why do so many non-religious people seem to completely reject the mere possibility of an after-life, or even just a soul, or some kind of spiritual energy connecting lifeforms?
EDGE WARNING
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I don’t believe in ghosts either and I don’t feel like I should have some giant asterisk hanging off that statement every time
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Agnosticism is not a middle ground. It’s something entirely different. It’s a view that existence of god is unknowable. So, you can be either atheist or theist. There’s no middle ground. You either believe in god(s) or not.
Some people say they are “agnostic”, because they are “open to a possibility that a god exist”, but that means they don’t believe in one. IMHO, people often use the term “agnostic” because there is a very real discrimination across entire world against the atheists. It’s sort of a copout atheists use to get by easier.
I think accepting yourself as an ant trying to understand a cellphone is an agnostic position as opposed to an athiest one as well. Is that a fair statement?
Gnostic theists are people who say they know God is real. They had a shroom trip probably.
Agnostic theists believe in God, but acknowledge that they haven’t really seen or spoken to or heard him.
Agnostic atheists don’t believe in God, and acknowledge that they haven’t like, died, so, whatever.
Gnostic atheists basically don’t exist, other than some Redditor who heard they didn’t exist, and hyped himself up into calling himself that.
Gnostic atheists basically don’t exist, other than some Redditor who heard they didn’t exist, and hyped himself up into calling himself that.
Or half the commentors in this thread
Atheism means you don’t believe any deities. It doesn’t mean you reject the possibility altogether, and it doesn’t have anything to say at all about souls, afterlifes, or spiritual energies.
Not to go all internet logic guy on you, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell’s_teapot is a good explanation of why atheism encompasses a lot of agnosticism. Or in other words why somebody who says “I don’t know if X is true” (agnostic) is often very comfortable also saying “I don’t believe that X is true.” (atheist)
Yeah to elaborate, part of the point of the teapot example, is that nobody feels the need to litigate and re-litigate epistemological arguments about anything mundane like “is a teapot in a very unlikely place” - they only get twisted into knots over the afterlife because they really hate dying.
If our lives depended on the teapot, suddenly people would start arguing about whether we can really know, with our brains, if there wasn’t a Roman space program or something.
Oh and also we would have vast theoretical discussions about the internal politics of the Roman Space Force and its motivations for creating a clay teapot and launching it into space. Maybe a symbolic dedication to Roman craftsmen. Maybe the emperor was clowning on a senator who wanted to send an astronaut. Maybe it was some crazy mixup!
If it was a mixup, now let’s think about the logistical peculiarities of a system that could have created such a teapot mixup, how certain archelogical sites lend credence to one framework or another, and how those theoretical logistical systems could have affected history without showing up in the archaeological records. How does the teapot scenario suggest we should carry ourselves socially, culturally, politically today? What are the lessons there?
Not joking - if we needed the teapot, this would be just a tiny fragment of the trillions of words, hundreds of billions of hours and entire professions dedicated to the teapot. The teapot stuff would wind up causing brutal genocides and centuries of immiseration.
definitely the romans, not the chinese. who actually drank tea and fucked around with gunpowder in that same period.
definitely the romans.
russels teapot was put there by the ancient chinese, you stupid fucking piece of racist shit. prove me wrong.
Ugh I’m tired of these Reformist Baptist Teapotist Congregationalist Council of 1907 heretics always showing up in the chat.
That’s true. But, as a tangential point, we do actually affirm this line of thinking with actions as well as words, even for important things. For example, just like the teacup and (from an agnostic’s point of view) God, I have no reason to think there’s an axe murderer hiding in my closet, but I also can’t rule it out. And the result of that is that I act exactly the same as I would if I was sure there wasn’t an axe murderer.
So even when my life depends on being right, I act exactly the same for “I don’t know if X is true” as “I don’t believe X is true”.
I have an attachment to the empirical and falsifiable that’s probably childish.
I have honestly wanted to engage with the spiritual, but nothing’s hooked me. Probably need to do mushrooms in the forest.
As your doctor and priest, I prescribe 3g shrooms or 1 hit (100-200 mcg) LSD + 2-300 mg ketamine (taken after you’ve come up and are crusing along nicely from the shrooms/acid), alone in a darkened room with headphones + music (I recommend throbbing gristle/early psychic TV). This is very sound medical and theological advice, don’t worry.
Edit: you may wanna do this with a buddy around in the next room, just in case. And be sure to lie down in a comfy place before the K hits, since you’ll probably lose track of your body completely while you explore the astral and etheric realms.
Edit 2: to contextualize your experience, you may want to read “Programming and metaprogramming the human biocomputer” by John C. Lilly beforehand, maybe also “Prometheus rising” by Robert Anton Wilson.
No guarantee mushrooms will do the trick. I saw god on mushrooms, but it was in fact a tree
At the risk of sounding like a logic bro: I haven’t ever seen any evidence of anything spiritual, so I have no reason to entertain the possibility of it existing. If there is no reason for me to believe (or at the very least consider the existence of) something, why should I? As for the myriad questions that science has not yet answered (or cannot answer) I’m perfectly happy to say ‘I don’t know’ rather than seeking a spiritual explanation without at least an indication that it might be the right one.
