Dear blog readers,
How do I prevent Victor from putting his dumb motocross, NASCAR and surfing movies at the top of our Netflix queue so that my movies never move up, without doing something underhanded and vengeful like changing the password to our account?
-Kelly
P.S. I love you, baby!
Scott comments:
How does it work for you, Kelly? The more people that have believed something for more time, the more chance it has of being true? So your version of Pascal’s Wager should be to become a faithful member of whatever religion currently holds that title, and, should the demographics shift enough during your lifetime to make the title-holder switch, you should too?
How about Scientology? Many, many more people believe in all that bullshit than actually believe in the FSM. (Only the mentally ill actually believe in the FSM, right?) By your reasoning, that means that Scientology is ten thousand times more likely to be true? Xenu and all?
Please.
See, this is why I so rarely start these sorts of debates. People get huffy, and it’s all very stressful. I’m only going to write about nice things, like berries and dogs (nice dogs, anyway), from now on. :-)
Scott, I don’t really think of it as a sliding scale. I’m not talking about particulars here, or about the nuances of individual religions. I’m just talking about the existence of God, just one big question, a question whose significance has had way more impact on the way we are today than the FSM or Scientology.
I’m not talking about *believing* in God, either, and I’m clearly not advising people to join any religions. I think you are misapplying my reasoning by implying this. I’m talking about suspending disbelief. It’s not a wager: I’m not trying to hedge my bets and I don’t advise others to do so either. I’m just leaving the door open a little wider for God than for the FSM.
I guess the reason why I resist lumping God in with the FSM is because I think that the mindset of viewing a belief in God as a fanciful, addlepated notion has led a lot of atheists to be, in my view, excessively scornful of *all* organized religion and of all people who believe, and dismissive of the good that a belief in God can provide for people. Of course I’m aware of the fact that many unjust deeds have been done in the name of organized religion, but I don’t think these misdeeds merit blanket condemnation of belief in God. Nor do I think that all believers deserve to be lumped with people who believe things that are manifestly contradicted by empirical evidence, or who believe things that justify evil deeds.
Rodney comments:
Ok, wait a minute here. The problem is that you have glossed over the meat of the issue in blithely referring to “the sheer frivolity of comparing the question of the existence of God to that of unicorns and FSMs.” To some of us, (me anyway)there is nothing frivolous about that. I see no reason to grant Jahweh any higher credibility than unicorns or FSMs, and that’s precisely why I’m uncomfortable identifying as an agnostic. When you say you are an agnostic, people regularly interpret that as meaning you hold open the door for *maybe* beleiving in GOD. But noone thinks you’re saying you *maybe* believe in unicorns. Jahweh get an implied priority.
Oh, Rodney. So young, so impetuous. Never fear. I fully intended to return to the unicorn/FSM/God question: I was leaving it aside “for the moment” so as to keep my opening salvo short and to the point. Arguing by dismissal is a cheap tactic and I certainly would never treat my esteemed adversaries with such disrespect! I am, in fact, shocked that you would think such a thing. But, your objection does afford me a convenient segue into the topic.
So your stance, if I understand it correctly, is that yes, indeed, the likelihoods of the existences of a Judeo-Islamo-Christian God, unicorns, and Flying Spaghetti Monsters are all approximately equal. Well, see, I do think this stance is frivolous. Do you really feel that this God that we’re talking about, this God that is the basis of three religions that have profoundly shaped western civilization for around 3,000 years, that this God can be dismissed in the same breath as an intellectual prop fabricated by some graduate student? Now, I’m not saying that 3,000 years of backstory means that you must, lemming-like, go along with 89% of the rest of the population of this country and *believe* in God. But, surely you must recognize the difference here between these two hypotheses?
I guess what I’m saying is that, out of respect for the rather large majority of thinking, reasoning, good human beings who believe, I’m willing to go to greater lengths to keep my mind open about the existence of a personal God than that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I think the collective belief of millions adds up to evidence that I’m willing to consider despite the fact that it’s not empirical.
Update: Ugh… now that I’m looking back at this post I see that I completely talked around your point in my eagerness to get in that stuff about why I think parallels between the FSM and God are frivolous. Sorry. I think you and Jim make similar points about not wanting to be called agnostics because you feel the word incorrectly identifies you. I think I address that point somewhat more directly below.
And Jim comments:
I think that your lampooning (and distrust) of atheists (like me…that’s right, i’m not afraid of the label) is a bit unfair. Would you label yourself an evolutionist (assuming that you’re comfortable with the evidence for biological evolution of the Darwinian sort), even though there are alternative (albeit rather unlikely) explanations for how all of this living stuff came about? For similar reasoning, I am more comfortable with the label ‘atheist’ than ‘agnostic’. To me, calling myself an atheist means that i find the likelihood of the existence of a personal god so small that i’m not going to invest much of my short time here on this planet in seeking him/her/it out or living my life as if he/she/it existed. I would call myself an agnostic only if I truly were on the fence…that is if i found the likelihood great enough to waste much of my time on it. I guess this all really stems from spending so much time on biology/probability theory/statistics where nothing is certain, but where one can still feel reasonably confident of certain things given the weight of evidence…
I see two different points to address here; the first is a semantic one. You call yourself an atheist, as I understand it, because you wish to differentiate yourself from fence-sitting agnostics who allow a larger probability of God’s existence than you are willing to concede. This I understand. But as I see it, you’ve made an implied choice here, to be lumped with those atheists who allow no possibility of God’s existence. I feel that the latter stance is, in fact, less rational than the stance of allowing a larger margin of doubt about God’s existence, and so, getting back to the point of my original post, I sometimes wonder why folks such as yourself choose to affiliate with people who arbitrarily discount one hypothesis without sufficient evidence to do so.
The second is your argument by analogy with the evolution/intelligent design debate. I can, and do, feel reasonably confident that alternative hypotheses to evolution are false, because there is overwhelming observable evidence in support of evolutionary hypotheses. But, I don’t think that the analogy holds perfectly when transferred to the question of the existence of God, because there is no concomitant overwhelming physical evidence as to the non-existence of God. Therefore, I’m uncomfortable calling myself an atheist, even of the type that you define.
So some atheists will respond to the argument that they’re arbitrarily rejecting one hypothesis of many by allowing a slight degree of possibility that God exists. They’ll say that they’re willing to give the God hypothesis equal weight to, say, the notion of the existence of unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster hypothesis. But they’re unwilling to be called agnostics, even though they admit that the hypothesis that God doesn’t exist is impossible to definitively disprove.
Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the sheer frivolity of comparing the question of the existence of God to that of unicorns and FSMs. I wonder, why does the label “agnostic” carry such a stigma with atheists? Some people object to being called agnostic because they don’t want to seem wishy-washy. Agnostics are fence sitters. You’re either with us or against us. Democrat or Republican! No room for a third party here. So does that mean it’s better to make confident pronouncements about questions whose answers you really just don’t know? If that is the case, the next time I ask an atheist for directions I will take the answer with a grain of salt.
How come we call animals girls and boys instead of men and women, even when they are full-grown?
“Nice dog. Is it a man or a woman?”
“Oh, he’s a man. C’mere, Arty! Good man! What a good man!”
It’s time to stop patronizing our differently-specied friends!