Knowledge About Religions

A recent Pew Research survey found that atheists and agnostics in the United States know more about religion than those in the "nothing in particular" group. Atheists and agnostics are also on par with the Catholics and Protestants concerning knowledge about Catholicism and Protestantism by their followers.

Live a Good Life

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” ― Marcus Aurelius

God Preferred Inbred Relationships

I'm a former Christian and reading the Bible led me to disbelief. It's been a long time since I've done that, so I've decided to get into it again now that I'm older. I'm adding some Bible study to my Agnostic Guide for this blog. It's starting to feel like a waste of time, but I'll use it to throw out a general observation here and there.

Here's an odd thing that really jumped out at me during my recent review: God preferred inbred relationships in the Old Testament for many key characters as his chosen people.

Warring Children of Abraham

The children of Abraham squabble and fight like the worst of siblings. They're closely related as a people if the religious texts can be believed. The picture above is a good one for showing the messed up family tree branching out from Abraham. Jews and Jesus are believed to descend from Isaac whereas Muhammad was descended from his older brother Ishmael. Ishmael's mother was Isaac's mother's handmaid, so that's an interesting relationship dynamic between the descendents.

Militant Fundamentalist Agnostics

I bookmarked an old blog post from way back in 2013 (so long ago, right?) called Militant Fundamentalist Agnostics and the meaning of atheism. It's a reminder to not be "that person" regarding my beliefs. I don't think I've ever been that person even though I'm an advocate for agnosticism. I know atheists are a full spectrum from a weak rejection of theism as unproven to a strong assertion for proof that there are no gods. I usually call the strong atheist an anti-theist to make that distinction.

That blog post starts with identifying the Militant Fundamentalist Agnostic (bonus points for the accompanying comic from my favorite XKCD):

Religious literalists and creationists can be annoying, and liberal believers whose theology is entirely apophatic can also be annoying; however anyone who espouses atheism on the internet will soon encounter an even more annoying group: the Militant Fundamentalist Agnostics.

The what? Surely that’s a contradiction in terms?! Sadly not, the Militant Fundamentalist Agnostic, while pretending to complete ignorance of gods, will confidently assert the central dogma of the agnostic faith, and cling to it tenaciously. Their one dogma is the claim that atheists make dogmatic assertions about the non-existence of gods. And hence, by declaring themselves to be free of such unwarranted, beyond-the-evidence assertions, they feel themselves superior, not only to the believers, who have no proof of their deities, but also to the atheists, who have no proof to back up their supposed claims of certain non-existence.

Non-Religious Rising

Source: Twitter

New statistics are out showing ‘Nones’ now as big as evangelicals, Catholics in the US. This is good news for those of us in this unaffiliated minority.

According to newly released General Social Survey data analyzed by Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University, Americans claiming “no religion” — sometimes referred to as “nones” because of how they answer the question “what is your religious tradition?” — now represent about 23.1 percent of the population, up from 21.6 percent in 2016. People claiming evangelicalism, by contrast, now represent 22.5 percent of Americans, a slight dip from 23.9 percent in 2016.

Atheism and the Scientific Method

Scientific America published an interview with Marcelo Gleiser titled Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prize-Winning Physicist Says. I don't agree with this particular agnostic's conclusion. He makes the false assertion that atheism is as a belief in non-belief. Atheism might mean that in the strongest sense, but the broadest definition of atheism says it's simply a lack of belief. The atheist is unconvinced. Here's Gleiser's false assertion:

I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation. It’s not just me; it’s also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank, and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.

An atheist doesn't declare: "I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe." An atheist declares they don't believe because the evidence for belief is insufficient to sway them to belief. The facts don't support the hypothesis for gods. Gleiser's characterization of atheists is as preposterous as some of the atheist reasons to dismiss agnostics.