Richard Dawkins' a/theism scale
Sep. 2nd, 2012 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
martasficOver at FB, Hank Fox of the Blue Collar Atheist blog asked:
I'm curious ... where do different people fall? And why, if you know?
Personally, I'm a bit leery of Dawkins's scheme for dividing things up. It assumes there's evidence that makes it more or less probable that God exists, I'm not sure I accept that. (Acutally, I'm not sure about evidence full stop when it comes to God since that seems to apply God is understandable more than I think He is.) As I've grown up and decided what I believe for myself, I've become more and more agnostic, but not in the sense most people mean by agnostic. I'm one of those religious people who think that God is unknowable because if I could break down god into facts that would fit in my brain, the kind of Being I was thinking about wouldn't really be worthy of the name God. I still firmly believe God exists, but it's not some kind of propositional claim I believe because I know it's true. It involves faith, which is something else entirely. (I seesaw a bit on this, and sometimes I do believe I can prove God exists, but more and more I'm leaning in this direction as I figure out what I truly believe.) All of that means I don't think it's more or less likely God exists - that implies the kind of evidence you could be wrong about.
But if you pushed me and let me put aside that concern, I'd say I'm a "two" (de facto theist) or a "three" (weak theist) depending on what I'm going through on RL. This is mostly about my mental state; sometimes the problem of evil seems more real --psychologically, not rationally-- than at other times. Rationally, I have answers to that problem that are more or less convincing (to me). But emotionally? Sometimes belief or faith or whatever you want to call it is a struggle. Actually, believing God is good is much harder than believing God is.
I'm curious ... where do different people fall? And why, if you know?
Personally, I'm a bit leery of Dawkins's scheme for dividing things up. It assumes there's evidence that makes it more or less probable that God exists, I'm not sure I accept that. (Acutally, I'm not sure about evidence full stop when it comes to God since that seems to apply God is understandable more than I think He is.) As I've grown up and decided what I believe for myself, I've become more and more agnostic, but not in the sense most people mean by agnostic. I'm one of those religious people who think that God is unknowable because if I could break down god into facts that would fit in my brain, the kind of Being I was thinking about wouldn't really be worthy of the name God. I still firmly believe God exists, but it's not some kind of propositional claim I believe because I know it's true. It involves faith, which is something else entirely. (I seesaw a bit on this, and sometimes I do believe I can prove God exists, but more and more I'm leaning in this direction as I figure out what I truly believe.) All of that means I don't think it's more or less likely God exists - that implies the kind of evidence you could be wrong about.
But if you pushed me and let me put aside that concern, I'd say I'm a "two" (de facto theist) or a "three" (weak theist) depending on what I'm going through on RL. This is mostly about my mental state; sometimes the problem of evil seems more real --psychologically, not rationally-- than at other times. Rationally, I have answers to that problem that are more or less convincing (to me). But emotionally? Sometimes belief or faith or whatever you want to call it is a struggle. Actually, believing God is good is much harder than believing God is.