Rain comments on Rationality quotes: April 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: wnoise 01 April 2010 08:41PM

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Comment author: Rain 01 April 2010 08:47:41PM 18 points [-]

The word agnostic is actually used with the two distinct meanings of personal ignorance and intrinsic unknowability in the same context. They are distinguished when necessary with a qualifier.

WEAK agnosticism: I have no fucking idea who fucked this shit up.
STRONG agnosticism: Nobody has any fucking idea who fucked this shit up.

There is a certain confusion with weak atheism which could (and frequently does) arise, but that is properly reserved for the category of theological noncognitivists,

WEAK atheism: What the fuck do you mean with this God shit?
STRONG atheism: Didn't take any God to fuck this shit up.

which is different again from weak theism.

WEAK theism: Somebody fucked this shit up.
STRONG theism: God fucked this shit up.

An interesting cross-categorical theological belief not easily represented above is

DEISM: God set this shit up and it fucked itself.

-- Snocone, in a Slashdot post

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 12 April 2010 12:25:35PM 0 points [-]

Could someone explain why this has been voted up so much? I didn't find it particularly funny, or to have any non-trivial insight.

Comment author: Bo102010 12 April 2010 12:30:20PM 5 points [-]

It shoehorns the use of giggle-inducing curse words into an explanation of religious views. Someone who has only ever been exposed to Beavis and Butthead cartons, and has never heard about "agnosticism," might be able to learn from this type of explanation.

Comment author: Rain 12 April 2010 01:50:42PM 0 points [-]

It presents a quick and easy, bullet-point spectrum of belief, which many people may not know exists.

An anecdotal data point: I linked to this quote when talking to a friend who was using me to vent their anti-theist ideas since they didn't have many other outlets for such thoughts. They laughed, and were able to properly categorize their beliefs (weak atheist) for the first time, rather than thinking themselves some kind of heretic (evil atheist).

That said, I didn't expect it to be this popular, either.

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