Quote from: reaper on December 06, 2006, 09:14:52 PMi don't think people are always trying to fill in the gaps, i think a lot of people have been believing in god a long timeQuote of the day. October 1st, 2009.
i don't think people are always trying to fill in the gaps, i think a lot of people have been believing in god a long time
Since we were parsing all this text anyway, we thought it would be cool to do some basic reading-level analysis on what people had written about themselves. We used the Coleman-Liau Index ... we [...] ran reading level by religion and found this:
We subdivided this chart further, by how serious each person was about their beliefs:
Note that for each of the faith-based belief systems I've listed, the people who are the least serious about them write at the highest level. On the other hand, the people who are most serious about not having faith (i.e. the "very serious" agnostics and atheists) score higher than any religious groups.
great pointless graphs!
It's not something you can test well, and it wouldn't matter if you could.
I would say ahteists genereally believe there is no god, and they are fairly sure of it. Some reason they might cite:1) religion has been shown to be wrong over and over, you can even rule out gods based on the fact that people believe in multiple different gods2) there appears no need for a god, and we have explained so muchAnyways I would say those are the main arguments. Agnostic generally means the person doesn't ascribe to saying one particular belief is true.edit: by default the ahteists have an agenda
Also, whats the difference between being agnostic and atheist?
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. -- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. -- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945
http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way. 1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.' 2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.' 3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.' 4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.' 5. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.' 6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.' 7. Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.'I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7, but I include it for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated. It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so (Jung also believed that partuclar books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bang.) Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 is in practice rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1, which has many devoted inhabitants. I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.
by default the ahteists have an agenda