Screwed by Evolution

Check out this article called Unadapted Us – How We’ve Been Screwed By Evolution. Humans generally have a bad design when you examine our various pieces and parts. We can look at other animals and see that evolution could do a better job for us. The article goes through several bad design features and ways they could be improved. It's somewhat humorous and informative.

Darwin Ape

Coded to Not Trust Smart People

Dilbert is one of my favorite comics. The recent Sunday comic is a good one so click that link.

Dilbert creates a simulated world in software and programs the people in it to think they have free will. Dogbert asks what happens if they discover their true nature. Dilbert replies that he coded in some limitations to hamper that and describes a few of them. Read the full comic because they obviously correlate to our own limitations in this Universe.

I'll go ahead and reveal the punch line here for discussion. Dilbert coded the simulated people to not trust smart people so they won't question the simulation. Sometimes it seems like this is a painful part of our reality (or are we in a simulation?).

Agnostic and Atheist at the Same Time

I came across a great article by Godless Mom called How Can Someone be an Agnostic and an Atheist at the Same Time? I agree with everything she said so this will be a short post.

The article covers the false choice that is sometimes presented between being an unbelieving atheist and an unknowing agnostic. Agnosticism isn't fence sitting or a middle ground between atheism and theism. Agnosticism isn't a secular refusal to weigh in on the existence or nonexistence of gods. Agnosticism says knowledge is the important consideration and the correct conclusion about knowledge is that we don't know. We could know in the future, we may never find the knowledge, or the first cause of the Universe could be completely beyond our capabilities as an unknowable concept.

Courtney wrote:

Of course, not everyone who identifies as an agnostic will claim to be a theist or atheist, but all agnostics are one of these two. They either have an active belief in a god or they do not and if they do not, whether these people like it or not, they are atheist. This is the definition of the word: no belief in god. It makes no difference if you claim knowledge of zero gods or not. Atheism is NOT the claim there are no gods.

I didn't understand this at first but I've grown to better understand it and accept it. It's a strong atheist or anti-theist who would claim there are no gods. The more common weak atheist simply rejects the gods as unproven. That's why the flipside of this is that atheists are also very often agnostics whether they like it or not. That's fine and we all gravitate towards the labels that make the most sense for how we want to portray our viewpoints about theism.

An Atheist with a Tall Hat

Humanist magazine posted an article called An Atheist with a Tall Hat On: The Forgotten History of Agnosticism. The opening argument is that atheism and agnosticism are the same.

One sometimes gets the impression that religious and nonreligous people alike consider agnosticism a more rational and sophisticated creed than atheism. On the contrary, agnosticism differs from atheism in name only. The distinction between the two is really about class and politics, not substance.

The article continues with some accurate background on agnosticism before it makes a false comparison to atheism.

To maintain his hard-fought respectability, Huxley unveiled the term in 1869 at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society, an eclectic group of leading believers and nonbelievers in Victorian Britain. He argued that Christians and atheists both shared a belief in the certainty of their views and that this certainty was unjustified. For Huxley, rather than claiming special knowledge, to be agnostic was to profess one’s lack of knowledge.

This seems a novel position only if one understands “atheism” to mean a positive defense of God’s nonexistence. But this wasn’t the meaning that many nineteenth-century atheists accepted.

This is where the writer strays when he says agnosticism is only a novel position if atheism is a positive defense of God's nonexistence. Claiming agnosticism says no such thing about atheism. Atheism is and can continue to be a rejection of God's nonexistence as simply not proven. The burden of proof is on the believer making those claims so atheism doesn't serve as a positive defense with or without the existence of agnosticism.

Agnosticism

What we know and don't know is much more important and worthy of consideration than what we believe and disbelieve.

ag·nos·ti·cism

1. the doctrine or belief of an agnostic (a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.)

2. An intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge.

Return of Agnostic Universe

Hello Earth and the rest of the universe! I used to host a website and blog called Agnostic Universe for many years. I let it go because it took up more time and money than it was worth since I managed and paid for the website.

I'm relaunching that content here on Blogger. This can now exist as long as the Blogger platform survives. I'm starting with reposting the Agnostic Library. These are the various writings of others that I assembled when I was first exploring agnosticism. I'll also post the book I wrote called An Agnostic Guide to Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's a more structured set of my musings as I explored agnosticism. The links for these are at the top of the site. I'll probably get back to blogging too so watch this space for any new musings I may have about agnosticism.