Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte
Actually, I think there's not a lot of difference between agnostics and atheists. Lebowski, I love you man, but you are reflecting a common misunderstanding of atheists. Atheists who have given any thought to their belief system are really just what have been known since ancient Greek times as "materialists." You see this reflected over and over again in modern writings of atheists. Many in fact just call themselves materialists. A couple of the founders of this outlook are Democritus and Epicurus.
Atheists or materialists don't have anyting like "faith" in the absense of God. What they believe is that anything you can't perceive with your senses is of no account. In fact they do practice a complete absense of faith; it's a discipline. They don't believe that "spirituality" is anyting other than emotion, until their senses tell them otherwise, that is. If they were to experience anything like Joseph Smith's "First Vision" they'd believe in God without having to adjust their basic outlook one whit.
Democritus and Epicurus are enormously underrated in their importance to Western culture. They are the true fathers of the scientific method. Aristotle and Plato are much more revered because they were the first humans to articulate a dichotomy between the carnal body and the soul, and the early Christians and later middle ages Christians incorporated their philsophies wholesale into Christianity; Plato even much influenced Paul's development of the idea of an atonement. But Epicurus dismissed his rough contemporary Plato as spinnr of fantasies.
Again, I refer everyone to the magnificent epic poem "On the Nature of Things" also called "The Way Things Are" for a brilliant and beautiful articulation of this outlook.
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Well said. And I realize that I am oversimplifying things.
Nevertheless.... when you say "I think there's not a lot of difference between agnostics and atheists.", I have to agree based on your definition of an atheist. Now I would like to read your definition of an agnostic.
When you say: "
If they were to experience anything like Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' they'd believe in God without having to adjust their basic outlook one whit." I understand your point. But most atheists I have known are dead sure that there is no God and use every opportunity to ridicule believers. It seems to me that such an experience would be shattering to an atheist since it would turn their world view upside down and completely disprove the "there is no such thing as a spiritual world" mindset.
In other words, when one says "spirituality is nothing more than emotion", isn't that a statement of belief, to a degree? How can one definitively prove such a thing?