agnostic.
BILL MOYERS: Not an atheist?
MARGARET ATWOOD: No, atheism-
BILL MOYERS: What’s the difference?
MARGARET ATWOOD: — is a religion.
BILL MOYERS: Atheism is a religion?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You mean it’s dogmatic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely dogmatic.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Well it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven.
BILL MOYERS: There is no God.
MARGARET ATWOOD: You can’t prove that.
BILL MOYERS: So you become– what’ a strict agnostic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: A strict agnostic says, you cannot pronounce, as knowledge, anything you cannot demonstrate. In other words if you’re going to call it knowledge you have to be able to run an experiment on it that’s repeatable. You can’t run an experiment on whether God exists or not, therefore you can’t say anything about it as knowledge. You can have a belief if you want to, or if that is what grabs you, if you were called in that direction, if you have a subjective experience of that kind, that would be your belief system. You just can’t call it knowledge.
That is really disappointing. The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favorite novels, and until now, I've always thought it displayed a pretty deep intellect.
People shouldn't comment on words they don't know the definitions to, and it seems Atwood has *gone there*. Bummer.
Protip: before you go ahead and blatantly misrepresent someone's views, google it.
That and the belief that a magic invisible transcendental jewish rabbi father/son/ghost three in one solution floating about the universe is equally probable to exist and not exist is stupid.
Mostly what's going on is she's using the words atheist and agnostic in a way we don't here but many people elsewhere do:
Quote:BILL MOYERS: Does that mean you take your stand on the side of faith? MARGARET ATWOOD: No, no having been raised a strict agnostic. BILL MOYERS: A strict agnostic? MARGARET ATWOOD: Strict agnostic. BILL MOYERS: Not an atheist? MARGARET ATWOOD: No, atheism- BILL MOYERS: What's the difference? MARGARET ATWOOD: -- is a religion. BILL MOYERS: Atheism is a religion? MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely. BILL MOYERS: You mean it's dogmatic? MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely dogmatic. BILL MOYERS: How so? MARGARET ATWOOD: Well it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven. BILL MOYERS: There is no God. MARGARET ATWOOD: You can't prove that. BILL MOYERS: So you become-- what' a strict agnostic? MARGARET ATWOOD: A strict agnostic says, you cannot pronounce, as knowledge, anything you cannot demonstrate. In other words if you're going to call it knowledge you have to be able to run an experiment on it that's repeatable. You can't run an experiment on whether God exists or not, therefore you can't say anything about it as knowledge. You can have a belief if you want to, or if that is what grabs you, if you were called in that direction, if you have a subjective experience of that kind, that would be your belief system. You just can't call it knowledge.
So what she really said was that agnostic atheism (which she's calling agnostic) is not a religion but gnostic atheism (which she's calling atheism) is because it requires faith in the lack of a god. The funny thing is she calls her self a "strict agnostic" by which she means no one can know whether there is a god or not because it's an untestable claim.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
July 8, 2015 at 6:40 pm (This post was last modified: July 8, 2015 at 7:18 pm by Metis.
Edit Reason: Posted link in wrong language
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(July 8, 2015 at 6:19 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: Atheism is a religion the same way the vacant lot next door is a McDonalds.
It's certainly not a religion in the conventional sense, but I do think she is trying to raise a valid point but is using the wrong words or rather using them in an unfamiliar way to express herself.
Religion of course is a very vague term, it can encompass everything from a belief to a series of traditions or rituals totally devoid of belief in any supernatural realm. Timothy Fitzgerald's book The Ideology of Religious Studies is a very good exploration of this, one I very much recommend.
We're used in the west to Religion referring specifically to belief in a deity, but elsewhere especially in the far east it can mean so much more, even just a world view as in the case of Modern Daoism or Confucianism.
Of course there is no solid "atheist code of practice" like there is a list of "thou shall nots" in the Qu'ran, but many Atheists do tend to lean far more strongly to liberal and libertarian views than mainstream society. That coupled with a strong conviction that God does not exist might be worthy of the term.
Socialism is often described as a religious system in Religious Studies departments because it is an all encompassing world view, indeed several leading scholars including the founder of the discipline itself Ninian Smart devoted several works to justifying why the USSR could be described as a theocracy.
We're too used to religion specifically meaning Abrahamic religion, because when we put the Brights next to an Eastern New Religious movement like Happy Science in Japan (yes this is a genuine religion that claims 12 million membership, which is likely to be inflated but not entirely negligible, and has its own political party http://en.hr-party.jp/) such a comparison might not be so far fetched.
Atheists may generally not have the centralization of the Happiness Realization Party, but like the Confucians who are perhaps even less centralized (they have no "Bright" movement for instance) they do hold very similar opinions on many issues, especially within the realm of morality and social issues.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
Quote:BILL MOYERS: Does that mean you take your stand on the side of faith?
MARGARET ATWOOD: No, no having been raised a strict agnostic.
BILL MOYERS: A strict agnostic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Strict agnostic.
BILL MOYERS: Not an atheist?
MARGARET ATWOOD: No, atheism-
BILL MOYERS: What’s the difference?
MARGARET ATWOOD: — is a religion.
BILL MOYERS: Atheism is a religion?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You mean it’s dogmatic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Absolutely dogmatic.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Well it makes an absolute stand about something that cannot be proven.
BILL MOYERS: There is no God.
MARGARET ATWOOD: You can’t prove that.
BILL MOYERS: So you become– what’ a strict agnostic?
MARGARET ATWOOD: A strict agnostic says, you cannot pronounce, as knowledge, anything you cannot demonstrate. In other words if you’re going to call it knowledge you have to be able to run an experiment on it that’s repeatable. You can’t run an experiment on whether God exists or not, therefore you can’t say anything about it as knowledge. You can have a belief if you want to, or if that is what grabs you, if you were called in that direction, if you have a subjective experience of that kind, that would be your belief system. You just can’t call it knowledge.
