I've never liked this taxonomy because, in my view, it conflates knowledge and certainty. You don't need to be 100% certain of something for it to be knowledge, in fact the majority of science is carried out in the fringes of that and any kind of empirical world view must accept that true, philosophical, certainty is not available to us.
England and Wales are no longer Christian nations...
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I've never liked this taxonomy because, in my view, it conflates knowledge and certainty. You don't need to be 100% certain of something for it to be knowledge, in fact the majority of science is carried out in the fringes of that and any kind of empirical world view must accept that true, philosophical, certainty is not available to us.
Indeed. Descartes nailed empirical certainty with “I think therefore I am”. The only thing we can be wholly and truly certain of is our own personal existence. Everything else comes with a degree of doubtability, no matter how minute.
So you're 100% sure this isn't just a cosmic simulation.
Descartes' argument was that we could never be 100% certain we weren't in a simulation [or in his words, "deceived by a malicious demon"], but that it didn't matter either way. We just know that we exist in a palpable reality, however you want to define "we" or "I".
Soldato
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I'm obviously delighted by this news, but this statement cracked me up.
He's obviously not doing a very good job!
He's obviously not doing a very good job!
That's absolutely correct.
And yes, it would probably be better if the graphic didn't misuse the word certain, but in fairness it's using the word in the colloquial sense, purely for visual succinctness, as it's intended to be nothing more than a shallow visual aid.
I mean, any graphic is going to lack nuance as this is a topic that would take us weeks to cover in any real depth, particularly if we're going to be going down the road of looking at epistemological definitions of knowledge, justified true beliefs and philosophy in general.
It's merely a simple representation of the positions that people hold around atheism/theism, and it's helpful in terms of visually separating the difference between having a lack of belief in something's existence, and holding a positive belief that something doesn't exist; which is something that a lot of people struggle with in my experience.
And personally, to that end at least, I think it does a decent enough job.
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Soldato
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Maybe you do not, as you are born with many inherited traits which shape how moral of a person you are, simple as that.
Point being that being religious or not has absolutely zero effect on morality. The argument that religion gives morals, is equivalent to the earth is flat
No, it is the opposite of a belief system.
Man of Honour
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Others have unpacked some the nuances behind the wording. It's all quite interpretational and unsurprisingly subjective which is undoubtedly why there is so much disagreement between people on the subject!
Soldato
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But Atheists believe in the big bang or string theory or evolution or many other things not proven with 100% certainty
If you believe that a God/Gods created the universe or the universe was created with space and quantum magic it's all the same really
I use the same labelling but with slightly different definitions. Mine stem from the original meaning of the word "agnostic", the meaning given to it by the person (Thomas Huxley) who made the word. It's the philosophical idea that something shouldn't be claimed to be the objective truth without sufficient objective evidence to warrant that claim.
I think the taxonomy is basically sound. Certainly more accurate than a binary split into a choice between "knows that there are no gods" and "knows that whatever religion they believe in is the absolute truth".
There's a very big difference between believing that the universe was created by an entity or entities and not knowing how it was created. Or even if it was created. The (badly named) big bang theory doesn't cover that. As well as that "this explanation of how it happened is probably true" isn't the same as "my god(s) did it".
Evolution is proven with 100% certainty. It's a vast collection of observations, aka a fact. Evolution and the theory of evolution are different things. Just as, for example, the transmission of disease and infection and germ theory are different things. The explanation of how a thing happens is not the same as the thing itself. We still don't have a complete explanation of how gravity works. That doesn't mean gravity isn't proven to exist. Early copper age metalworkers had absolutely no idea about the chemical reaction CuO + CO --> Cu + CO2 if the molecules are given enough energy for the reaction to occur. They weren't even within screaming distance of that understanding. They didn't know about atoms or molecules or that CO or CO2 existed or why the energy levels mattered or pretty much anything else that was going on. But that didn't stop the smelting happening.
There is a chasm of difference between scientific theories which are the current best guess until a better one...
...and a thought virus used for comfort and control.
Well at least it's the majority religion still.
Seeing as the majority of " no religion " is just edgy idiots like me, that are fully raised in a Christian country but are not dumb enough to believe in sky fairies guiding our daily lives..
Life is good until Islam is the actual majority. I guess the country has 2 or 3 decades to go before there's no more bacon on the menu.
We live in fascinating times the complete erosion of the groundbase that was underpinning northern European ethics and morality.
I say it every time but I look forward to China occupying the world and persecuting all religions equally
Seeing as the majority of " no religion " is just edgy idiots like me, that are fully raised in a Christian country but are not dumb enough to believe in sky fairies guiding our daily lives..
Life is good until Islam is the actual majority. I guess the country has 2 or 3 decades to go before there's no more bacon on the menu.
We live in fascinating times the complete erosion of the groundbase that was underpinning northern European ethics and morality.
I say it every time but I look forward to China occupying the world and persecuting all religions equally
In the last decade Islam rose by a massive 1.2 million people to a mindblowing 6.5%. In 2 or 3 decades, it might reach the heady heights of 10 or 15% of the population. Woot! Woot!
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No. Atheism is a response to a single question of ‘do you believe a god or gods exist’. It says absolutely nothing about anything else. You can be an atheist and not accept evolution or the Big Bang theory, or believe the earth is flat.
Now, the vast majority of us will accept the current scientific consensus because that’s generally how our brains are wired, but there’s also the group who are theists and also accept these theories. The head of the human genome project is a Catholic, for example, and pretty much all of the field of biology is underpinned by the theory of evolution.
It’s a very complicated Venn diagram - you can’t put everyone in neat little boxes with labels on them.
Its true. Religion only survives by indoctrinating people from an early age and those children grow up and brainwash their own children, this has largely fallen away in UK Christianity and I expect the same will happen to the other religions in time.
That's not true. Being an Atheist is nothing more than the absence of a belief in a god; hence the name.
Many atheists do happen to believe in those things, but that's not what the word itself is describing.
The a in atheist, in Greek, means without - And theo (or theos) in Greek means god.
So atheos or atheist simply means without god(s).
Someone's position on the existence of a god says absolutely nothing about their position on anything else at all, including the Big Bang.
You can be an atheist who also happens to believe in the Big Bang, you can be an atheist who also happens to believe that the universe is eternal and has always existed, you can be an atheist who doesn't happen to believe in either and thinks something else entirely, or you can even be an atheist who doesn't hold any positive belief about the origin of the universe at all; it makes no difference, they would still be an atheist because the label only describes the absence of a very specific belief.
I'm afraid I have to take umbrage with this too.
Trying to draw a comparison between the Big Bang or Evolution and Theism is a false equivalence.
The Big Bang happened, it's proven.
Evolution happens, it's proven.
They're both testeable, observable and demonstrable things that have absolutely occured; they require no faith at all.
What you're referring to I believe, is the theories of how they both happen/happened, which is something else entirely.
Evolution itself is an observable fact, whereas the theory of Evolution is simply the theory we have about the mechanism by which it works.
That's a subtle but extremely important difference, and the same goes for the Big Bang; we can literally look at it through a radio telescope that's sensitive enough to pick up Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, so we absolutely know that this thing we refer to as the Big Bang happened. What we don't know for absolute certain is the mechanism by which it happened, and that's where the theory part comes in.
Again, they're not at all equivalent positions.
One explanation has zero demonstrable evidence in support of it, and requires pure faith as a result; the other is the best current explanation that we have, and is based upon an absolute plethora of repeatable, demonstrable evidence that requires no faith at all.
Now that doesn't mean that the latter explanation is a complete one, and has everything all worked out, in fact quite the opposite; it's a continual refinement of our understanding over time based upon ever improving, yet repeatable experiment and evidence.
Only the God explanation claims to have everything worked out, even though it is unable to provide any evidence in it's support.
Anyway, sorry to jump all over your post. Please don't take it personally!
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they can do a census but cant do the maths?
46.2% christian
37.2% heretics
16.6% riffraff?
christians still seem to work out to be top of the pops but i do admit i dont have a phd in maths, i bring shame to my asian parents...
46.2% christian
37.2% heretics
16.6% riffraff?
christians still seem to work out to be top of the pops but i do admit i dont have a phd in maths, i bring shame to my asian parents...