My form of atheism is that any question about “god” is not well-formed because doesn’t define what the word means sufficiently for me to even understand the question let alone answer it. This is not about a perfect understanding – but rather the willingness to accept “don’t know” as an operational answer. Can’t know is more subtle because it can mean not amenable to further understanding. But it can’t also mean not being a well-formed question as in “why did the chicken cross the road” which is inherently ambiguous without a context.
BTW, I use “theist” to refer to a belief in an anthropomorphic deity and deists who see the universe as a clockwork with everything fitting into place. The latter sometimes being consider atheists. From: Silklist <silklist-bounces+silklist=bobf.frankston....@lists.digeratus.in> On Behalf Of Ameya Nagarajan via Silklist Sent: Monday, January 15, 2024 22:50 To: Intelligent conversation <silklist@lists.digeratus.in> Cc: Ameya Nagarajan <am...@alumni.ie.edu> Subject: Re: [Silk] A religion for atheists Love that framing Tomasz Cordially, Ameya Nagarajan (she/her) <http://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyann> On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 at 06:17, Tomasz Rola via Silklist < <mailto:silklist@lists.digeratus.in> j> wrote: On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 10:19:58AM -0500, Bob Frankston via Silklist wrote: [...] > > The word “supernatural” when defined as “(of a manifestation or > event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or > the laws of nature” is interesting. In mathematics there is the I am of habit to strongly distinguish between the two abovementioned things. Two hundred years ago, radio transmission would have been beyond scientific understanding (at the time) but not beyond laws of nature. Thus to qualify what is supernatural - i.e., belonging to some hypothetical plane "external to nature" - one needs to have perfect knowledge of nature and its laws. We are not there yet. We barely cover some part of 5% of what the Universe is. By current understanding, the rest is Dark Matter and Dark Energy, about which we know close to nothing. I do not think there was ever a laboratory experiment which inquiried any of the two D-things, albeit of course they are probably present in every lab of ours. There are, of course, plenty of people who would like to think that we are almost there, just fill in some gaps, neutrino this, quark that. As of "religion for atheists", me being a simpleton, I once defined (for my own use) religious thinking as "making claims, especially about God, which cannot be proved in any way". Deists claim that God(s) exist, atheists claim the other way. Of those, deists seem to be more trustworthy because they openly say this claim belongs to the domain of faith. Minus some philosophers who want to rationalise their faith, sometimes going to great lengths in order to "proove" that subject of their beliefs is inevitable consequence of logic. In this light, atheists who understand how irrational their position is, are trustworthy. Those who claim to be rational (deists and antideists alike) are dangerous to various degree - some are printing brochures and giving them away on the street (Bertrand Russell wrote one, which I am yet to read, so maybe he will convince me, who knows), and some other "rationalists" are killing random folks. So, for me, there is no need for "religion for atheist" because atheists are religious already... Now, if they want to be in the presence of likeminded people, there is no need to make (surplus) religion of this. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com <mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com> ** -- Silklist mailing list Silklist@lists.digeratus.in <mailto:Silklist@lists.digeratus.in> https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
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