• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Richard Dawkins "The most famous..... Agnostic?"

RaptorWizard

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
5,895
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
This is what God does in my words:
The meaning of life is becoming God, the Grand Architect, the Perfect One free of all restrictions, channeling the timeless electric flow of the luminous waters of Chi, Prana, Akasha, the living Force of Creation, controlling eternally whirling ether cycles, transforming into the infinite forms of evolution, shaped by focus and strength of willpower, harmoniously orchestrating superstring symphonies, rearranging the codifications of the Akashic Records, the Luminiferous Aether, the Universal Supercomputer, the Mind of God, destroying old laws and programming new laws into the Omniversal Existential Game, humbly awakening to all motion picture perspectives of the multidimensional relativistic reality, forging and annihilating the stars, flying above and beyond the constellations, the Higher Balance of Heaven, unleashing the Divine Arcanum of the Cosmic Creator, the Ultimate Destiny.
 

Unperson

New member
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
Anyone who's read "The God Delusion" will have seen the 7-point scale of belief. Nobody can be a 1 or a 7 (completely sure either way), and everyone is resigned to being 2-6, including Dawkins himself, as no one can know everything. He's always been open about his agnostic atheism, but agnostic atheism is not to be taken as a weak atheism or what have you. Our atheism (both of ours) would be a 6, and as high as human beings can have, in terms of disbelief.

This article (and the others like it) are pretty much just signs that the authors in question have not read The God Delusion, heard Richard talk, or just want to create controversy and get views. Ridiculous.
 

Unperson

New member
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
Why, because people are rational?

It's been a while since I've read the book, a couple of years at least, but the way Dawkins explained it was, we, as humans, do not know everything, and further, cannot know everything. For anyone to claim either a 1 or a 7 requires them to claim absolute knowledge. As absolute knowledge, by anything short of a god, is impossible, the claim is either exaggerated or just flat-out false.

2 is a strong theist, 6 is a strong atheist. Everyone is an agnostic something, on the Dawkins scale. You have to be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, because you must admit, if not to others, at least to yourself, that you could very well be wrong about your ideas, values, and beliefs.

In terms of the question of god, someone has to be right, of course, but no one can ever know that. You can say god speaks to you, but so will others in other religions. You can say god speaks to no one, and everyone who thinks god does is a mental case. Everyone is entitled to these ideas, but there is no assurance that they are right, just a personal supposition one way or the other.
 

Nicodemus

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
9,756
It's been a while since I've read the book, a couple of years at least, but the way Dawkins explained it was, we, as humans, do not know everything, and further, cannot know everything. For anyone to claim either a 1 or a 7 requires them to claim absolute knowledge. As absolute knowledge, by anything short of a god, is impossible, the claim is either exaggerated or just flat-out false.
Epistemologically speaking, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. However, that does not mean that people do not believe to know things with absolute certainty. Knowledge, after all, is nothing but justified belief; and what counts as justification is up to the individual. So one can also be a 1 or a 7.
 

Unperson

New member
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
Epistemologically speaking, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. However, that does not mean that people do not believe to know things with absolute certainty. Knowledge, after all, is nothing but justified belief; and what counts as justification is up to the individual. So one can also be a 1 or a 7.
I don't recall him arguing from the point of what the individual thinks is true, because yes, anyone who holds a position, especially a "strong" position, will believe themselves to be correct. Why otherwise would they hold it?

They can still be wrong. In the end it's probably a toss-up to who's right on this issue anyways, so while we have our opinions, our opinions are not a measure of reality, they are a mesure of our own realities.

I think I'm right, my friend thinks she's right, we have no way of finding out who's right, but we would both be wrong, and we'll both readily admit such. What's wrong with that? Dawkins is taking the humble point of view, as in The God Delusion: we're not all-knowing and never will be.
 

Nicodemus

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
9,756
I don't recall him arguing from the point of what the individual thinks is true, because yes, anyone who holds a position, especially a "strong" position, will believe themselves to be correct.
If he is not arguing from that point of view, the whole scale makes no sense, because if it not about degrees of belief in what is true, it is about degrees of truth, of which there are but two: 0 and 100. You said it yourself:

Anyone who's read "The God Delusion" will have seen the 7-point scale of belief.
 

Unperson

New member
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
If he is not arguing from that point of view, the whole scale makes no sense, because if it not about degrees of belief in what is true, it is about degrees of truth, of which there are but two: 0 and 100. You said it yourself:
Fair enough, but it's not my scale, it's the scale Richard Dawkins put forward.

I'll grant you your points and say in response that mine wasn't to back up his scale, necessarily, merely to explain that the position Richard Dawkins held hasn't changed over the years.

p.s. if you were expecting a debate, sorry I'm not very good at it lol.
 

Beargryllz

New member
Joined
Jun 7, 2010
Messages
2,719
MBTI Type
INTP
It's been a while since I've read the book, a couple of years at least, but the way Dawkins explained it was, we, as humans, do not know everything, and further, cannot know everything. For anyone to claim either a 1 or a 7 requires them to claim absolute knowledge. As absolute knowledge, by anything short of a god, is impossible, the claim is either exaggerated or just flat-out false.

2 is a strong theist, 6 is a strong atheist. Everyone is an agnostic something, on the Dawkins scale. You have to be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, because you must admit, if not to others, at least to yourself, that you could very well be wrong about your ideas, values, and beliefs.

In terms of the question of god, someone has to be right, of course, but no one can ever know that. You can say god speaks to you, but so will others in other religions. You can say god speaks to no one, and everyone who thinks god does is a mental case. Everyone is entitled to these ideas, but there is no assurance that they are right, just a personal supposition one way or the other.

As an agnostic atheist, I would say that Dawkins is deluded or fails at making meaningful numerical scales

If no one can be totally sure, why even have 1-7

Why not just make it a scale of 2-6?

But that is stupid, because you can absolutely be sure of yourself

Why can't a perfectly average human being believe something with great certainty? Certainty great enough to make doubt an unnecessary expenditure of our valuable time in this beautiful world
 

entropie

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
16,767
MBTI Type
entp
Enneagram
783
Everytime I read the phrase "agnostic atheist" I have to think of Madonnas virginity. I am seriously wondering thru what event in the past, my brain formed this permanent connection :/
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
Refreshed and Relaxed

Belief in God is a trance. We put aside our cognitive faculties and allow ourselves to imagine God.

Trances vary from a light trance, such as the trance of a believer who goes to church occasionally, to a deep trance, such as a believer who hallucinates Jesus as their Friend, or the Virgin Mary as their Mother. And in between there are various levels of trance.

Agnostics tend to have woken from the religious trance, but often enough they will fall prey to other trances unbeknownst to themselves.

So agnostics remain proud of having woken from one trance, only to be entranced by another.

The only cure is to learn to put ourself into a trance, take ourself to a level we desire, then wake ourselves progressively from the trance, back into our full cognitive faculties, refreshed and relaxed.
 

Munchies

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2010
Messages
468
MBTI Type
XNXP
Enneagram
OMG
Instinctual Variant
sx
Trance not the mind but mind the trance whut?
 

Unperson

New member
Joined
Mar 21, 2012
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
As an agnostic atheist, I would say that Dawkins is deluded or fails at making meaningful numerical scales

If no one can be totally sure, why even have 1-7

Why not just make it a scale of 2-6?

But that is stupid, because you can absolutely be sure of yourself

Why can't a perfectly average human being believe something with great certainty? Certainty great enough to make doubt an unnecessary expenditure of our valuable time in this beautiful world

You'd have to ask Dawkins.

I used to be in with the whole militant atheism thing until I realized just how retarded it is. I haven't even read any of the atheism books in a few years, so I'm a poor source for this stuff.

Read The God Delusion yourself if you're really curious, maybe Dawkins explains it better than I remember.
 
Top