1872: Sympathy for the Devil

[Scumhook]

Originally Posted by seamus

Agnostic just means you aren't 100% confident in your belief. Troy is an agnostic-atheist which means he doesn't believe in god but is not absolutely confident.

Originally Posted by Electric Squirrel

I don't often say I'm atheist and agnostic but that is how I would define myself. Here is why.
I call myself an atheist because I do not believe in any gods/god/higher power.
I do not believe because there is no logical reason to conceive such a thing exists.
However while there is no evidence that would make one conceive of such a thing there is no evidence to say it con not be either.
So I come to this conclusion. I can dismiss all ideas of higher powers and magic because what can be asserted with no proof can be dismissed with no proof. But the only way to know something for certain is to prove it which by the nature of the assertion I cannot do. So while there is no way I could possibly be more certain that there is no such thing as a higher power the fact I cannot disprove god means there is no logical way to say there is a 100% chance there is no higher power in the same way I cannot disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster despite the fact I can know it is a joke.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Thx for these posts. They did help, and then I thought about it some more and started going down a fucking rabbit hole

Will re-read later, and then re-read the Godless WMN thread too.

I hope God is made of pasta.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by seamus

Agnostic just means you aren't 100% confident in your belief.

i think squirrel hit on this, but Agnosticism isn't about your waffling confidence level, it's a philosophical position that you /cannot/ know. you can very well believe that a higher power exists in whatever form makes sense to you, but as an agnostic, the rationale is that we puny humans can't possibly "know" it. epistemology is a fucking rabbit hole.

i have a personal belief that using Agnosticism as an excuse to be lazy about exploring and understanding your inner belief system or making definitive statements about your truth is a cop out and lacks precision of speech.

[adrian]

I've been asked the "how would you know what's right or wrong without jesus" question.

Seriously folks, if you've read your bible or even looked at the pictures in it, you might have noticed two more people being crucified ? They were robbers. And if you flick back a few pages, you will see that the "mob" were offered a pardon for one prisoner - either jesus or barabbas. Barabbas was a murderer.

Plainly the Romans had somehow managed to come up with a system founded on morality and exercised in law without any need of christianity.

And quite frankly if you need a god to tell you not to rob and kill, then you are a bit of a cunt.

[adrian]

Stewart Lee on creationism and Richard Dawkins. - YouTube
Only 49 seconds

[adrian]

Agnostics are pretty much lost causes. A muslim, jew or christian has already denied the existence of a hundred other gods - they are just one more god away from reality.

[Scumhook]

Originally Posted by adrian

And quite frankly if you need a god to tell you not to rob and kill, then you are a bit of a cunt.

[OLDPPL]

Originally Posted by John Galt

Surveys show that 89.3% of people who say "libertarians are ..." are using the OSM definition of libertarian, and have no idea what they're talking about..

Agreed. All the Libertarians I know don't give a fuck who you marry or who you pray to. They just want to be left alone.

Majority of my friends are radical left to democrat liberal and I love em but they have no idea where the original tea party came from , nor what libertarians are about.

I get so annoyed with the mind set of 'Well it's not Obama, so it must be anti-liberal and Republican.' America is so fucking divided by party lines. How about the issues on an individual basis? How about being socially liberal and fiscally conservative??

[moeman99]

Did Troy really say that you can get arrested in Canada for telling a joke? Are you kidding me? What a moronic comment.

[Keith]

Recently two or three comics in Canada got sued and lost for the way they responded to a heckler on stage (and it wasn't anything so crazy that they said back.)

These are separate occasions, one comic at each occasion, in completely different venues.

That wouldn't happen now in America.

The flamer/libertarian thing I didn't know to comment about because to me it's so nuanced in politics I can give a fuck. Still don't know what a libertarian is, and if someone doesn't tell me in three sentences here I'll never know nor care. But I was on board with the Canadian point.

[BrianAlt]

A Libertarian is supposed to be one that believes in a person's liberty to live their life the way they want to. However, in my opinion, too many of the party leaders also want to dictate some of those liberties (a contradiction). Most individuals (non-politicians) just want true liberty, but if they get it, that often infringes on someone else's liberties (another contradiction).