(no subject)

[jack]

One of the thoughts about different aspects of atheist belief is that the natural one is not believing "God exists", but some people do believe something like "If He does exist, He's a bastard."

But it occurred to me, that's basically the point of the Northern Lights trilogy. The central message is "God doesn't exist because he's a bastard". If that sounds confusing, well, exactly, that's why the message the books send seems to be confusing :)

It's not a wrong way to go about it. Narnia could be described as partly carrying the message "God *does* exist because he's nice," and does it very well indeed. Using God's metaphorical absence as a metaphor for his literal absence is a good metaphor -- I can see if the books had clicked for me more, it might be quite exciting, if instead of having no unifying message, atheism was a crusade against an uncaring God and a malicious power-hungry arch-angel. Yay!

For that matter, in some sense, it's a real argument: if you say "If God were running the world, I don't like it," you might get from there to "then He isn't," via "if he's not doing it right, he's not God or not there".

But Pullman's presentation didn't really work for me, and so all the flaws in the presentation continued to bother me.

Contrariwise, sometimes people do over-seize on the second aspect of atheism, especially if they're used to their religion being the default and assume an atheist *is* not someone factually thinking God doesn't exist, but someone morally choosing not to follow Him.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No, thank you for being clear. I was working it out as I went along, and phrasing in an amusing way. It's not a core or necessary atheist belief, but I think it's *an* aspect that applies to some people in some ways, namely:

* Some atheists say, "Even if God does exist as described [either monotheistic or polytheistic Gods], I don't agree with that, I don't think that makes him good or gives him moral authority, I'm not following". (FWIW, I wouldn't go that far, but many aspects of God and gods as described do give me problems, it's not as simple as, I don't think God doesn't exist, if he did, it would all be ok.)

* Some atheists say much the same thing, but rather than arguing about theoretical moral absolutes say "People are starving, my grandparents died, if there's any sort of God at all, he sucks." (That's not a whole argument, there's lots of reason there *can* be God, but still suffering.)

* Almost no-one says "There *is* a God, but I don't like him," though that's what Lord Asrael says. Which isn't atheist, literally, although many religious people get the ideas confused.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Almost no-one says "There *is* a God, but I don't like him"

Me and a lot of my friends (both who have ended up atheist and have ended up Christian) seem to wibble through that stage. I think it's an uncomfortable position to be in, which is maybe why it doesn't get talked about a lot, but I would have thought it was a very common one.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I wonder if this is a case where the lack of a name for something makes it less visible.

I fall into a related viewpoint (I don't see any evidence that there is a god, but if there is I don't think he deserves worship), and I can't figure out the appropriate terminology. Agnostic-satanist? Pullmanist?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think atheist should do fine :) I think that is a subset of atheist, and most of the time you probably don't need to specify the distinction :)

I like your suggested terms though, we're fast expanding on Dawkins-atheist to many other potentially troubling classifications :)

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

maybe, although I still get in a mighty tangle just figuring out whether to call myself atheist or agnostic

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've got a long explanation of my views on that somewhere, but if you can accurately describe what you think, I've got bored of the question of where the words do and should apply.

I don't see any evidence that there is a god

I'd describe that as atheist, but might say agnostic if you though it plausible that some might turn up, but if you merely think it's theoretically possible that evidence would turn up, that's not enough to make you agnostic.

However, other people think of the terms differently (and sometimes think there's some great truth in the way they do). Some people would say you're only atheist if you think it's *certain* or *proved* that there's no God. Or that you're only agnostic if you think God is at least as likely and that possibility influences your life.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

yeah, I agree it gets tedious. I quite like Pullman's own formulation, actually:

Now, it's possible to describe my own beliefs for example, as being both atheist and agnostic, depending on where I put the camera. If I look at the total amount of things I know, and compare it with the things I don't know, the things I know; the tiniest possible, little remote, little speck of light in the middle of a great, vast encircling darkness; which is everything I don't know. And in all the things I don't know, there may be a God. There may be a God out there, but I don't know. However, when you move the camera, when you come in a bit closer and get closer to this little speck of light, so it gets bigger and bigger, and finally sort of spreads out beyond the edges of the vision and fills everything you can see.. Here, I can see no evidence whatever for God. So on this level, I'm an atheist; further out, I'm an agnostic; depends on where you're standing.

...and there I'll leave it, since I don't think either of us want to run through a big thread on terminology.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds like quite a good description, thanks.

I do want to examine the terminology at some point, but hope to have something that settles the matter, rather than inviting disagreement from people who would prefer different terms, and don't want to try to start in a comment thread.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

You can be both depending on what you mean by the words.

I identify as a weak atheist (in general, verging to strong about the Christian god in particular) and a weak agnostic.

There are endless debates about what the words mean (often by people trying to score points in internet arguments), but I find those two terms helpful in explaining the position that I hold, so I'm happy to use them.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You can be both depending on what you mean by the words.

Of course. The link is a very good description, and I think I'd agree with what you belief (at a guess) but if so disagree with the way it's described. This is the meat of the post I want to make about atheist and agnostic.

The thing is, in the very first sentence, there's the comment "accept as true the proposition" which is a good description, putting the assertion up front, but I think that the meaning of the terms revolves so closely around different levels of "think true" that that's insufficient.

For instance, in normal English, I would describe myself as thinking all the following are true:

* There's no-one in the kitchen here
* There are no teapots on pluto
* Roman Empire used to exist
* Africa exists
* The sky often has a blue colour
* 2+2=4

However, there's a definite spectrum. I could be proved false on almost all of those, with different levels of conceivability. There could perfectly well be someone hiding in a cupboard in the kitchen. I just don't expect it, assume there isn't and proceed as if it were true. If asked, I'd give an probability of some sort, probably about 99%, but be perfectly willing to be corrected on this point.

Several of the others I *could* be wrong about, but it seems very unlikely.

The last is (with appropriate definitions) essentially a tautology -- I could have misunderstood something so tragically it's false, but that would shake nearly everything I believe.

Where on that scale do I put the non-existence of God? I don't think it being a belief in absence makes it any less a belief, that you might be certain of, but in theory proved wrong about, but describing it that way acknowledges that I see the absence as the default position, and in the absence of evidence, am as confident of the absence as I am of anything else short of things I've a personal experience of or consider tautologies.

So AFAICT I'm unable to describe my position between atheist and agnosticism without trying to explain these levels of belief, though would like to see consistent explanation of "strong" and "weak" atheist in these terms, that I could then just identify as and link to :)

[atreic.livejournal.com]

It's almost about shifting the emphasis of the question though
- atheist / deist are definitions around the question of Does God exist?" whereas people who believe "if God exists, he's evil" don't care* whether God exists, because their behaviour is going to be pretty much the same whether they are in a universe with no god, or a universe with a bad god, and they've made their primary decision that they don't live in a universe with a god they have to follow.

So instead of "Does God Exist" being the dividing question, the question is "Should I follow God?" maybe...

*Well, maybe they care a little bit, but it's not The Point

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes. I think I was struggling towards something like:

* What you say, there, and explain well, that there's two separate questions, is the obvious and mostly correct explanation
* But there's something more going on, the questions are linked in some way, both in real life, and in Pullman.

Maybe :)

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

For some values of satanist, it clearly is a satanist viewpoint. It depends to what extent one believes that Lucifer's rebellion was about free will as opposed to the various other motives ascribed to him.

Liberal-satanist sounds like an ideology somebody has made up for the purposes of jokes, though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think some people would class any anti-God position as Satanist, and to the extent that Lucifer was saying what oedipamaas49 said, I suppose it's applicable, but I'd avoid it :) It sounds (a) too confusing, playing into misconceptions of some Christians that being against God = being pro evil and (b) the misconceptions of people who do believe that, who seem to mostly be at the level of "REBELLION ROCKS! GO SATAN! ROOOOOOOCK AND ROLLLLLL!" :)

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

(Actually, in my case it's more of an ongoing "if God is what all-these-people-over-here say it is, then I don't like it, and I don't want to be associated with them".)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! Again, very well put. I could see the idea had an emotional resonance somewhere, but not if anyone would actually describe themselves as subscribing to it.

Without getting too personal, I think I get the idea, it would be probably hard to describe if it's not a specific pigeon-hole, and perhaps even not stable. Um, *thinks*. The example in my mind is someone who starts as Christian/theist, and then loses a love for God and thinks His world sucks, and then, after a while, decides they don't believe in God at all any more.

But that's a complete guess, can you suggest corrections/additions to that?

Um, I think it may be very related to the sort of thing I was trying to reach for in my post -- the blurring between *wanting* to believe something and *believing* something, which I mention to woodpijn below...

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Some atheists say, "Even if God does exist as described [either monotheistic or polytheistic Gods], I don't agree with that, I don't think that makes him good or gives him moral authority, I'm not following"
Yeah. A lot of atheists (like me) say "If God does exist then we know he is not good and so therefore should be opposed (or at least not followed)".

I've never heard of anyone saying "God if he exists would be evil therefore he doesn't exist" unless they're playing philosophical games with the term 'god'.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a logical argument (except via the problem of evil) but rather that not *wanting* to believe in god seems related to *not* believing in god.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

You've really enountered atheists who don't believe in God because they don't *want* to believe in God? Wow.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The internet is full of stupid people of all colours and stripes.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't described it in the best way, but yes, and as a normal, common phenomenon, not a weird philosophical conception.

Think of someone who had an emotional shock -- a relative killed in a car accident which destroys your previous faith in God, or becoming religious after a religion helped you cope after. I think neither of those has a real place in a logical argument[1] but certainly influence people to convert in several directions.

[1] The nearest would be not thinking things like that happened to people like you, and it happening making you realise it does. That's possible but not really what's going on imho.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Conversion I think is different. I don't really want to talk about conversion.

When people deconvert because of bad stuff, I think what happening is that these people are raised in nice fluffy CofE households, and so vaguely believe in a nice fluffy god. Then they discover the world is full of Very Bad Things, get distressed, and realise that their nice fluffy god either isn't doing anything, doesn't exist, or isn't really very fluffy after all.

As most of these people did not have a strong faith anyway (just a weak comforting fluffy faith) it goes away when they discover it appears to be incompatible with reality.

It is a logical conclusion for them to draw though. The emotions indicate how upset they are, but it's not that they reject God because of their emotions, it's that the God they thought existed can't realy exist because of All The Bad Stuff.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want to dwell on it, but most people who haven't converted, it's hard to separate what they say from them just being what they always have been.

That's a great description and I know what you mean, but what about the other direction? I think someone who *wants* to believe in God is more likly to find more sympathy with other reasons/arguments to do so than someone who doesn't, and vice versa. So that's not the end of the story, but I think how you feel about it, especially on such hard-to-prove questions definitely has an effect -- on how you believe and certainly how you read the books :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

People can be influenced either way, and make illogical decisions on the basis of that influence. I think it is more common to believe because you want to believe, because there are possible pay offs if you believe in God.

There are pay offs (allowed to have sex before marriage, etc) for not believing in the god of the Evangelical Christians too, but if you want the benefits of religion but don't like that God you don't have to be an atheist, there are lots of fluffy religions you can side step in to, or fluffier versions (such as most of the CofE) you can step down / up in to.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Also, see gareth_rees' latest post. In theory, I wish everyone decided if there was a God based on factual observation. However, how people feel definitely *does* influence that, and I think it's more complicated than that they believe something illogical on the basis of emotional influences. Although I'm afraid I find it difficult to explain in what way.