tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521212.post114313269515306083..comments2023-06-04T03:02:21.239-05:00Comments on I Am Monkey Boy: Atheists are the new CommunistsIAmMonkeyBoyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07871482079508396802noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5521212.post-1143145636901285242006-03-23T14:27:00.000-06:002006-03-23T14:27:00.000-06:00A while ago, I gave up telling people who bothered...A while ago, I gave up telling people who bothered to ask that I was agnostic. Oh, I'm still agnostic, but the term pretty much requires me to launch into the differences between "weak atheism" and "strong agnosticism". It's all the same to them. <BR/><BR/>Most people will always fail to differentiate between the lack of belief in a god and the outright belief in the non-existence of God. Their ignorance and my impatience resut in me simply stating I dont believe IN god. They assume that Im atheist, and then have a relatively passable understanding of where I'm coming from. <BR/><BR/>Agnosticism isn't chicken shit or fence-sitting or watered down atheism or any of the other epithets the armchair theologians care to rattle off. I like to think of it this way:<BR/><BR/>The theist states that there is an invisible pink dragon who grants wishes and lives in the sky.<BR/><BR/>The atheist falls for the bait and identifies him or herself with a belief system devoted to proving the non-existence of the invisible, pink, wish-granting dragon in the sky.<BR/><BR/>The agnostic, unlike the atheist, realizes that the burden of proof is on the theist, and as such, chooses to not waste his time and participate in a debate that is unwinnable, given all the theists qualifiers designed to shoehorn the concept of the dragon into a rational world. If you can't see, touch, or hear the dragon, and the dragon's wish-granting nature appears to be completely arbitrary, then what is the difference between the existence and the non-existence of the dragon? The agnostic happily goes about their life, and will deal with the evidence for and against the dragon's existence when it presents itself, which it is not likely to do.Matthew Iversonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00631348291628685159noreply@blogger.com