Flexible Demeanour

[nameandnature]

The people who wrote Over Three Hundred Proof's of God's Existence had obviously been debating with a certain sort of Christian on the Internet, namely the nutty, probably American sort (with apologies to the 49% of Americans who did not vote for Jesusland). Remember: you end up covered in mud, and the pig enjoys it. Or as teh JC himself said, don't cast your pearls before swine. The Proofs are funny, anyway.

I found the Proofs on an old blog entry by Tom Coates on the existence of God. One comment there was pointed out by another commenter on another blog, and I rather liked it too. John Franson wrote:

I'm an atheist for the same reason those above have said they are atheists. I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe the walls of my house are inhabited by intangible purple monsters [shurely invisible pink unicorns? - Ed.] that come out at night to play Twister in my living room. Agnostics say, "We can't know if there's a god or not." But this shows they've been prejudiced by prevailing cultural beliefs. They might as well say, "We can't know if there's intangible monsters in the walls or not. How arrogant and illogical of you to say otherwise." That's what they'd be saying if the world was populated by wall-monster believers. My belief that God doesn't exist requires no more faith than my belief that there are no intangible monsters in the walls. I'll allow that maybe something(s) caused the universe. But if so, there's no reason to call it "god" or to think it had any of the attributes that anybody ascribes to god.

I oscillate between calling myself an agnostic and calling myself an atheist, but in the light of the above, it seems atheist might be more useful.

(I found Tom Stuart's blog from his comment on this post of captain_aj's on whether it makes sense to call oneself a liberal Catholic. The blog contains Interesting Stuff).

Comments

[andrewducker]

You _can't_ know if there are intangible purple monsters in the walls of your house. I remain agnostic on their existence also.

[nameandnature]

True, I can't know. But I don't trouble myself to maintain a studied attitude of indecision about the purple monsters, and I think that is, as the commenter said, largely because there aren't lots of people asking me whether I've formed a Personal Relationship with the Intangible Purple Monsters. An agnostic who doesn't spend a lot of time seriously considering that God might actually exist is functionally atheist, if not philosophically atheist.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I'm functionally atheist 99% of the time.

But then I functionally have objective morals 99% of the time. I still don't believe in them.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I like proof #24.

[bluap.livejournal.com]

My view is that an athiest actively denies the existence of God.

Personally, I just don't give a damn.