Atheist only please!?

Question

I would refer to myself as a "floundering agnostic". Possibly a "fence sitter" and the fence post is jabbing me...so it's time to get off.....the fence that is....LOL!

I realize that atheists do not believe in god...however, do you believe in anything supernatural? Spirits, ghosts, the force, ESP, astrology, whatever? and if not...why not?

I'm not wording this correctly. Sorry. I'm hoping that your answers will help me wrap my mind around some concepts that are perplexing me.

How the heck am I supposed to pick a best answer from so many excellent ones?

Thank you all very much...this has made a world of difference.

Answer 1

I know you've asked for aetheists to respond... I'm more of an agnostic myself in terms of what I believe. What I believe is that humans are incapable of knowing whether or not gods, spirits, souls exist,...because we are limited by our perceptions and the way our brains allow us to percieve information. We are also limited by the way we are able to communicate the information we think we know,... gestures, words. Believing either that there IS a God or that there ISN'T a God is a choice made based on information that we percieve, even though human perception in itself has never proven itself to be trustworthy or accurate.

Answer 2

You can be an agnostic without floundering. It doesn't mean what either theists or atheists might have you believe it means. Look it up in the dictionary.

If you've realised that (at least) the major religions are bunkum, that's not enough to call yourself an atheist. To do that, you have to make the choice to believe that no such thing as a god exists, at all. You won't entertain the idea that there might be such a thing or entity in anyway shape or form that you can either understand or not.

Agnostics acknowledge that the nature of a god, if there is such a thing, must be beyond the capacity of our rather limited minds to comprehend and perceive, at least at this time. In the future, as human knowledge of the world dissolves it's mysteries as is slowly happening now, a new aspect of may become apparent which requires something like a god. We can say with some confidence, however, whatever god might be, it's not some old geezer with a long white beard and a really bad attitude.

Answer 3

Overall, I'd have to say that this is the best set of answers I've seen in Y/A. Congratulations on a good question.

I regard 'supernatural' to be a cop-out concept... where we cannot readily find an answer in nature, we make up an answer based in the 'supernatural', and accept it as a matter of faith. This is the crux of the logical fallacy (flaw in thinking) known as the 'Argument From Incredulity', a subset of the "Argument ad Ignorantium' (Argument From Ignorance). It goes something like this: "I cannot conceive of how this might have come to be; therefore, God did it."

That is the height of willful ignorance and self-delusion. Stupidity is not an acceptable form of enlightenment or knowledge.

There are many things about our universe that are not understood, and for which there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, but no concrete evidence... nothing that scientists can get their teeth into. I had an experience where I was sitting at a desk in a hotel room, in Taipei, Taiwan. I was writing out post cards, when I suddenly had this very strange feeling come over me. I snagged a piece of paper, looked at my watch, wrote down the time, and the words "Dad just died." Long story short... I returned to Pennsylvania. After comparing notes with my Mom, and figuring out the time zone differences, it turned out that my dad had passed away at EXACTLY the time that I had written that note.

A religious person would likely interpret such an experience in terms of 'God told me', or 'an angel whispered to me', or 'the soul of my dad stopped to visit me on his way to heaven', or some such tripe. But it is the experiences that are important... not our interpretation of them. What the experience revealed to me was that we are connected in some way, independent of the senses and independent of distance, in some way that nobody understands. But that is ALL it tells me. It certainly doesn't tell me that there is a 'supernatural'.

I think that anything that can exist in the universe, or occur in the universe is, BY DEFINITION, NATURAL. People want to slap the 'supernatural' label onto things that they do not understand, for no other reason than the DELUSION that they DO understand gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, as opposed to the cold prickly feeling that they get when they are faced with the knowledge that strange things can happen that are beyond their understanding. It is a form of fear and cowardice.

Personally, I don't get a cold prickly feeling when I encounter something strange that I don't understand. "I don't know" is a perfectly reasonable and intellectually honest stance to take. Rather than fear the unknown, embrace it... and the idea that there is a whole universe full of wonderful things that we have yet to discover. Don't try to hide your ignorance behind wishful, magical thinking and delusions of all-powerful sky-fairies... EMBRACE cognitive dissonance... that is what tells us that there is work yet to be done, and shows us where we need to look.

Answer 4

I find it hard to categorize myself because I'm open-minded to the ideas of spirit, but not so open-minded as to believe in a personal deity who desires my worship (a review of the questions and answers I asked earlier today might give you an idea of where to place me).

There is no reason to believe science has exhaustively explored the nature of events attributed to spirit, nor that it has answered all questions in such matters. Indeed, mathematics has established the theory that there are other dimensions which we do not consciously experience, and Quantum physics has established a theory describing a pervasive connection between all matter.

Whether these or other theories prove correct is another matter. But I've lost count of the number of times where, out of the blue, I started thinking of someone only to be answering their phone call a few seconds later.

Premonitions are difficult to nail down, and so far inexplicable according to conventional science, but I've certainly experienced them.

I've also had an undoubted ESP experience, many years ago.

I think the true essence of the agnostic is an open mind to events and experiences. Not a gullible mind, but a mind willing to question and search for answers. Science has all the answers no more than religion. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in between.

I hope that helps you off the fence (which has to be an uncomfortable perch ;-)

Answer 5

I believe that there is still a lot of mystery in the universe. There have been some profound scientific revolutions that required a big paradigm shift in thinking -- general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. It's clear that we need at least one more major revolution, since general relativity and quantum mechanics are both tremendously successful theories in their own domains, but are totally incompatible where they overlap. Perhaps after one or two revolutions we will learn things that cause us to redefine what is "natural" to include some things that might be considered "supernatural" now.

I think we still have a great deal to learn about the abilities of our mind/brain. I have had dreams where it was clear that my subconscious "knew" something that my conscious mind didn't previously know. I've had lucid dreams that were amazing experiences.

Given all that, I think it is valuable to stay as sceptical as possible about things for which there is no possibility of doing reproducible experiments, and especially for things where experiments have been done and found no evidence. It is much better to remain sceptical than to fall for wishful thinking.

Answer 6

It sounds to me like you are more agnostic than atheist, which is how I would describe myself.
An atheist does not believe in the spiritual world, they only believe in what is tangible. An agnostic believes in spirituality, but does not put a label on it.
That is where I would fall, and I believe you as well. I believe there is a spiritual world, a higher plane of existence that we do not understand, or cannot
"wrap our brains around". Ghosts, ESP, spirituality, faith, all fall into this "thing" that our puny little human minds cannot fathom. I believe that Christianity, Judaism, Muslim...that is all our attempt to understand something that is beyond our grasp.
If we put it into a book, write stories about it, assign rules and rituals to it, we can deal with it. We minimize it into something not so scary or mysterious.
Didja hear what happened to the atheist insomniac dyslexic? She stayed up all night wondering if there was really a Dog. :)

Answer 7

It's a solid question. I am an atheist, and I do not believe in anything supernatural. I describe my belief system as "naturalistic", and therefore I meet the definition of a "Bright" (sources).

The "why not?" (why don't I believe in the supernatural) is because supernatural explanations either fall apart or fail to explain anything. I do believe that it is still possible that there is something supernatural, but there's clearly no current evidence for any such thing.

Answer 8

Ghosts, goblins, witches and gods are all make believe. No one has ever been able to document telekinesis or any other special power. Becoming a rational being means casting off childish beliefs in favor of the demonstrable and realizing you cannot know all things. In as much as I was not around to see how everything came into being (and neither were you),I say, "I don't know ..... YET!" To assume that some god, my less than intellectual ancestors made up, instantaneously farted the universe into being, is absurd

Answer 9

Atheism simply means lack of belief in any god or gods.

Technically, I suppose it's possible to be an atheist while believing in all manner of other things; but practically speaking, most atheists would also eschew belief in anything supernatural, because of the lack of evidence for any such thing. For myself, I tell people that I believe in everything, except nothing -- and god is nothing. Similarly, ghosts and ESP and such are nothing, there's no evidence for any of it.

Agnostics believe that it's impossible to know for certain whether anything supernatural exists. It's a perfectly valid point of view and you needn't be ashamed of it nor uncomfortable with it.

Answer 10

I am an atheist. I do not believe in the existence of any "higher power". I do not believe because there is no evidence to convince me of a deity. The bible was written by men. Religions were established and flourished as a means of controlling the masses through fear and intimidation.

Originally, mysticism and magical thinking grew out of ignorance, just as people now think the Amercian Indians were "silly" for believing in a "god of thunder" or a "sun god", so too, should we now grow up and quit relying on a magical invisible boogey monster in the sky who smites us if we defy him, and takes credit for things we do well.

I believe humans are repsonsible for their own lives. Bad things happen and good things happen and it's random. How successful you are in life depends on how hard you work toward your goals and how you handle the bad things.

Read the book "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan, and "Why People Believe Weird Things", by Michael Shermer and watch this video.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdVucvo-kDU (or go to youtube.com and search atheist...it's the video with Carl Sagan's picture on it)

Keep asking questions and learn the facts for yourself.

Healthy skepticism is a good thing!