Reasons I'm agnostic

[maestroanth]

F

[Ihateyoumike]

I'm sorry I couldn't find the introduction page.

Start a new post here if you'd like to introduce yourself.  

[maestroanth]

F

[Lilbeth]

It is nice to think something about us continues...I take comfort in knowing many stars we are seeing now, no longer exist.......Now, if we can derive things about our own lives from simple truths such as this.....maybe something does continue.......I want to be the optimist here....I know energy is forever....just changes all of the time.....However....a god, so to speak....NO....I don't believe in that.......nor do I really want to.

[PipeBox]

How can you simply say there is nothing outside our 5 senses?

Plenty is outside our 5 senses, but we can use various instruments to observe these things, or at least their effects.  Anything with no apparent effect on the universe shouldn't be assumed, but rather, we should see the effect and then try to find its cause.

Plus, if in the end we are just dust in the ground (which inevitably the whole human species as well on this planet), morality is simply impotent.  As an animal I have many so called "evil" pleasures.  Do you think simply law would stop me?

Does it?  I know where my desires are greater than my desire to uphold the law, I break it.  It is this way for everyone, and the point at which they're willing to break any given law depends greatly on how much stock they put into it.  Copyright laws?  I don't put too much stock into those.  Blue laws that prevent buying liquor on Sunday?  Yeah, right.  Legislation against blasphemy?  I'll tell the religions of the world to blow it out their arse.  Oh, and morality is very clearly subjective.  The good thing is, most of us share fundamental aspects of it, and those who don't share those aspects with us will fast find themselves being either exiled to prison or exiled from life.  This is not ideal, and arguably immoral, but this is how society handles those with adverse morality or none to speak of, and it conveniently explains why we don't see many folks like this.  They're eventually weeded out of the genepool if their problem was genetic, or if it was a byproduct of experience or environment, then they're still isolated.  

If all there is to life is fulfillment of bodily pleasures, I might as well get out all those good and evil pleasures (even if it shortens my life) and go out with a bang!  It's the whole idea of a spirit or will that keeps me from commiting evil bodily pleasures (I feel that is innate because I was raised in an abusive home until I was eight, and after still had it hard, but even witnessing this as a child, I knew it was wrong).

Do whatever you feel is right.  Indeed, you will anyway if no one physically restricts you.  You don't break laws in general because you value them in some capacity, and your desire not to break them outweighs your desire to ignore them.  You don't act in "evil" fashion because of just that: you consider it evil.  Tell me what you would honestly do differently if you lost your spirituality.  Would you rape, murder, torture, and steal?  I find it hard to believe you would.  In fact, I'd guess that you installed the idea of these being absolutely wrong into your spirituality to give you further reason to go nowhere near them.  After all, who adopts a spirituality that is completely averse to their morality?  No, it seems one rises from the other.  Out of empathy, we can see what is wrong.  Stealing isn't wrong because we're told by some etheric force not to do it.  Neither is rape.  These things are wrong because they violate your fellows, and empathy, if we abide by the insight it provides us, tells us this.

I think it's foolish to practically dictate something doesn't exist (God, afterlife, another reality that exists beyond we can experience with our 5 senses); as well as stating something does without experience or proof.  Science is constantly changing and what we know because we are becoming more consistently aware as well.

I'm an agnostic atheist.  The things you've brought up might exist, but we've no clear evidence that they do, but we certainly have a desire for them to be true which can lead us to believe in them wholesale just because they haven't been falsified (and indeed, cannot be).

Who knows, maybe in the future scientists can and will create Flying Spaghetti Monsters, unicorns, etc...or maybe even find evidence of another plane of existence.

Maybe.  And maybe the unicorns are already out there.  You and I can't say it's not true.  But I will not believe it is.

Remember I only define god as the uncaused cause that started the universe (a nebulous type definition), or as a being or place that we can't experience with our limited senses (thus view on reality) or any instruments.  Maybe those limits on our senses do lift when one passes away and what we experience is a type of greater ominpotency in death?  Who knows?

Indeed, who knows.  But I know that we will die, and I have not seen any evidence of a hereafter, so why would I assume one?  Maybe you do not assume one, but then what does it matter?  If we're going to become greater than we ever imagined after we die, you can tell me "See?  Told ya you didn't know," and I'll reply "Oh. But I didn't.  Still, SWEET (assuming it rocks)."

My gripe is that we have no basis for discussing these things, especially since you've put them in a non-falsifiable niche.  Discussions on it are about as useful as my talking to you about Cowboy Land, which is a universe external to God, and indeed created him.  God was conceived of by a cowboy, you see, and in Cowboy Land, conceptions may conceive, themselves.  And so God created us and gave us spirituality and engineered an afterlife for us, all in such a way that none of it was readily detectable.  And he made us to die, so that he would eventually be able to ask us how awesome the universe he designed from scratch was, and then he would let us know that he was the conception of a cowboy, and a temporary one at that.  And in the next moment, we would all cease from being.  The cowboy then would wonder what was for lunch, and lunch in some etheric form yet undefined might envision its own universe, completely unlike our own and beyond our fathoming.  Yeah, this is why we don't discuss the unknowable.  You are very right to tell us there are some things we don't know, possibly some things we can't, but all it is beyond that is speculation.  Speculate whatever you like, but I ask you be aware that the likelihood of it reflecting reality, when based soley on your desires, is slim to none.

We will continue to learn about this universe.  The home of agnostics (and I say this as one) is in ignorance, and the floorspace is getting smaller all the time.  As we unravel the mysteries of the brain and the the beginning of the universe, many visions of gods and afterlives die.  There will always be some that remain, namely those that are reasoned out in such a way as to be unfalsifiable.  But these, until demonstrated otherwise, reside in the realm of nothing more than fantasy and are encompassed by the word "maybe."

[VanReal]

Ummm....according to some biologists/pscyhologists human's are just as predictable as cats or dogs.  We just can't measure all the variables yet.  Therefore, instinct/evolution would be the all-controlling force.

That's an interesting statement, I would like to see any documentation by these scientists that supports this that is considered valid among the respective communities.  

I'm not trying to stereotype all atheists; I'm just saying if I were an 6 or 7 (probably even 5) atheist.

Willpower means the opposite of an all-controlling force.

   I'm not sure what either of the above to statements mean.  Are you talking about age in the first sentence and maybe just didn't finish out the thought?  And if the second sentence is a true definition of willpower how does that support your point?

The idea that believing there is nothing beyond this life equals the thought process that we should simply go primal and do what we want and follow our instincts is interesting.  We don't all have the same instincts and we are (as Kalyssa said) trained as social beings living among and adhereing to a "social contract".  Many people do act on their basic desires and instincts in opposition of this social setting but there is nothing showing this is in direct relation to them believing they turn to dust or believing they have a potential afterlife.  If anything it simply means they are unwilling to adhere to living among other people without giving in to their basic instincts.  I don't believe that I should just run around and slit peoples throats because I'll be dust in a few years, I enjoy the here and now, the relationships I have with people, the enjoyment of living in society rather than as a recluse.  As a matter of fact if I knew I were turning to dust tomorrow I wouldn't rush out to committ acts of violation against other people, those thoughts never occur to me. I don't think the correlation exists in what you are proposing.