After a wonderful evening at the pub it occurred to me that I need to write down my use of definitions. Even though it is a valid argument that what matters is that the others know the definitions of the terms I am using, I feel it is important for myself to list a few things down.
So on the assumption that you are already a non-believer in the supernatural let me write down a set of definitions. (my very own opinion)
Theist: someone who believes in the existence of an intervening personal god. A god who responds to prayers and who is actively involved in the workings of everyday life.
Deist: without falling foul to oversimplification I think I can be excused in defining a deist as one who believes in a god who created the universe and the laws but does not actively involve in the workings of everyday life. A non-interfering kind of god.
Pantheist: Also known as Spinoza's god and that of Einstein. Suffice to say at this juncture that this is also not an interfering god.
So with the help of the above definitions we have
Atheist: Someone who does not believe in an interfering god. And that is all. This definition is embedded in the term. It does not include being a nice person, or a moral person or any other things required to a socially acceptable person. So theoretically an atheist can still be a deist or a pantheist. And the atheist movement, if one can call that, is only interested in highlighting the detrimental effects of believing in an intervening god.
Anti-Theist: in the words of Hitchens is someone who actively does not wish for a theistic setup were it offered in the first place. The whole concept of big brother and unending adulation is an offence to the human spirit.
And so defining someone as an atheist does not tell us much about that person, other than the single fact that this person does not believe in an interfering god. And this then brings us to the larger concept of supernatural, meta-physical and the spiritual. You could say you are an atheist and still believe in vampires, or in fairies, or ghosts, or unicorns. You could believe in karma, or in influential energy or what ever the human mind is capable of making up.
And that is why I choose to use the term naturalism (as opposed to supernatural) to define the boundaries where I can have a conversation with. If you start talking to me seriously about any of the superheroes, or supernatural or metaphysical all I hear is "bingo bongo bing!".
That being said how do we figure out what is possible and what is not. We right now have one tool at our disposal. Skepticism making use of the scientific method, logic and reason. The scientific method is the easiest tool in the belt and should be used with caution. Not every person capable of wielding a hammer is automatically a carpenter, so just throwing around the term is not going to get you anywhere. Logic and reason are far harder to learn and practice. But as the philosophers of time immemorial have shown, this is the more powerful of the two. And skepticism is the attitude to prefer and require a level of proof before accepting something.
So we now have crossed from atheism, to anti-theism, to naturalism with the help of skepticism. But would defining oneself as a skeptic be enough? What about instances where the scientific method, logic and reason fail. What about concepts of trust and belief? What about social interactions? Skepticism will not be the best approach to a social relationship. Imagine a childs disbelief and loss of confidence every time the parents want proof of its statements.
But then again, what is trust? How is trust different from belief? and how is belief different from faith? From a personal point of view, the easiest definition is that of faith. to believe in something without any evidence, but purely based on the trust invested in the messenger. So the more you trust someone the more you are prone to have faith in what he or she tells you. So the person has a higher moral responsibility, such as parents, friends, and people in power.
Trust is something you accumulate over time. You trust someone more the more you know him, and the more his or her actions correspond to your moral framework. You start trusting in your knowledge the more that knowledge that stood the test of time. You trust in theories start increasing the more they withstand the inspection.
Belief however is a little tricky. You are always believing something or the other. Some belief that is shown to be true in the future becomes knowledge. And some beliefs that have been shown to be wrong should be discarded. You start to believe in things only if the are possible with the knowledge you already have accumulated. If all your life you have never seen someone fly, and you know the fundamentals of gravity, then when someone says that they saw someone fly, you are bound to not believe the story initially. If however it was explained to you that the person flew in a plane, then the things takes a more believable stance. Similarly, with the knowledge we have of gravity, as experienced on earth, and on the moon, if someone were to say you will weight lot more in jupiter, even though noone has been to jupiter, one can believe that statement because of the knowledge we have of gravity.
In a similar way, when a girl says she was harassed, it is easier to believe her, if you have knowledge about how often this can occur. Asking for proof or evidence in this case is not going to get the conversation far. So where does that leave us in our definitions.
A naturalist covers quite a bit, and skepticism covers the tools but what term could cover the social and human interactions. I have settled on the term humanism (through no small influence from Carl Sagan). I am not sure if this term covers what I want to define myself with, but it is more neutral than feminism, and a much better word than brights.
I would only require one not to blindly follow the scientific method and lose sight of all the arts, music and poetry that make being human so wonderful. But that is my two pence worth of thought about this.
p.s. for any random person stumbling onto this blog, my apologies for writing so badly in the english language. You however did land on psychedelic thoughts. What did you expect!
So on the assumption that you are already a non-believer in the supernatural let me write down a set of definitions. (my very own opinion)
Theist: someone who believes in the existence of an intervening personal god. A god who responds to prayers and who is actively involved in the workings of everyday life.
Deist: without falling foul to oversimplification I think I can be excused in defining a deist as one who believes in a god who created the universe and the laws but does not actively involve in the workings of everyday life. A non-interfering kind of god.
Pantheist: Also known as Spinoza's god and that of Einstein. Suffice to say at this juncture that this is also not an interfering god.
So with the help of the above definitions we have
Atheist: Someone who does not believe in an interfering god. And that is all. This definition is embedded in the term. It does not include being a nice person, or a moral person or any other things required to a socially acceptable person. So theoretically an atheist can still be a deist or a pantheist. And the atheist movement, if one can call that, is only interested in highlighting the detrimental effects of believing in an intervening god.
Anti-Theist: in the words of Hitchens is someone who actively does not wish for a theistic setup were it offered in the first place. The whole concept of big brother and unending adulation is an offence to the human spirit.
And so defining someone as an atheist does not tell us much about that person, other than the single fact that this person does not believe in an interfering god. And this then brings us to the larger concept of supernatural, meta-physical and the spiritual. You could say you are an atheist and still believe in vampires, or in fairies, or ghosts, or unicorns. You could believe in karma, or in influential energy or what ever the human mind is capable of making up.
And that is why I choose to use the term naturalism (as opposed to supernatural) to define the boundaries where I can have a conversation with. If you start talking to me seriously about any of the superheroes, or supernatural or metaphysical all I hear is "bingo bongo bing!".
That being said how do we figure out what is possible and what is not. We right now have one tool at our disposal. Skepticism making use of the scientific method, logic and reason. The scientific method is the easiest tool in the belt and should be used with caution. Not every person capable of wielding a hammer is automatically a carpenter, so just throwing around the term is not going to get you anywhere. Logic and reason are far harder to learn and practice. But as the philosophers of time immemorial have shown, this is the more powerful of the two. And skepticism is the attitude to prefer and require a level of proof before accepting something.
So we now have crossed from atheism, to anti-theism, to naturalism with the help of skepticism. But would defining oneself as a skeptic be enough? What about instances where the scientific method, logic and reason fail. What about concepts of trust and belief? What about social interactions? Skepticism will not be the best approach to a social relationship. Imagine a childs disbelief and loss of confidence every time the parents want proof of its statements.
But then again, what is trust? How is trust different from belief? and how is belief different from faith? From a personal point of view, the easiest definition is that of faith. to believe in something without any evidence, but purely based on the trust invested in the messenger. So the more you trust someone the more you are prone to have faith in what he or she tells you. So the person has a higher moral responsibility, such as parents, friends, and people in power.
Trust is something you accumulate over time. You trust someone more the more you know him, and the more his or her actions correspond to your moral framework. You start trusting in your knowledge the more that knowledge that stood the test of time. You trust in theories start increasing the more they withstand the inspection.
Belief however is a little tricky. You are always believing something or the other. Some belief that is shown to be true in the future becomes knowledge. And some beliefs that have been shown to be wrong should be discarded. You start to believe in things only if the are possible with the knowledge you already have accumulated. If all your life you have never seen someone fly, and you know the fundamentals of gravity, then when someone says that they saw someone fly, you are bound to not believe the story initially. If however it was explained to you that the person flew in a plane, then the things takes a more believable stance. Similarly, with the knowledge we have of gravity, as experienced on earth, and on the moon, if someone were to say you will weight lot more in jupiter, even though noone has been to jupiter, one can believe that statement because of the knowledge we have of gravity.
In a similar way, when a girl says she was harassed, it is easier to believe her, if you have knowledge about how often this can occur. Asking for proof or evidence in this case is not going to get the conversation far. So where does that leave us in our definitions.
A naturalist covers quite a bit, and skepticism covers the tools but what term could cover the social and human interactions. I have settled on the term humanism (through no small influence from Carl Sagan). I am not sure if this term covers what I want to define myself with, but it is more neutral than feminism, and a much better word than brights.
I would only require one not to blindly follow the scientific method and lose sight of all the arts, music and poetry that make being human so wonderful. But that is my two pence worth of thought about this.
p.s. for any random person stumbling onto this blog, my apologies for writing so badly in the english language. You however did land on psychedelic thoughts. What did you expect!
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