Thank you for writing this, Colin. I'm planning to never vote again at this point, because the Republicans are imposing their religion as surely as the Wokists are. The deepest irony is how little compromise it would take to win me and literally all the other non-woke women I know. Adopt European abortion rules (first trimester, safe/legal/rare) and abandon the laws causing horror shows of women who can't get miscarriage care (one of the many stories going around the internet is someone I know personally; even one is too many but her case I know to be 100% real, in Alabama). They'd have won landslides in November 2022 and 2024 would be a cakewalk. It is the exact parallel of how the Democrats would never have lost so many of us without the Woke religious bullshit. But this is what religion does, whether it's the magic of souls in fertilized eggs or the magic of gendered souls. Sigh. Anyway..thank you for saying this.
The policy positions you describe are exactly what Ron DeSantis implemented (15 week elective ban) and likely why he DID win in a landslide. I would like to see the Republican Party embrace both his approach and policy preferences. He has also figured out parents are a powerful and passionate voting block.
"most atheists define 'atheism' as simply 'the lack of belief in a god or gods.' There is a world of difference between merely lacking a belief in something and being 'completely certain' that something does not exist. The vast majority of atheists I have ever met—and I have met a lot—would never say they are certain that God does not exist." I have trouble with this definition, because it could apply equally to the word "agnostic," which I am. People I know who call themselves atheists belittle the very idea that there could be a transcendent being or a Prime Mover. In my experience, they take a rather arrogant and patronizing view of people who do believe. Agnostics say they don't know, and they don't belittle anyone who does believe, because the fact is, nobody knows. But any reasonable person can look at the complexity of life and say that it is a reasonable conclusion the world did not come into being purely by chance. I think Carlson may be reacting to the kind of arrogance I am speaking of. It is splitting hairs to define atheism as "lacking" a belief, since most atheists do take a stand and argue that there is no God (see under Christopher Hitchens et al). I mean to say, they are not passive about this "lack", but often aggressive, so the word has a connotation not of "lack" but of "anti"-belief.
So, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that negative atheists are agnostic, positive atheists are the ones who drip with contempt for faith and agnostics might still be believers even though they believe that the existence of God cannot be known. Academia has been busy. So many hairs to split.
"Agnostic" describes knowledge or certainty, but tells nothing of belief."
The root of agnostic in Greek would be gnosis for knowledge. The prefix of A implies the negative. So it could be translated as the absence of knowledge.
In the context of the existence of God, agnostic means that one is without complete knowledge of whether a God exists. As you point out, that is not a declaration of faith.
As an agnostic, I don't necessarily believe that God exists but I don't discount that as a possibility. I am unable to declare a position about the existence of God because I have no irrefutable proof one way or the other. I am neither a theist or an atheist but I could lean one way or the other based on my interpretation of the evidence.
On the matter of faith and knowledge, it is possible to have faith without knowledge and knowledge without faith but most of the time, faith is grounded in knowledge and evidence. Faith is not inherently the absence of knowledge.
For example, you can have faith that an institution will stand by its principles based on past performance. That is evidence for your faith that is based on historical knowledge and evidence. In the same way, positions for and against the existence of God have evidence.
Many would say that the ordered nature of the universe is evidence for the existence of God. Others review the same evidence and say that chaos settled into order due to the immutable laws of the universe.
Conversely, there is no evidence for the existence of a teapot that orbits the sun between Earth and Mars. Declaring that it exists without evidence is unfalsifiable. It does not require that anyone refute its existence. The same cannot be said for the existence of God.
The root of atheist in Greek is theos. That roughly translates into God. The prefix of A implies the negative. As such, atheist could be translated into the absence (of belief) in God.
From my perspective, atheists and theists are declaring a position on the existence of God. They do so using evidence. However, a gnostic atheist can no more prove the absence of God than a gnostic theist can prove that God exists. The evidence is disputable.
An agnostic atheist is the safest position because it acknowledges that definitive proof doesn't exist for their declared position. An agnostic theist sounds like a theoretical edge case. You would need to discount the evidence of our existence to make this claim.
These are all declarations of faith in one form or another. I say this because you are declaring for or against the existence of God without definitive proof. You either acknowledge that as an agnostic atheist or you use some evidence to justify it as a gnostic atheist.
However, from my perspective, an (a)gnostic (a)theist is really just a sliding scale of confidence, or faith, in the evidentiary proof. An agnostic has a very low level of confidence in the proof available. Using the evidentiary standard, this indicates that you are either a theist, an atheist or an agnostic. Everything else is splitting hairs.
I say that because an agnostic (a)theist inherently leaves themselves open to the possibility that definitive proof may exist to support one position or the other. That equates to a low level of confidence in evidentiary proof. That is how we traditionally define an agnostic.
Atheists have a tendency to assume that theism needs to prove that God exists to disprove atheism. But I would say that the reverse is equally true. In discourse, atheists can also be patronizing, condescending and combative.
This discussion illustrates the disconnect. In this case, atheists have redefined common terms based on their own liturgical practice. When questioned, atheists have explained why those who dissent are operating from a position of ignorance.
All terms and definitions could be open to interpretation. But it is somewhat presumptuous to redefine terms that overlap with agnosticism and then use those as the standard for how everyone should use them going forward.
Personally, I don't care. I operate on the assumption that atheists are going to be condescending assholes when discussing anything related to the divine. If not, that's a bonus. But I can understand why some would have less patience on the matter. That includes, but is not limited to Tucker Carlson.
I think your perspective, Barbara, hits the nail on the head and provides the likely context for Tucker Carlson's remark. Not that I think of him as the spokesman for Republican values in any case.
Yes, and Colin, in his description of himself, sounds more like an agnostic. I have also encountered atheists who are not only arrogant and condescending but also hateful towards believers. And perhaps that IS what Tucker was responding to. Hard to tell. We need more dialogue. We should not simply divide ourselves into more and more siloes of hate.
Agree that Colin falls more plausibly into the agnostic camp. Both ardent believers and ardent anti-belief-ers are evangelical at times, off-putting to anyone who prefers to come to their position without aggressive seduction.
He's an agnostic atheist. As already explained, belief and knowledge/certainty are separate categories.
Nobody needs to prove that something does not exist in order to not have a belief in it.
No atheist needs to ever prove or even assert that a god does not exist to not believe it does. No lawyer ever needs to prove a defendant innocent to create disbelief among the jury in their guilt for a verdict of Not Guilty. Nobody needs to prove that a teapot does not orbit the sun between Earth and Mars to not believe such a thing exists. Nobody needs to prove Bigfoot doesn't exist in order to not hold a belief in it/them.
An atheist does not possess a belief in a god or gods. Some of them are certain or claim it as knowledge. Some do not. It doesn't matter which - both do not possess belief. Their difference is in certainty/knowledge: a/gnosticism.
It doesn't matter whether any jurist thinks the defendant is innocent (gnosticism) or is just unconvinced (agnosticism), the verdict they return is the same: Not Guilty.
Perhaps you find atheists off-putting at times because they react unfavorably when you insist that they are making assertions that they are not (and need not).
I agree. I used to say I was closer to being an atheist, but then began reading the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and he seemed so certain of his opinions as to take them on faith, and as insulting to non-believers as any preacher, that I thought the religion of atheism wasn't for me.
I know for certain that I do not have a belief in a god or gods. I don't need to know or be certain about the god(s) it/themselves. You seem to have not understood the difference between belief and knowledge.
It doesn't require any faith at all to reject unjustified, unsubstantiated claims. Nobody needs to be certain that Bigfoot do not exist in order to not believe in them or to strenuously oppose people making laws based on Bigfootism. Nobody needs "faith" to say, well, your Bigfoot belief is not based on any evidence, so I'm not going to believe you.
It takes no faith at all to reject the claims believers make that god(s) exist. And rejecting an assertion that they exist does not require asserting that they don't. It's not necessary to claim that there's an even number of jellybeans in a jar in order to reject someone's claim that there's an odd number. No atheist needs to assert that a god does NOT exist in order to not have a belief in such a creature.
I started my early teens waffling between wanting to believe in a god and being an agnostic. My later dilemma was balancing between being an agnostic or an atheist. I finally took the plunge and have called myself an atheist for the last 2 decades. I don't try to convert anyone and tell people they must come to their beliefs in their own way. I don't criticize other religions (except Scientology, but I can't be blamed for that one) and I am envious, at times of the solace people find in their own beliefs. I just wish people would stop checking off boxes to determine which camp to throw you in.
Agnostic is an adjective relating to knowledge. Saying you're "agnostic" is like if I ask you whether you have an SUV or a conventional car, and you answer "silver." You haven't answered the question at all. It doesn't say anything about belief; it's comparable to those claiming to be "non-binary." "Agnostic" is not some middle-ground between belief or non-belief. You either possess a belief in god(s) or you do not - that's a/theism, the X-axis. It's not a question about gods, it's a question about *you* and what you possess in your belief inventory. You either have "gods" in your belief inventory, or you don't. Saying "I don't know" means we can assume that you don't, as you would know if you do. If I ask you if you have a pen in your bag and you don't know, go looking and don't come back with a pen, we expect to operate on the basis that you don't have a pen. Knowledge is a separate Y-axis: agnostic atheist, agnostic theist, gnostic atheist, gnostic theist. Arguing from a position of scientific ignorance is also not the best bet. Your limited impressions of a created universe does not make it any more true, any more than a Woke's univariate analysis that systemic forces created all disparity makes it true. Both are baseless creationist claims and ignore any attempt to understand. The argument from complexity is notoriously poor. If complexity indicates a creator, then is the creator more complex or less complex? Doesn't this mean the creator needs its own creator? Or is this just going to be a Special Pleading fallacy? If you can imagine a creator who didn't need to be created, you can easily perceive a universe that didn't need to be created. Atheism is not having a belief in gods, same as not having a belief in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. You don't need to believe or prove that Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster don't exist in order to not believe. You don't need to believe someone is Innocent to find them Not Guilty. Believers accuse their gods of existing; atheists find them Not Guilty. As any amount of time watching any police procedural should have taught you, Not Guilty is not the same as Innocent. If you've been touting yourself as an "agnostic," you might need to look into the actual definition of the words you've been using; most supposed-"agnostics" are in fact atheists who just don't like the word.
Sounds like you've made up your own definition of agnostic, interesting though it is. I just looked the word up at dictionary.com and found this:
1. 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. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
3. a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic: Socrates was an agnostic on the subject of immortality.
None of those fit the your definition of replying "silver" when a person is asked what kind of car they have. Or of someone being unsure whether they have a pen in their bag. Perhaps that's because both of your examples do not address the core issue of faith, which is that of believing something to be true (or not true) without material proof. Having faith is believing in something that cannot be proven true or false. It is not being confused about or unsure of a provable fact.
I've long held that atheists actually do have a religion because they believe there is no God (or to use Colin's framing—they lack a belief in God, which is the same thing as believing God doesn't exist). IOW, atheists believe something that is unprovable. And I think Barbara's point is well-taken in that many atheists (certainly not all) treat "believers" with condescension and scorn, not even realizing that they themselves are believers of a different stripe. An agnostic, from what I've seen, is someone who simply says: I don't know what to believe, so I just live my life with the question "does God exist?" unanswered.
Well, this definition is simply more formal than my demotic one. I do believe there is no possibility of ultimate knowledge in this domain, which I thought I had implied.
Again, this is agnosticism. It says nothing about belief. It doesn't answer the question of "do you possess a belief in a god or god?"
Nobody's asking about certainty or knowledge. It's a question about YOU.
Belief is not knowledge. You can believe that a teapot orbits the sun between Earth and Mars without having knowledge of it. Your belief is unjustified (faith-based) until you provide evidence, but your belief does not require knowledge.
It's so telling that self-purported "agnostics" steadfastly refuse to actually answer the question posed in front of them, and deflect and vacillate to avoid acknowledging their theism or atheism (belief or lack of belief).
"Non-binary" people respond the same way when you press them on it. It appears to be part of maintaining the rebel persona.
So, where you ignored or missed that #1 is literally about knowledge, not belief, was that deliberate or accidental?
"1. 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."
You made my point for me. A/gnosticism concerns knowledge. Not belief.
My examples were demonstration of answering the question you want to answer, not answering the actual question posed: do you possess a belief in a god? Answering "I'm agnostic" doesn't answer the question. The question is not about knowledge - nobody asked that - it's about belief. Do you possess a belief in a god or gods? Yet again, it's not about the gods, it's about you.
Saying that atheists have their own religion is an easy, lazy way to say "see, you're as bad as us!" when they don't assert or need to assert anything, they can simply evaluate god claims and find them unconvincing.
Perhaps if you answered straightforward questions as given, you wouldn't get the reaction you get.
Lacking belief in God is not the same as believing God doesn't exist. You can lack belief because you are from a place with no God concept, because you are an infant, because you just haven't been convinced yet even though you're open to it, because you're too busy surviving something else to ponder it, and for all sorts of other reasons.
Well, as I see it, infants and children aren't capable of rationally considering existential questions so they don't fit within the scope of this discussion, which is how to categorize the rationally considered response of a person to the ultimate existential question. If a person is unconvinced but open to to the possibility of God, or too busy surviving something else to ponder the question, then they are not taking a side and that meets the dictionary definition of being agnostic. A person who *has* considered the question and come to a conclusion, who has chosen their lack of belief in God, is someone who believes God doesn't exist, aka an atheist. Which is someone who holds a faith that informs their life.
Negative atheists lack belief in God. They do not hold that God does not exist. Agnostism is a position about certainty, not about God.
To decide that negative atheists don't exist, when they're telling you they do, is a fundamentalist position. It seems that you're exactly who Colin is speaking to. Please look into the Principle of Charity and consider the importance of curiosity, understanding, steelmanning, and building alliances instead of clinging to a mischaracterization of people you don't understand. It's something the world needs very much right now in light of the excesses on every side.
I think we're defining terms differently. What you call a negative atheist is someone I would call agnostic, because it sounds like someone who hasn't firmly decided they don't believe in God—or to put it in your terms, they don't posit certainty on the question. So I'm not refusing to acknowledge their existence. I'm categorizing them under a different label.
Also, fwiw, many of the people I follow online are declared non-believers whose intellects and moral compasses I deeply admire. As a conservative believer, I happily welcome the opportunity to align with them in the cause of truth-seeking and truth-telling. So I'd call it a mischaracterization of me to suggest I'm "exactly who Colin is speaking to." I'd like to think you and I can disagree without insisting that the other adopt our own schema and its terminology in order to come to an understanding.
Hmmm, well DJ's examples do not illustrate definition 1, and definition 3 ("a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic") completely contradicts DJ's definition: "'Agnostic' is not some middle-ground between belief or non-belief."
"1. 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."
Knowledge. Says know and knowledge multiple times. I said knowledge. I was referring to knowledge. Literally my opening line. To pretend I was saying something other than what I EXPLICITLY said is intellectually dishonest.
Says belief zero times. A/gnosticism is about knowledge, not belief. Just as I said.
You can believe without knowing, believe with knowing, not believe with knowing, not believe without knowing.
I reject your initial analogy. The question about the SUV is answerable by a yes or a no, because you have evidence to back it up. The question about the existence of God is not. I take agnostic to mean what I daresay 99.9% of other people do: namely, I don't know whether or not there is a Supreme Being. I think it is just as reasonable to believe there is one as not to believe there is one. I am afraid I don't understand this lengthy, ahem, diatribe, so I will just back away slowly. But thanks for demonstrating my previous assertion about the frequent rhetorical aggression of atheists.
Again, you're responding to the question you want to hear, not answering the question posed. What is being asked is about possession. Do you possess an SUV, not do SUVs exist? We know SUVs exist, the question is about whether you have one. Do you possess a god-belief? We know god-belief exists. The question is whether you possess one.
Once again, the question is about YOU, not about the existence or non-existence of a god.
This is extremely straightfoward. It is telling that you are working so hard to avoid answering without obfuscation and deflection.
I disagree for many reasons. Some things are absolutely knowable, but most are unknowable. Even the origins and age of advanced human civilizations is unknowable today. The popular narrative was until the last decade that advanced human civilization is 5,000-7,000 years old. The evidence today indicates great human civilizations existed at least 12,000 years ago. LiDAR studies in South America indicate there could have been as many as 100 million humans living there at some point, but we don’t know when. Admitting/ believing we don’t know the answer to if there were advanced human civilizations 12,000 or more years ago is a valid and legitimate assessment, while the insistence that we were all unsophisticated nomadic hunter-gatherers until 5,000 to 7,000 years ago is largely negated by recent evidence. But we don’t actually know. We can’t travel in time to observe it.
Those that are humble and honest would say they don’t know how old advanced human civilizations is and acknowledge much of what humans think we know to be true often isn’t. In the 19th century people were sure the earth was 4 million years old. By the 20th it was 40 million. Mid 20th it became 400 million. Late 20th through today it’s cut a 4.54 billion years old. When I was born in 1982 the dinosaurs were thought to have been killed off by a bunch of volcanos. By 2002 it was well established more evidence existed that it was from a metro strike. We don’t know the certain answer to any of these things.
On the biggest and most important questions in life, including God, it is perfectly valid for considered humans to come to the conclusion they don’t know because at this point in time the answer is unknowable and that may always be the case. The implication you either “have” a god/ gods or you don’t, like belief in the existence of god is some kind of trinket, is one the most simple minded assertions I have ever heard.
What you're saying is long-winded and irrelevant, with a patina of faux-humility. And you've either missed or are avoiding the point: knowledge and belief are not the same.
It doesn't matter whether a god or gods is knowable or unknowable - although you can't pretend to know that it's unknowable, otherwise it's knowable. Saying that it's unknowable is a contradiction. How can you know that it's unknowable? You might as well tell me what "nothing" is or is not capable of.
Belief is not knowledge. You can believe that a teapot orbits the sun between Earth and Mars without having knowledge of it. I can disbelieve that such a teapot exists without having to disprove its existence. Your belief in such a teapot is unjustified (faith-based) until you provide evidence, but your belief does not require knowledge.
It's not simple-minded to separate belief and knowledge. It's simple-minded to conflate the two, act like belief and non-belief share equal footing, fail to understand how we logically accept or reject arguments and propositions, and post a rambling screed about knowledge when the subject matter is belief.
If we go into a store and I point to a jar of jellybeans and tell you that there's an even number, do you believe me? Can you disbelieve me? If you disbelieve me, are you saying there's an odd number? Does your disbelief require you to know how many jellybeans there are? The claim of an even number of jellybeans is separate from the claim that there's an odd number.
Rejecting that a defendant is guilty does not require you to believe that they're innocent. That's what Not Guilty is for.
Believers accuse their god(s) of existing. Atheists find them Not Guilty. No atheist ever needs to find a god Innocent of existing.
You either possess a belief in a god or gods or you do not. You either accept god-existence claims or you do not. You either find gods Guilty of existence or you do not. If you do not, then you are an atheist. None of this requires knowledge.
Nobody needs to know that a god does not exist to reject someone's claim that such a being does.
The fact that you are trying to conflate the debate over evidence of the existence of a great power beyond material human grasp with the guilt or non-guilt of a human breaking a law that is purely a human social construct certainly demonstrates your own narrow perception of the universe, but it says nothing about the debate around the existence of that great force or being.
While clearly not all atheists are so removed from material reality as to embrace the utter insanity of gender ideology, your comments might explain why the movement arose out of atheist movements. If your assertion is demonstrative of the thought process of most atheists, then it makes sense many atheists support gender ideology because your rants portray a world view that can't grasp existence of anything outside of modern industrialized social constructs. That is the foundational assertion of those who promote the demonstrably false nonsense that everything impacting the human experience can be controlled by humans via adjustments to social constructs and centralized control of the narratives to support those constructs. This world view is effectively the basis of many secular modern theologies from (failed) Marxists aims to socially engineer equal outcomes to gender ideologists attempts to socially engineer reproductive roles to such a degree they are reduced to mere preferences.
What constitutes "advanced human civilizations"? How can a civilization be advanced and not leave behind some evidence of its trajectory? Cave drawings tell us people lived at a certain time, but are those drawings "advanced" or primitive? For me the beginning of advancement is self-awareness, which produces ideas that are distinct from knowledge connected to sustainability of life. Ideas produce artefacts, practices and so forth that leave a mark. If there were advanced civilizations from 12,000 years ago, where did they go? Was there a meteorite that blasted them into smithereens?
I realized my first comment did not answer your question. I am sorry. As to your smithereens question - yes!! But many impacts. Evidence first discovered before I was born (I was born in the 1980's), but only recently being acknowledged by the "expert" class indicate a 1,300-year period known as Younger Dryas that began approximately 12.900 years ago. This period completely changed the Earth's climate, temperature, and surface. If you want to look at the evidence of this catastrophic event, look at topographical maps of younger rivers and you will see modern rivers often flow at the bottom of enormous river channels that are today flood plains and fertile valleys.
We don't know this was contained to north America (what the "expert" class wants to claim), because there is globally, but we do know it was catastrophic. Widespread flooding beyond our imaginations, impacts when we went through the remnants of the Torus comet every 6 months, 400ft rise in ocean level which may have happened in only a few years at the end of that period. During this period half of all mammal species went extinct. Some of those leading the drive to acknowledge this also claim in 2030 the same could happen again and have dd theories around drugs I don't remotely buy, but the evidence of great past civilizations is well supported with actual evidence confirmed by many others and carbon dating. I'm leaning strongly towards the 2030 thing being yet another faux dooms day prediction that, like most, is probably not going to happen, but I might be hanging out in the Appalachian Mountains with my family just in case. haha).
Great anthropologists and geologists have long postulated about the Sphinx being 10,000 years old because the weathering damage (which couldn't occur more recently) and later restoration but were rejected by the "expert" gatekeepers who don't want to admit they were wrong about anything. When gobleki tepe was discovered in 1994 it blew up the argument those societies simply didn't exist. Those structures are at least 12,000 years old from carbon dating.
Likewise, in North America many geologists and astronomers have postulated the great Earth Works here are a similar age at least based on their alignment with the sun (and the slight changes over the last 10,000 years). That argument was rejected because we carbon dated bones found in them wo closer to 2,000 years ago. However, early explorers in the Americas who spoke with native tribes recorded that those tribes said the earthworks predated their society's existence - basically they took over the structures of a past civilization. Similar theory to the Sphinx. This gets suppressed by the "expert" class but many of the archives remain.
They left behind a crap ton more evidence than anything we build today ever could. Gobekli Tepe (and another 11 already discovered similar great earthworks) in Turkey, Serpent mound in North America (among dozens of others including Bimini Road), weathering evidence indicates the great Sphinx was actually built at least 10,000 years ago and the head of a Pharoah was carved onto it thousands of years later. LiDAR has revealed earthworks in South America Capable of supporting at least 100 million and only 2% of the canopy has been hit with LiDAR. The most fertile soil 12,000 years ago was in what is now the Saharah desert which no one is excavating. 30,000 year old detailed and beautiful figurines made of woolly mammoth tusks have been found in European caves that took an estimated 400 hours to craft from an artisan. Plato put Atlantis 9,000 years before his time (or about 11K-12K years ago). All of these things require an advanced degree of self-awareness not to mention efficiency in feeding, housing, and clothing a population so others had the free time to create great art and build great earthworks. It's increasingly appearing much of the cave art we've found are basically ancient Graphiti and doodles (remember the people who created them don't appear to have actually lived in most of the caves).
Our biggest structures and roads won't last 200 years. A catastrophic earth impact, or series of earth impacts, that lead to the kind of flooding and 400ft ocean rise seen on earth 12,800-11,600 years ago happened again it would wipe out all evidence of our society (and no, "climate change" from human emissions is not a and can not cause that). Look how much of our knowledge and communication is stored on electronic devices. All we'd leave behind is plastic trash that would give zero indication of an advanced society. Heck, it's taken us hundreds of years to just refigure out how ancient Roman concrete is far superior to ours today and as it turns out they had far more advanced knowledge of using heat to cause chemical reactions leading to far superior concrete to our own.
Do you really think humans went around grunting at each other for a couple hundred thousand years and then, magically, in a span of 5,000 years figured out how to put a man on the moon? That line of reasoning is arrogant fir sure, but not very logical.
Wokeness is the worst kind of cultish religious movement -- it has all the most dogmatic, oppressive aspects of a religion, but with none of the redeeming qualities such as forgiveness and mercy. Things went off the rails in atheism when Danny Muscato put on a dress and holy pronouns and didn't get laughed out of the room.
I've been an atheist ever since I was 11 many decades ago. I don't believe in God. And if I had to bet on it, I'd say I'm absolutely, positively certain it's a completely made up, fictional character, like James Bond, Scarlett O'Hara, or the Road Runner.
But at this point I'm far more concerned about the screwed up direction the Democrats are headed in than the Republicans. Yes, I support abortion rights. I even had one many decades ago (no regrets). But if I had to rank order the two issues, abortion restrictions vs. "transgender" brainwashing, on their importance to society, the "transgender" threat would come out way on top every time.
Yes. Abortion restrictions are unfair. But they primarily affect low income girls and women of childbearing age. And there are highly effective methods to prevent pregnancy, Plan B pills, and medical abortions. But the "transgender" propaganda affects everyone. Men, women, girls, and boys. Rich or poor. Old or young.
I'll be Goddamned (pun intended) if I'm going to accept the idiotic pronoun farce. And I'm outraged whenever I read about a perverted male sex offender being housed in a women's prison where he can rape, beat, and impregnate his female cellmate. I hate the pernicious indoctrination children are subjected to to make them doubt their own physical sex. And most of all, I detest the idea that tens of thousands of teenage girls are mutilating their bodies with male hormones and double mastectomies.
I will never vote for a Democrat again. I just hope the Republicans can get their act together and stop obsessing about embryos and fetuses. They'd win more elections if they abandoned that hill to die on.
People like Tucker and Kirk have unfortunately equated those who are atheist with all those who have no morality when in fact many have a strong moral compass stronger even than some of the professed ultra religious. How someone leads ones life, what guides their behavior is more important than any label. In fact questioning the existance of a higher power, of G-d, is a process that many deeply religious go through but few discuss. Those of us with a strong desire to follow basic moral precepts need to align together to fight what appears to be a concerted movement to normalize any and all depravity. We need more alliances, not divisions. I was quite surprised to hear Tucker speak this way. I thought he was more moderate. I wonder if it is worth reaching out to him?
Tucker is moderate. He is vehemently anti-war, but pretty moderate otherwise. I don’t watch the talking head evening show much, but I have Fox Nation just for Tucker Carlson today and Originals. From Michael Shellenberger to Randall Carlson to the head of gays against groomers, Carlson interviews a diverse group of people whose ideas he thinks should be heard, right or wrong, because they add depth and complexity to our understanding of the world. I think Matt Taibbi was on his evening show last night. Tucker interviews Glenn Greenwald all the time. There is a ton of crossover with Joe Rogan interviewees as well.
Colin - I get you are upset when you hear those on the right being intolerant on your lack of religious views. I don’t personally feel that way nor do the many conservatives I know, but I do at least understand the viewpoint that is suspicious of those promoting atheism though I see less concern from conservatives towards those who just personally don’t believe in God. I find actual conservatives, Carlson included, far more tolerate of divergent opinions and beliefs than the left has ever been. That said, the right is more about judging to conserving culture and while they more tolerant, there are issues that some conservatives won’t budge, on and this is one of them.
There is also a very good reason for that. There is a strong correlation between societies that reject religion and terrible atrocities, even if that’s not true for some individuals. That’s not to claim people haven’t used religion to promote atrocities, but there is a difference in scale. Also, not all religions have a positive impact on society, but some definitively do.
Our society is sterilizing and genitally mutilating kids for the “crime” of failing to fit some gender norm box. As you point out this idea did not originate from religious people. Stalin is one of the most evil humans to ever live (Hitler is with him). China enslaves millions of minorities to build us lead filled solar panels today. Mao starved tens of millions. North Korea. Vietnam. Cambodia. Cuba. The list goes on. At what point will atheist at least acknowledge elimination of religion from society has opened the doors to mass suffering, totalitarianism, and death on an unparalleled level in the last 100ish years?
While I get your point, and 10-12 years ago would have agreed, having kids completely changed my perspective. I am raising my kids religiously for the reasons conservatives embrace religion and I have zero regrets. We don’t raise them to see the world simply or in black and white, but we do want them rooted in an old and tested theology with a solid moral foundation. Not everyone, but for many, when they claim to believe in nothing they will actually believe in anything. While there are exceptions and spectrums and all the nuance in the world, conservatives are often more religious because they draw a direct, and I believe accurate, line between populations that reject religion only to treat the state as God willing to become zealots for anything.
We aren’t super religious or devout, but I find myself hoping my kids decide to build a life with someone who has at least a little faith. Not a religious zealot and not an atheist, but somewhere in the vast in between. I have also rediscovered my own faith the past few years and it has helped guide and ground me as a mom in this bat 💩 crazy world.
If people don’t like how religious a particular candidate is they should support moderate candidates and vote in the primaries. There are moderate populist on the right and they do well - both Ron DeSantis and JD Vance are moderates if you look at their actual policies.
But consider that while you may not need God, maybe as a society we do need a little God, some grounding in positive religions to remind us we aren’t little Gods and shouldn’t try to be, even if everyone doesn’t need to full on believe every aspect of any particular religion. There is good reason some conservatives are suspicious of atheist movements. The woke aren’t the first to use atheism as a conduit for immoral tyranny and destruction, and they probably won’t be the last.
Also, Carlson isn’t a politician. He’s a conservative Christian commentator. To ask conservative Christians to abandon their desire to have those of faith represent them is wrong. It is people of faith, several different faiths, leading the charge against child genital mutilation and government tyranny. The churches, not the “liberals” pushed back against Covid nonsense. The conservatives push back against mutilating children for toddler wrongthink. Jesus taught that all humans are of one body.
Carlson is no purest - if you see Tucker Carlson today, which in my opinion is FAR superior to any talking head show at night - you’ll see a huge variety of guests including recent folks like Michael Shellenberger and Randall Carlson. Randall Carlson has some fascinating insights I happen to agree with, and some I find nuts that I don’t - like thinking hallucinogenics may have lead humans to create civilization. Wether it’s more supported theories like advanced human civilization being much much older than the narrative, or what I still think are crazy drug theories, no religious zealot gives that guy a platform. There is actually a ton of crossover with guests hosted by Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson on his Fox Nation stuff.
All this a long way of saying I don’t think you are going to find open arms on the right for those promoting atheism for the sake of atheism. You will find tolerance to be an atheist on the right. In this country most conservatives support freedom of religion, not removing religion from society.
Perhaps that leaves many politically homeless and perhaps that’s a good thing. Politics isn’t sport. We need people who don’t have a team to keep both extremes in check. Vote the policies that you think are best. Vote whichever party is best at that moment for your country and community. Before rejecting good public policy because your feelings are hurt by the individual politician’s religious views, keep in mind conservatives study history and see a ton of danger in atheist societies and they are not necessarily wrong about that. They see the same danger in the state promoting a particular religion. We need different viewpoints for balance, not hard core team groupthink that caters to the extremes.
The Republicans would need to do a lot more than become nominally open to atheists to get the votes of centrist Democrats. The right’s extremism on abortion; their (in my view) deadly willingness to politicize vaccinations, and above all, their efforts to subvert our democracy, put them beyond the pale. I’m a Democrat who strongly upholds reality on sex, and I’m even a Christian, but I will never vote for people who support most of what today’s right wing supports. I would rather come up with ways to educate and persuade people like me about the danger and irrationality of the trans ideology. If I can be convinced, so can others.
Did you really accuse Republicans of politicizing vaccines while the Democrats othered the unvaccinated and tried to force experimental shots into innocent children and young adults??? My husband and I put in our will our kids won’t get these deadly clot shots. We won’t get these shots. We’ve buried five friends, 3 of them former college athletes that were still in extremely good shape and all under 55 since August 2021. Four times as many in the vaccine group died of heart attacks as did in the placebo group during the trials, and that number of vaccine group heart attack deaths was twice the number of Covid deaths in the placebo group. All cause mortality remains elevated in countries that used the mRNA shots but not those that don’t.
My kids might never vote for Democrats their entire life because of how Democrats screwed poor kids in their generation with completely useless and incredibly harmful “mitigation.”
Not to be harsh, but you are the type of very uniformed yet judge person that lead my husband and I to build a vacation home during the pandemic to get away from. You also remind me why I left the Democrat party and should think long and hard before ever voting for a Dem again.
My comment was pointing to all the ways Democrats ignored true evidence and data, even censoring it from the public, all so they could mandate vaccines and justify their harmful and authoritarian political Covid policies. When you interpret that as “Republicans politicizing vaccines” you actually prove my point. That you claim my statement about the actions Democrats took, and the objective evidence they discounted, makes “your reasons” for your positions clear is nothing more than you typing a self-own you don’t seem to realize is a self own. My comment said nothing about Republicans because Republicans are not the ones who politicized Covid vaccines. Republicans policy was very clear they thought it was a non political personal choice. I’m still waiting for the winter of death Joe Biden promised those of us who opted against the vaccines.
Thanks Colin, I am one of those evangelicals who is happy to have you fight this battle with us. I never thought I would see the day when I was reading a Richard Dawkins tweet and saying "yeah....this guy has it right..." but here we are. Hopefully good things will come out of all this. I am confident that common sense will prevail in the gender discussion and these new friendships made in the thick of battle will last well into the future.
People on the right are allowed to disagree about anything, including religion. That is what makes them different from the cult-like left that marches in lockstep conformity to embrace acts of scientific nonsense and moral depravity. The left is told to abandon objective reality so they slavishly do it in the service of gender ideology. They mindlessly obey when told not to question medical experts who sterilize and mutilate children. They abandon meritocracy in favor of identity politics, destroy works of art, and cheer when government agencies censor free speech on social media. Who cares if someone disagrees about your views about god, abortion or being gay? Embrace people who question everything by abandoning tribal loyalties to primitive left wing pieties and their hive mentalities. Maybe you will change people who disagree with you or they will change you, but that is what gives life meaning and truth, and it is reality's last stand.
Thank you. That's very well said! Wokism, a secular form of fundamentalism, is by now the greatest threat by far to Western civilization or any other civilization. I'm generally conservative (though not in all ways) and religious (though not in any orthodox way), and I welcome support from you and everyone else who values reason in the search for truth.
Not to seem disagreeable, but I caution anyone against confusing the woke left with liberals and, more importantly, Democrats. Wokeists are louder than their numbers, and wield very little influence inside the Democratic Party; hell, even Bernie Sanders wised up to this when, in 2020, he told his campaign "stop hiring activists." Of course, it's always possible that influence will grow, but in most cases, voting for a Democrat is not voting for gender ideology or what have you.
However, there certainly is--as Holly Math Nerd pointed out--a similarity between the Wokeists of today and the Republicans of the 80s and 90s**. Both are mired in a religious ideology, and want to turn that ideology into public policy. For myself, if I wanted to be a slave to ideology, I'd never have become a liberal in the first place.
(**I note that today's Republicans by and large don't even bother pretending at piety, the way they did when I was young. They are gross, rude, and venal, and seem to revel in it, which is a far cry from the days when they impeached Bill Clinton over lying about an affair with a consenting adult.)
Unfortunately wokism has taken over the leadership and majority in the Democratic Party even if rank and file Democrats might be more classically liberal. It is kind of hard to tell. But at this point neither Party represents me.
Like you, I am an anti-woke atheist with a background in evolutionary biology. I am disaffected from the Democratic Party that is completely captured by "successor ideology." That said, what is there to like about the contemporary Republican Party apart from being anti-woke? Seems like the last sensible ones have retired or passed away. The party of MAGA, insurrection, election deniers and Q-ANON, the party that cannot even elect a House speaker at this moment, is just as frightening and arguably the greater immediate threat to democratic institutions. The idea that they will ever welcome atheists into their midst is risible. I am resigned to being without party affiliation for now. I will judge candidates one-by-one. There are some moderate Dems who while they can't attack those to their left do not repeat the mantras. I also question the wisdom of you, as someone out there trying to change minds, associating with one or another political party. You will limit your effectiveness if you do so. We don't need another Chris Rufo. (An aside, you do know that he used to work for the Discovery Institute, don't you? How does he feel about atheists?) You need to be able to reach what remains of the center-left, anti-MAGA who question the new woke dogmas, but they'll tune you out if you call yourself a Republican. I'd love to see a viable third party emerge that could represent the reality-based political center. Unlikely, I know. Until then I'm proudly independent of both disfunctional parties.
Brilliant and consistent with the teachings of Jesus. We are all created in the image of God. Those of us who have been adopted by our Heavenly Father need to be His ambassadors while aware of the fact that we do not know who will eventually yield to the Holy Spirit.
I have never had much respect for Charlie Kirk and in the last couple of years, my respect for Carlson has decreased. They live, think and speak in echo chambers surrounded by those who agree with them and adore them. Hubris and judgmentalism have shone through.
I've noticed this push against atheists by the likes of Matt Walsh. It's a weird time for them to be flexing like this when they have previously stated they will ally with all groups against gender madness.
I welcome more dialogue and debate like the type Sam Harris had with Shapiro and Peterson but I don't get the vibe they want to do this. We'll see. I don't mind using the word Agnostic. It is more honest and appropriately humbling than atheism, which became militant and anti-theist. I would advise atheists and agnostics get too wedded to the GOP. If they can't moderate on issues like abortion, there may be no saving them. I can maintain a pro-choice position while still acknowledging human life is being unjustly terminated. Hitchens and Paglia came to similar conclusions. It is morally superior to be pro-life but it is not feasible in the real world. We can still push back against late term abortions and win the moral argument in gradualism. Desantis found a good medium in 15 week limits. Also, the reality is abortion pills will be ubiquitous and shipped anywhere so any absolute ban will be unenforceable.
Thank you for writing this, Colin. I'm planning to never vote again at this point, because the Republicans are imposing their religion as surely as the Wokists are. The deepest irony is how little compromise it would take to win me and literally all the other non-woke women I know. Adopt European abortion rules (first trimester, safe/legal/rare) and abandon the laws causing horror shows of women who can't get miscarriage care (one of the many stories going around the internet is someone I know personally; even one is too many but her case I know to be 100% real, in Alabama). They'd have won landslides in November 2022 and 2024 would be a cakewalk. It is the exact parallel of how the Democrats would never have lost so many of us without the Woke religious bullshit. But this is what religion does, whether it's the magic of souls in fertilized eggs or the magic of gendered souls. Sigh. Anyway..thank you for saying this.
Extremism on the right is as bad as wokism on the left. Both hate. Both extremes do not represent the highest ideals of humanity.
The policy positions you describe are exactly what Ron DeSantis implemented (15 week elective ban) and likely why he DID win in a landslide. I would like to see the Republican Party embrace both his approach and policy preferences. He has also figured out parents are a powerful and passionate voting block.
This is correct.
"most atheists define 'atheism' as simply 'the lack of belief in a god or gods.' There is a world of difference between merely lacking a belief in something and being 'completely certain' that something does not exist. The vast majority of atheists I have ever met—and I have met a lot—would never say they are certain that God does not exist." I have trouble with this definition, because it could apply equally to the word "agnostic," which I am. People I know who call themselves atheists belittle the very idea that there could be a transcendent being or a Prime Mover. In my experience, they take a rather arrogant and patronizing view of people who do believe. Agnostics say they don't know, and they don't belittle anyone who does believe, because the fact is, nobody knows. But any reasonable person can look at the complexity of life and say that it is a reasonable conclusion the world did not come into being purely by chance. I think Carlson may be reacting to the kind of arrogance I am speaking of. It is splitting hairs to define atheism as "lacking" a belief, since most atheists do take a stand and argue that there is no God (see under Christopher Hitchens et al). I mean to say, they are not passive about this "lack", but often aggressive, so the word has a connotation not of "lack" but of "anti"-belief.
What Colin is describing is not agnostic. Agnosticism is a position on certainty, not on God, and can exist alongside belief or atheism.
Negative atheists (most atheists) - lack a belief in God.
Positive atheists - believe that there is no God.
Agnostic - believes that the answer to whether or not there is a God cannot be known (whether currently a believer or a nonbeliever).
So, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that negative atheists are agnostic, positive atheists are the ones who drip with contempt for faith and agnostics might still be believers even though they believe that the existence of God cannot be known. Academia has been busy. So many hairs to split.
Agnostic and atheist are separate categories.
Agnostic atheists don't believe a god exists, but don't claim knowledge.
Gnostic atheists don't believe a god exists, and claim to know it.
Agnostic theists believe a god exists, but don't claim it as knowledge.
Gnostic theists believe a god exists, and claim to know it for certain.
"Agnostic" describes knowledge or certainty, but tells nothing of belief.
You can believe that a teapot orbits the sun between the Earth and Mars without knowing it (that's faith).
I can disbelieve that such an object exists without having to prove that it does not.
"Agnostic" describes knowledge or certainty, but tells nothing of belief."
The root of agnostic in Greek would be gnosis for knowledge. The prefix of A implies the negative. So it could be translated as the absence of knowledge.
In the context of the existence of God, agnostic means that one is without complete knowledge of whether a God exists. As you point out, that is not a declaration of faith.
As an agnostic, I don't necessarily believe that God exists but I don't discount that as a possibility. I am unable to declare a position about the existence of God because I have no irrefutable proof one way or the other. I am neither a theist or an atheist but I could lean one way or the other based on my interpretation of the evidence.
On the matter of faith and knowledge, it is possible to have faith without knowledge and knowledge without faith but most of the time, faith is grounded in knowledge and evidence. Faith is not inherently the absence of knowledge.
For example, you can have faith that an institution will stand by its principles based on past performance. That is evidence for your faith that is based on historical knowledge and evidence. In the same way, positions for and against the existence of God have evidence.
Many would say that the ordered nature of the universe is evidence for the existence of God. Others review the same evidence and say that chaos settled into order due to the immutable laws of the universe.
Conversely, there is no evidence for the existence of a teapot that orbits the sun between Earth and Mars. Declaring that it exists without evidence is unfalsifiable. It does not require that anyone refute its existence. The same cannot be said for the existence of God.
The root of atheist in Greek is theos. That roughly translates into God. The prefix of A implies the negative. As such, atheist could be translated into the absence (of belief) in God.
From my perspective, atheists and theists are declaring a position on the existence of God. They do so using evidence. However, a gnostic atheist can no more prove the absence of God than a gnostic theist can prove that God exists. The evidence is disputable.
An agnostic atheist is the safest position because it acknowledges that definitive proof doesn't exist for their declared position. An agnostic theist sounds like a theoretical edge case. You would need to discount the evidence of our existence to make this claim.
These are all declarations of faith in one form or another. I say this because you are declaring for or against the existence of God without definitive proof. You either acknowledge that as an agnostic atheist or you use some evidence to justify it as a gnostic atheist.
However, from my perspective, an (a)gnostic (a)theist is really just a sliding scale of confidence, or faith, in the evidentiary proof. An agnostic has a very low level of confidence in the proof available. Using the evidentiary standard, this indicates that you are either a theist, an atheist or an agnostic. Everything else is splitting hairs.
I say that because an agnostic (a)theist inherently leaves themselves open to the possibility that definitive proof may exist to support one position or the other. That equates to a low level of confidence in evidentiary proof. That is how we traditionally define an agnostic.
Atheists have a tendency to assume that theism needs to prove that God exists to disprove atheism. But I would say that the reverse is equally true. In discourse, atheists can also be patronizing, condescending and combative.
This discussion illustrates the disconnect. In this case, atheists have redefined common terms based on their own liturgical practice. When questioned, atheists have explained why those who dissent are operating from a position of ignorance.
All terms and definitions could be open to interpretation. But it is somewhat presumptuous to redefine terms that overlap with agnosticism and then use those as the standard for how everyone should use them going forward.
Personally, I don't care. I operate on the assumption that atheists are going to be condescending assholes when discussing anything related to the divine. If not, that's a bonus. But I can understand why some would have less patience on the matter. That includes, but is not limited to Tucker Carlson.
Wow, quite the well developed presentation of the topic. Will have to give it a reread. Would be interesting to hear you discuss/explain it
I'm just glad that someone read it.
Thanks. I never knew about thse distinctions!
I think your perspective, Barbara, hits the nail on the head and provides the likely context for Tucker Carlson's remark. Not that I think of him as the spokesman for Republican values in any case.
Yes, and Colin, in his description of himself, sounds more like an agnostic. I have also encountered atheists who are not only arrogant and condescending but also hateful towards believers. And perhaps that IS what Tucker was responding to. Hard to tell. We need more dialogue. We should not simply divide ourselves into more and more siloes of hate.
Agree that Colin falls more plausibly into the agnostic camp. Both ardent believers and ardent anti-belief-ers are evangelical at times, off-putting to anyone who prefers to come to their position without aggressive seduction.
He's an agnostic atheist. As already explained, belief and knowledge/certainty are separate categories.
Nobody needs to prove that something does not exist in order to not have a belief in it.
No atheist needs to ever prove or even assert that a god does not exist to not believe it does. No lawyer ever needs to prove a defendant innocent to create disbelief among the jury in their guilt for a verdict of Not Guilty. Nobody needs to prove that a teapot does not orbit the sun between Earth and Mars to not believe such a thing exists. Nobody needs to prove Bigfoot doesn't exist in order to not hold a belief in it/them.
An atheist does not possess a belief in a god or gods. Some of them are certain or claim it as knowledge. Some do not. It doesn't matter which - both do not possess belief. Their difference is in certainty/knowledge: a/gnosticism.
It doesn't matter whether any jurist thinks the defendant is innocent (gnosticism) or is just unconvinced (agnosticism), the verdict they return is the same: Not Guilty.
Perhaps you find atheists off-putting at times because they react unfavorably when you insist that they are making assertions that they are not (and need not).
Barbara, I agree with your assessment 100% and agree with what you postulate about Carlson. Very well stated.
I agree. I used to say I was closer to being an atheist, but then began reading the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and he seemed so certain of his opinions as to take them on faith, and as insulting to non-believers as any preacher, that I thought the religion of atheism wasn't for me.
I know for certain that I do not have a belief in a god or gods. I don't need to know or be certain about the god(s) it/themselves. You seem to have not understood the difference between belief and knowledge.
It doesn't require any faith at all to reject unjustified, unsubstantiated claims. Nobody needs to be certain that Bigfoot do not exist in order to not believe in them or to strenuously oppose people making laws based on Bigfootism. Nobody needs "faith" to say, well, your Bigfoot belief is not based on any evidence, so I'm not going to believe you.
It takes no faith at all to reject the claims believers make that god(s) exist. And rejecting an assertion that they exist does not require asserting that they don't. It's not necessary to claim that there's an even number of jellybeans in a jar in order to reject someone's claim that there's an odd number. No atheist needs to assert that a god does NOT exist in order to not have a belief in such a creature.
Claims do not work that way.
I started my early teens waffling between wanting to believe in a god and being an agnostic. My later dilemma was balancing between being an agnostic or an atheist. I finally took the plunge and have called myself an atheist for the last 2 decades. I don't try to convert anyone and tell people they must come to their beliefs in their own way. I don't criticize other religions (except Scientology, but I can't be blamed for that one) and I am envious, at times of the solace people find in their own beliefs. I just wish people would stop checking off boxes to determine which camp to throw you in.
Agnostic is an adjective relating to knowledge. Saying you're "agnostic" is like if I ask you whether you have an SUV or a conventional car, and you answer "silver." You haven't answered the question at all. It doesn't say anything about belief; it's comparable to those claiming to be "non-binary." "Agnostic" is not some middle-ground between belief or non-belief. You either possess a belief in god(s) or you do not - that's a/theism, the X-axis. It's not a question about gods, it's a question about *you* and what you possess in your belief inventory. You either have "gods" in your belief inventory, or you don't. Saying "I don't know" means we can assume that you don't, as you would know if you do. If I ask you if you have a pen in your bag and you don't know, go looking and don't come back with a pen, we expect to operate on the basis that you don't have a pen. Knowledge is a separate Y-axis: agnostic atheist, agnostic theist, gnostic atheist, gnostic theist. Arguing from a position of scientific ignorance is also not the best bet. Your limited impressions of a created universe does not make it any more true, any more than a Woke's univariate analysis that systemic forces created all disparity makes it true. Both are baseless creationist claims and ignore any attempt to understand. The argument from complexity is notoriously poor. If complexity indicates a creator, then is the creator more complex or less complex? Doesn't this mean the creator needs its own creator? Or is this just going to be a Special Pleading fallacy? If you can imagine a creator who didn't need to be created, you can easily perceive a universe that didn't need to be created. Atheism is not having a belief in gods, same as not having a belief in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. You don't need to believe or prove that Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster don't exist in order to not believe. You don't need to believe someone is Innocent to find them Not Guilty. Believers accuse their gods of existing; atheists find them Not Guilty. As any amount of time watching any police procedural should have taught you, Not Guilty is not the same as Innocent. If you've been touting yourself as an "agnostic," you might need to look into the actual definition of the words you've been using; most supposed-"agnostics" are in fact atheists who just don't like the word.
Sounds like you've made up your own definition of agnostic, interesting though it is. I just looked the word up at dictionary.com and found this:
1. 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. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
3. a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic: Socrates was an agnostic on the subject of immortality.
None of those fit the your definition of replying "silver" when a person is asked what kind of car they have. Or of someone being unsure whether they have a pen in their bag. Perhaps that's because both of your examples do not address the core issue of faith, which is that of believing something to be true (or not true) without material proof. Having faith is believing in something that cannot be proven true or false. It is not being confused about or unsure of a provable fact.
I've long held that atheists actually do have a religion because they believe there is no God (or to use Colin's framing—they lack a belief in God, which is the same thing as believing God doesn't exist). IOW, atheists believe something that is unprovable. And I think Barbara's point is well-taken in that many atheists (certainly not all) treat "believers" with condescension and scorn, not even realizing that they themselves are believers of a different stripe. An agnostic, from what I've seen, is someone who simply says: I don't know what to believe, so I just live my life with the question "does God exist?" unanswered.
Well, this definition is simply more formal than my demotic one. I do believe there is no possibility of ultimate knowledge in this domain, which I thought I had implied.
Again, this is agnosticism. It says nothing about belief. It doesn't answer the question of "do you possess a belief in a god or god?"
Nobody's asking about certainty or knowledge. It's a question about YOU.
Belief is not knowledge. You can believe that a teapot orbits the sun between Earth and Mars without having knowledge of it. Your belief is unjustified (faith-based) until you provide evidence, but your belief does not require knowledge.
It's so telling that self-purported "agnostics" steadfastly refuse to actually answer the question posed in front of them, and deflect and vacillate to avoid acknowledging their theism or atheism (belief or lack of belief).
"Non-binary" people respond the same way when you press them on it. It appears to be part of maintaining the rebel persona.
Yes, you did imply that. I was replying to JD's comment, not yours.
So, where you ignored or missed that #1 is literally about knowledge, not belief, was that deliberate or accidental?
"1. 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."
You made my point for me. A/gnosticism concerns knowledge. Not belief.
My examples were demonstration of answering the question you want to answer, not answering the actual question posed: do you possess a belief in a god? Answering "I'm agnostic" doesn't answer the question. The question is not about knowledge - nobody asked that - it's about belief. Do you possess a belief in a god or gods? Yet again, it's not about the gods, it's about you.
Saying that atheists have their own religion is an easy, lazy way to say "see, you're as bad as us!" when they don't assert or need to assert anything, they can simply evaluate god claims and find them unconvincing.
Perhaps if you answered straightforward questions as given, you wouldn't get the reaction you get.
Lacking belief in God is not the same as believing God doesn't exist. You can lack belief because you are from a place with no God concept, because you are an infant, because you just haven't been convinced yet even though you're open to it, because you're too busy surviving something else to ponder it, and for all sorts of other reasons.
Well, as I see it, infants and children aren't capable of rationally considering existential questions so they don't fit within the scope of this discussion, which is how to categorize the rationally considered response of a person to the ultimate existential question. If a person is unconvinced but open to to the possibility of God, or too busy surviving something else to ponder the question, then they are not taking a side and that meets the dictionary definition of being agnostic. A person who *has* considered the question and come to a conclusion, who has chosen their lack of belief in God, is someone who believes God doesn't exist, aka an atheist. Which is someone who holds a faith that informs their life.
Negative atheists lack belief in God. They do not hold that God does not exist. Agnostism is a position about certainty, not about God.
To decide that negative atheists don't exist, when they're telling you they do, is a fundamentalist position. It seems that you're exactly who Colin is speaking to. Please look into the Principle of Charity and consider the importance of curiosity, understanding, steelmanning, and building alliances instead of clinging to a mischaracterization of people you don't understand. It's something the world needs very much right now in light of the excesses on every side.
I think we're defining terms differently. What you call a negative atheist is someone I would call agnostic, because it sounds like someone who hasn't firmly decided they don't believe in God—or to put it in your terms, they don't posit certainty on the question. So I'm not refusing to acknowledge their existence. I'm categorizing them under a different label.
Also, fwiw, many of the people I follow online are declared non-believers whose intellects and moral compasses I deeply admire. As a conservative believer, I happily welcome the opportunity to align with them in the cause of truth-seeking and truth-telling. So I'd call it a mischaracterization of me to suggest I'm "exactly who Colin is speaking to." I'd like to think you and I can disagree without insisting that the other adopt our own schema and its terminology in order to come to an understanding.
DJ's definition is the first one. The dictionary uses all popularly used definitions of a word. See: "literally"
Hmmm, well DJ's examples do not illustrate definition 1, and definition 3 ("a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic") completely contradicts DJ's definition: "'Agnostic' is not some middle-ground between belief or non-belief."
"1. 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."
Knowledge. Says know and knowledge multiple times. I said knowledge. I was referring to knowledge. Literally my opening line. To pretend I was saying something other than what I EXPLICITLY said is intellectually dishonest.
Says belief zero times. A/gnosticism is about knowledge, not belief. Just as I said.
You can believe without knowing, believe with knowing, not believe with knowing, not believe without knowing.
It absolutely does support what I said.
I reject your initial analogy. The question about the SUV is answerable by a yes or a no, because you have evidence to back it up. The question about the existence of God is not. I take agnostic to mean what I daresay 99.9% of other people do: namely, I don't know whether or not there is a Supreme Being. I think it is just as reasonable to believe there is one as not to believe there is one. I am afraid I don't understand this lengthy, ahem, diatribe, so I will just back away slowly. But thanks for demonstrating my previous assertion about the frequent rhetorical aggression of atheists.
Again, you're responding to the question you want to hear, not answering the question posed. What is being asked is about possession. Do you possess an SUV, not do SUVs exist? We know SUVs exist, the question is about whether you have one. Do you possess a god-belief? We know god-belief exists. The question is whether you possess one.
Once again, the question is about YOU, not about the existence or non-existence of a god.
This is extremely straightfoward. It is telling that you are working so hard to avoid answering without obfuscation and deflection.
I disagree for many reasons. Some things are absolutely knowable, but most are unknowable. Even the origins and age of advanced human civilizations is unknowable today. The popular narrative was until the last decade that advanced human civilization is 5,000-7,000 years old. The evidence today indicates great human civilizations existed at least 12,000 years ago. LiDAR studies in South America indicate there could have been as many as 100 million humans living there at some point, but we don’t know when. Admitting/ believing we don’t know the answer to if there were advanced human civilizations 12,000 or more years ago is a valid and legitimate assessment, while the insistence that we were all unsophisticated nomadic hunter-gatherers until 5,000 to 7,000 years ago is largely negated by recent evidence. But we don’t actually know. We can’t travel in time to observe it.
Those that are humble and honest would say they don’t know how old advanced human civilizations is and acknowledge much of what humans think we know to be true often isn’t. In the 19th century people were sure the earth was 4 million years old. By the 20th it was 40 million. Mid 20th it became 400 million. Late 20th through today it’s cut a 4.54 billion years old. When I was born in 1982 the dinosaurs were thought to have been killed off by a bunch of volcanos. By 2002 it was well established more evidence existed that it was from a metro strike. We don’t know the certain answer to any of these things.
On the biggest and most important questions in life, including God, it is perfectly valid for considered humans to come to the conclusion they don’t know because at this point in time the answer is unknowable and that may always be the case. The implication you either “have” a god/ gods or you don’t, like belief in the existence of god is some kind of trinket, is one the most simple minded assertions I have ever heard.
What you're saying is long-winded and irrelevant, with a patina of faux-humility. And you've either missed or are avoiding the point: knowledge and belief are not the same.
It doesn't matter whether a god or gods is knowable or unknowable - although you can't pretend to know that it's unknowable, otherwise it's knowable. Saying that it's unknowable is a contradiction. How can you know that it's unknowable? You might as well tell me what "nothing" is or is not capable of.
Belief is not knowledge. You can believe that a teapot orbits the sun between Earth and Mars without having knowledge of it. I can disbelieve that such a teapot exists without having to disprove its existence. Your belief in such a teapot is unjustified (faith-based) until you provide evidence, but your belief does not require knowledge.
It's not simple-minded to separate belief and knowledge. It's simple-minded to conflate the two, act like belief and non-belief share equal footing, fail to understand how we logically accept or reject arguments and propositions, and post a rambling screed about knowledge when the subject matter is belief.
If we go into a store and I point to a jar of jellybeans and tell you that there's an even number, do you believe me? Can you disbelieve me? If you disbelieve me, are you saying there's an odd number? Does your disbelief require you to know how many jellybeans there are? The claim of an even number of jellybeans is separate from the claim that there's an odd number.
Rejecting that a defendant is guilty does not require you to believe that they're innocent. That's what Not Guilty is for.
Believers accuse their god(s) of existing. Atheists find them Not Guilty. No atheist ever needs to find a god Innocent of existing.
You either possess a belief in a god or gods or you do not. You either accept god-existence claims or you do not. You either find gods Guilty of existence or you do not. If you do not, then you are an atheist. None of this requires knowledge.
Nobody needs to know that a god does not exist to reject someone's claim that such a being does.
The fact that you are trying to conflate the debate over evidence of the existence of a great power beyond material human grasp with the guilt or non-guilt of a human breaking a law that is purely a human social construct certainly demonstrates your own narrow perception of the universe, but it says nothing about the debate around the existence of that great force or being.
While clearly not all atheists are so removed from material reality as to embrace the utter insanity of gender ideology, your comments might explain why the movement arose out of atheist movements. If your assertion is demonstrative of the thought process of most atheists, then it makes sense many atheists support gender ideology because your rants portray a world view that can't grasp existence of anything outside of modern industrialized social constructs. That is the foundational assertion of those who promote the demonstrably false nonsense that everything impacting the human experience can be controlled by humans via adjustments to social constructs and centralized control of the narratives to support those constructs. This world view is effectively the basis of many secular modern theologies from (failed) Marxists aims to socially engineer equal outcomes to gender ideologists attempts to socially engineer reproductive roles to such a degree they are reduced to mere preferences.
What constitutes "advanced human civilizations"? How can a civilization be advanced and not leave behind some evidence of its trajectory? Cave drawings tell us people lived at a certain time, but are those drawings "advanced" or primitive? For me the beginning of advancement is self-awareness, which produces ideas that are distinct from knowledge connected to sustainability of life. Ideas produce artefacts, practices and so forth that leave a mark. If there were advanced civilizations from 12,000 years ago, where did they go? Was there a meteorite that blasted them into smithereens?
I realized my first comment did not answer your question. I am sorry. As to your smithereens question - yes!! But many impacts. Evidence first discovered before I was born (I was born in the 1980's), but only recently being acknowledged by the "expert" class indicate a 1,300-year period known as Younger Dryas that began approximately 12.900 years ago. This period completely changed the Earth's climate, temperature, and surface. If you want to look at the evidence of this catastrophic event, look at topographical maps of younger rivers and you will see modern rivers often flow at the bottom of enormous river channels that are today flood plains and fertile valleys.
We don't know this was contained to north America (what the "expert" class wants to claim), because there is globally, but we do know it was catastrophic. Widespread flooding beyond our imaginations, impacts when we went through the remnants of the Torus comet every 6 months, 400ft rise in ocean level which may have happened in only a few years at the end of that period. During this period half of all mammal species went extinct. Some of those leading the drive to acknowledge this also claim in 2030 the same could happen again and have dd theories around drugs I don't remotely buy, but the evidence of great past civilizations is well supported with actual evidence confirmed by many others and carbon dating. I'm leaning strongly towards the 2030 thing being yet another faux dooms day prediction that, like most, is probably not going to happen, but I might be hanging out in the Appalachian Mountains with my family just in case. haha).
Great anthropologists and geologists have long postulated about the Sphinx being 10,000 years old because the weathering damage (which couldn't occur more recently) and later restoration but were rejected by the "expert" gatekeepers who don't want to admit they were wrong about anything. When gobleki tepe was discovered in 1994 it blew up the argument those societies simply didn't exist. Those structures are at least 12,000 years old from carbon dating.
Likewise, in North America many geologists and astronomers have postulated the great Earth Works here are a similar age at least based on their alignment with the sun (and the slight changes over the last 10,000 years). That argument was rejected because we carbon dated bones found in them wo closer to 2,000 years ago. However, early explorers in the Americas who spoke with native tribes recorded that those tribes said the earthworks predated their society's existence - basically they took over the structures of a past civilization. Similar theory to the Sphinx. This gets suppressed by the "expert" class but many of the archives remain.
Food for thought.
They left behind a crap ton more evidence than anything we build today ever could. Gobekli Tepe (and another 11 already discovered similar great earthworks) in Turkey, Serpent mound in North America (among dozens of others including Bimini Road), weathering evidence indicates the great Sphinx was actually built at least 10,000 years ago and the head of a Pharoah was carved onto it thousands of years later. LiDAR has revealed earthworks in South America Capable of supporting at least 100 million and only 2% of the canopy has been hit with LiDAR. The most fertile soil 12,000 years ago was in what is now the Saharah desert which no one is excavating. 30,000 year old detailed and beautiful figurines made of woolly mammoth tusks have been found in European caves that took an estimated 400 hours to craft from an artisan. Plato put Atlantis 9,000 years before his time (or about 11K-12K years ago). All of these things require an advanced degree of self-awareness not to mention efficiency in feeding, housing, and clothing a population so others had the free time to create great art and build great earthworks. It's increasingly appearing much of the cave art we've found are basically ancient Graphiti and doodles (remember the people who created them don't appear to have actually lived in most of the caves).
Our biggest structures and roads won't last 200 years. A catastrophic earth impact, or series of earth impacts, that lead to the kind of flooding and 400ft ocean rise seen on earth 12,800-11,600 years ago happened again it would wipe out all evidence of our society (and no, "climate change" from human emissions is not a and can not cause that). Look how much of our knowledge and communication is stored on electronic devices. All we'd leave behind is plastic trash that would give zero indication of an advanced society. Heck, it's taken us hundreds of years to just refigure out how ancient Roman concrete is far superior to ours today and as it turns out they had far more advanced knowledge of using heat to cause chemical reactions leading to far superior concrete to our own.
Do you really think humans went around grunting at each other for a couple hundred thousand years and then, magically, in a span of 5,000 years figured out how to put a man on the moon? That line of reasoning is arrogant fir sure, but not very logical.
Wokeness is the worst kind of cultish religious movement -- it has all the most dogmatic, oppressive aspects of a religion, but with none of the redeeming qualities such as forgiveness and mercy. Things went off the rails in atheism when Danny Muscato put on a dress and holy pronouns and didn't get laughed out of the room.
I've been an atheist ever since I was 11 many decades ago. I don't believe in God. And if I had to bet on it, I'd say I'm absolutely, positively certain it's a completely made up, fictional character, like James Bond, Scarlett O'Hara, or the Road Runner.
But at this point I'm far more concerned about the screwed up direction the Democrats are headed in than the Republicans. Yes, I support abortion rights. I even had one many decades ago (no regrets). But if I had to rank order the two issues, abortion restrictions vs. "transgender" brainwashing, on their importance to society, the "transgender" threat would come out way on top every time.
Yes. Abortion restrictions are unfair. But they primarily affect low income girls and women of childbearing age. And there are highly effective methods to prevent pregnancy, Plan B pills, and medical abortions. But the "transgender" propaganda affects everyone. Men, women, girls, and boys. Rich or poor. Old or young.
I'll be Goddamned (pun intended) if I'm going to accept the idiotic pronoun farce. And I'm outraged whenever I read about a perverted male sex offender being housed in a women's prison where he can rape, beat, and impregnate his female cellmate. I hate the pernicious indoctrination children are subjected to to make them doubt their own physical sex. And most of all, I detest the idea that tens of thousands of teenage girls are mutilating their bodies with male hormones and double mastectomies.
I will never vote for a Democrat again. I just hope the Republicans can get their act together and stop obsessing about embryos and fetuses. They'd win more elections if they abandoned that hill to die on.
People like Tucker and Kirk have unfortunately equated those who are atheist with all those who have no morality when in fact many have a strong moral compass stronger even than some of the professed ultra religious. How someone leads ones life, what guides their behavior is more important than any label. In fact questioning the existance of a higher power, of G-d, is a process that many deeply religious go through but few discuss. Those of us with a strong desire to follow basic moral precepts need to align together to fight what appears to be a concerted movement to normalize any and all depravity. We need more alliances, not divisions. I was quite surprised to hear Tucker speak this way. I thought he was more moderate. I wonder if it is worth reaching out to him?
Tucker is moderate. He is vehemently anti-war, but pretty moderate otherwise. I don’t watch the talking head evening show much, but I have Fox Nation just for Tucker Carlson today and Originals. From Michael Shellenberger to Randall Carlson to the head of gays against groomers, Carlson interviews a diverse group of people whose ideas he thinks should be heard, right or wrong, because they add depth and complexity to our understanding of the world. I think Matt Taibbi was on his evening show last night. Tucker interviews Glenn Greenwald all the time. There is a ton of crossover with Joe Rogan interviewees as well.
Agree! I would be delighted to hear Colin and Tucker discuss this very topic. I suspect they would land on common ground.
Colin - I get you are upset when you hear those on the right being intolerant on your lack of religious views. I don’t personally feel that way nor do the many conservatives I know, but I do at least understand the viewpoint that is suspicious of those promoting atheism though I see less concern from conservatives towards those who just personally don’t believe in God. I find actual conservatives, Carlson included, far more tolerate of divergent opinions and beliefs than the left has ever been. That said, the right is more about judging to conserving culture and while they more tolerant, there are issues that some conservatives won’t budge, on and this is one of them.
There is also a very good reason for that. There is a strong correlation between societies that reject religion and terrible atrocities, even if that’s not true for some individuals. That’s not to claim people haven’t used religion to promote atrocities, but there is a difference in scale. Also, not all religions have a positive impact on society, but some definitively do.
Our society is sterilizing and genitally mutilating kids for the “crime” of failing to fit some gender norm box. As you point out this idea did not originate from religious people. Stalin is one of the most evil humans to ever live (Hitler is with him). China enslaves millions of minorities to build us lead filled solar panels today. Mao starved tens of millions. North Korea. Vietnam. Cambodia. Cuba. The list goes on. At what point will atheist at least acknowledge elimination of religion from society has opened the doors to mass suffering, totalitarianism, and death on an unparalleled level in the last 100ish years?
While I get your point, and 10-12 years ago would have agreed, having kids completely changed my perspective. I am raising my kids religiously for the reasons conservatives embrace religion and I have zero regrets. We don’t raise them to see the world simply or in black and white, but we do want them rooted in an old and tested theology with a solid moral foundation. Not everyone, but for many, when they claim to believe in nothing they will actually believe in anything. While there are exceptions and spectrums and all the nuance in the world, conservatives are often more religious because they draw a direct, and I believe accurate, line between populations that reject religion only to treat the state as God willing to become zealots for anything.
We aren’t super religious or devout, but I find myself hoping my kids decide to build a life with someone who has at least a little faith. Not a religious zealot and not an atheist, but somewhere in the vast in between. I have also rediscovered my own faith the past few years and it has helped guide and ground me as a mom in this bat 💩 crazy world.
If people don’t like how religious a particular candidate is they should support moderate candidates and vote in the primaries. There are moderate populist on the right and they do well - both Ron DeSantis and JD Vance are moderates if you look at their actual policies.
But consider that while you may not need God, maybe as a society we do need a little God, some grounding in positive religions to remind us we aren’t little Gods and shouldn’t try to be, even if everyone doesn’t need to full on believe every aspect of any particular religion. There is good reason some conservatives are suspicious of atheist movements. The woke aren’t the first to use atheism as a conduit for immoral tyranny and destruction, and they probably won’t be the last.
Also, Carlson isn’t a politician. He’s a conservative Christian commentator. To ask conservative Christians to abandon their desire to have those of faith represent them is wrong. It is people of faith, several different faiths, leading the charge against child genital mutilation and government tyranny. The churches, not the “liberals” pushed back against Covid nonsense. The conservatives push back against mutilating children for toddler wrongthink. Jesus taught that all humans are of one body.
Carlson is no purest - if you see Tucker Carlson today, which in my opinion is FAR superior to any talking head show at night - you’ll see a huge variety of guests including recent folks like Michael Shellenberger and Randall Carlson. Randall Carlson has some fascinating insights I happen to agree with, and some I find nuts that I don’t - like thinking hallucinogenics may have lead humans to create civilization. Wether it’s more supported theories like advanced human civilization being much much older than the narrative, or what I still think are crazy drug theories, no religious zealot gives that guy a platform. There is actually a ton of crossover with guests hosted by Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson on his Fox Nation stuff.
All this a long way of saying I don’t think you are going to find open arms on the right for those promoting atheism for the sake of atheism. You will find tolerance to be an atheist on the right. In this country most conservatives support freedom of religion, not removing religion from society.
Perhaps that leaves many politically homeless and perhaps that’s a good thing. Politics isn’t sport. We need people who don’t have a team to keep both extremes in check. Vote the policies that you think are best. Vote whichever party is best at that moment for your country and community. Before rejecting good public policy because your feelings are hurt by the individual politician’s religious views, keep in mind conservatives study history and see a ton of danger in atheist societies and they are not necessarily wrong about that. They see the same danger in the state promoting a particular religion. We need different viewpoints for balance, not hard core team groupthink that caters to the extremes.
Well, most Christians are certain that their god exists, other gods don't, their religion is correct, and any other religion is incorrect.
To quote Dawkins, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
The Republicans would need to do a lot more than become nominally open to atheists to get the votes of centrist Democrats. The right’s extremism on abortion; their (in my view) deadly willingness to politicize vaccinations, and above all, their efforts to subvert our democracy, put them beyond the pale. I’m a Democrat who strongly upholds reality on sex, and I’m even a Christian, but I will never vote for people who support most of what today’s right wing supports. I would rather come up with ways to educate and persuade people like me about the danger and irrationality of the trans ideology. If I can be convinced, so can others.
Did you really accuse Republicans of politicizing vaccines while the Democrats othered the unvaccinated and tried to force experimental shots into innocent children and young adults??? My husband and I put in our will our kids won’t get these deadly clot shots. We won’t get these shots. We’ve buried five friends, 3 of them former college athletes that were still in extremely good shape and all under 55 since August 2021. Four times as many in the vaccine group died of heart attacks as did in the placebo group during the trials, and that number of vaccine group heart attack deaths was twice the number of Covid deaths in the placebo group. All cause mortality remains elevated in countries that used the mRNA shots but not those that don’t.
My kids might never vote for Democrats their entire life because of how Democrats screwed poor kids in their generation with completely useless and incredibly harmful “mitigation.”
Not to be harsh, but you are the type of very uniformed yet judge person that lead my husband and I to build a vacation home during the pandemic to get away from. You also remind me why I left the Democrat party and should think long and hard before ever voting for a Dem again.
Thanks. You have made made the reasons for my position clearer than I could.
My comment was pointing to all the ways Democrats ignored true evidence and data, even censoring it from the public, all so they could mandate vaccines and justify their harmful and authoritarian political Covid policies. When you interpret that as “Republicans politicizing vaccines” you actually prove my point. That you claim my statement about the actions Democrats took, and the objective evidence they discounted, makes “your reasons” for your positions clear is nothing more than you typing a self-own you don’t seem to realize is a self own. My comment said nothing about Republicans because Republicans are not the ones who politicized Covid vaccines. Republicans policy was very clear they thought it was a non political personal choice. I’m still waiting for the winter of death Joe Biden promised those of us who opted against the vaccines.
Thanks Colin, I am one of those evangelicals who is happy to have you fight this battle with us. I never thought I would see the day when I was reading a Richard Dawkins tweet and saying "yeah....this guy has it right..." but here we are. Hopefully good things will come out of all this. I am confident that common sense will prevail in the gender discussion and these new friendships made in the thick of battle will last well into the future.
People on the right are allowed to disagree about anything, including religion. That is what makes them different from the cult-like left that marches in lockstep conformity to embrace acts of scientific nonsense and moral depravity. The left is told to abandon objective reality so they slavishly do it in the service of gender ideology. They mindlessly obey when told not to question medical experts who sterilize and mutilate children. They abandon meritocracy in favor of identity politics, destroy works of art, and cheer when government agencies censor free speech on social media. Who cares if someone disagrees about your views about god, abortion or being gay? Embrace people who question everything by abandoning tribal loyalties to primitive left wing pieties and their hive mentalities. Maybe you will change people who disagree with you or they will change you, but that is what gives life meaning and truth, and it is reality's last stand.
Thank you. That's very well said! Wokism, a secular form of fundamentalism, is by now the greatest threat by far to Western civilization or any other civilization. I'm generally conservative (though not in all ways) and religious (though not in any orthodox way), and I welcome support from you and everyone else who values reason in the search for truth.
Not to seem disagreeable, but I caution anyone against confusing the woke left with liberals and, more importantly, Democrats. Wokeists are louder than their numbers, and wield very little influence inside the Democratic Party; hell, even Bernie Sanders wised up to this when, in 2020, he told his campaign "stop hiring activists." Of course, it's always possible that influence will grow, but in most cases, voting for a Democrat is not voting for gender ideology or what have you.
However, there certainly is--as Holly Math Nerd pointed out--a similarity between the Wokeists of today and the Republicans of the 80s and 90s**. Both are mired in a religious ideology, and want to turn that ideology into public policy. For myself, if I wanted to be a slave to ideology, I'd never have become a liberal in the first place.
(**I note that today's Republicans by and large don't even bother pretending at piety, the way they did when I was young. They are gross, rude, and venal, and seem to revel in it, which is a far cry from the days when they impeached Bill Clinton over lying about an affair with a consenting adult.)
Unfortunately wokism has taken over the leadership and majority in the Democratic Party even if rank and file Democrats might be more classically liberal. It is kind of hard to tell. But at this point neither Party represents me.
I like this comment, even though I'm not so sure there are democrats going against the radical-activist grain. I hope so.
I gave up on the left several years ago. Not yet ready to align myself with the right, mostly due to religious and environmental issues.
Like you, I am an anti-woke atheist with a background in evolutionary biology. I am disaffected from the Democratic Party that is completely captured by "successor ideology." That said, what is there to like about the contemporary Republican Party apart from being anti-woke? Seems like the last sensible ones have retired or passed away. The party of MAGA, insurrection, election deniers and Q-ANON, the party that cannot even elect a House speaker at this moment, is just as frightening and arguably the greater immediate threat to democratic institutions. The idea that they will ever welcome atheists into their midst is risible. I am resigned to being without party affiliation for now. I will judge candidates one-by-one. There are some moderate Dems who while they can't attack those to their left do not repeat the mantras. I also question the wisdom of you, as someone out there trying to change minds, associating with one or another political party. You will limit your effectiveness if you do so. We don't need another Chris Rufo. (An aside, you do know that he used to work for the Discovery Institute, don't you? How does he feel about atheists?) You need to be able to reach what remains of the center-left, anti-MAGA who question the new woke dogmas, but they'll tune you out if you call yourself a Republican. I'd love to see a viable third party emerge that could represent the reality-based political center. Unlikely, I know. Until then I'm proudly independent of both disfunctional parties.
Brilliant and consistent with the teachings of Jesus. We are all created in the image of God. Those of us who have been adopted by our Heavenly Father need to be His ambassadors while aware of the fact that we do not know who will eventually yield to the Holy Spirit.
I have never had much respect for Charlie Kirk and in the last couple of years, my respect for Carlson has decreased. They live, think and speak in echo chambers surrounded by those who agree with them and adore them. Hubris and judgmentalism have shone through.
I've noticed this push against atheists by the likes of Matt Walsh. It's a weird time for them to be flexing like this when they have previously stated they will ally with all groups against gender madness.
I welcome more dialogue and debate like the type Sam Harris had with Shapiro and Peterson but I don't get the vibe they want to do this. We'll see. I don't mind using the word Agnostic. It is more honest and appropriately humbling than atheism, which became militant and anti-theist. I would advise atheists and agnostics get too wedded to the GOP. If they can't moderate on issues like abortion, there may be no saving them. I can maintain a pro-choice position while still acknowledging human life is being unjustly terminated. Hitchens and Paglia came to similar conclusions. It is morally superior to be pro-life but it is not feasible in the real world. We can still push back against late term abortions and win the moral argument in gradualism. Desantis found a good medium in 15 week limits. Also, the reality is abortion pills will be ubiquitous and shipped anywhere so any absolute ban will be unenforceable.