mattnewport comments on Atheist or Agnostic? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: byrnema 18 April 2009 09:25PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 19 April 2009 06:36:01PM *  0 points [-]

Beyond the problem of complete acceptance, I have yet to find a definition of God that is not:

  1. Obviously empirically false (e.g. omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and nothing else) or
  2. Incoherent - (e.g. omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and some fourth property that we cannot possibly fathom that supercedes the other thre, i.e. we literally have no idea what He is)

Most definitions of god involve a lot of hand-waving, to the point at which you don't actually know what you mean when you say "I believe in God."

This is the main reason I do not associate atheism with an affirmative belief in non-existence. "I do not believe bleggs exist" is not a reasonable statement unless you can reasonably define bleggs.

"Any agent with supernatural powers who is responsible for the creation of the universe and/or mankind, who is ontologically superior to mankind" seems like a fairly catch-all definition of God (as opposed to god(s), which could be somewhat different). Admittedly, there's some hand-waving in "ontologically superior," but I think this definition is pretty effective. Admittedly I know little about Eastern religion, so I may be missing something big. I'm not attached to that definition at all and would love to see a better one if someone has one.

Comment author: mattnewport 19 April 2009 10:06:17PM 0 points [-]

I feel fairly comfortable describing myself as an atheist without having a catch-all definition of God. What I mean when I describe myself as an atheist is that I believe in the non-existence of God according to the (differing) definitions used by 95%+ of people who claim to believe in God. In a discussion with an individual theist, if they ask me what I mean when I say God doesn't exist, I can ask them what they believe about God and then tell them why I believe that God doesn't exist.

In the rare case of a theist who believes in a God who created the universe and has had no further involvement, I will explain to them why I think that the God they believe in is a meaningless concept and not something to which the word belief can be usefully attached.