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by BetaCygni 2953 days ago
To be honest, we don't know either, so the agnostic viewpoint (compared to atheistic) would be that it is equally valid. Either you believe in random chance or you believe in God.

I'm always perfectly happy when someone calls the big bang the moment of creation. It could have been.
4 comments
Nursie 2953 days ago
>Either you believe in random chance or you believe in God

Not really true.

"We don't know exactly how the Cambrian explosion came about, but have a lot of good evidence on how evolution works, which allows us to probe deeper into theories about what happened" is not equivalent to "it's all random chance!"

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BetaCygni 2953 days ago
Isn't evolution random chance + selection? That's how I've always seen it.
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rsynnott 2953 days ago
Most religious people (or at least most widespread religions) essentially accept evolution, you know. Hard evolution denialism (especially young earth creationism) is largely peculiar to certain forms of evangelical Protestantism and some factions of Islam, these days.
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olavk 2953 days ago
A belief in evolution have nothing to do with atheism. Many religious people believe in evolution.
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ak39 2953 days ago
Not sure the point you're making.

I do not differentiate between agnostic and atheistic thought. They are both the same thinking/belief systems in my view. An agnostic believes there could be a "god/creator" (but does not pursue this thought any further than "maybe"). An agnostic also believes there may not be a God/Creator given the absence of evidence to justify such a belief. An atheist believes that there is NO god/creator given the absence of evidence to prove the existence of such a being. If evidence had to exist then the atheist will believe the existence of such a being based on such evidence. That sounds exactly the same.

As to your point about "we don't know" - well, not knowing is perfectly fine in science. We cannot ascribe to or embellish and fabricate imagined facts and agents to any unknown phenomenon without evidence.

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BetaCygni 2953 days ago
> I do not differentiate between agnostic and atheistic thought.

I find it very interesting that in de US there seem to be a lot of gnostic atheists (they know for certain there is no god, and are very vocal about this), while in Europe most people would be agnostic atheists, and they don't care as much.

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olavk 2953 days ago
In order to decide whether you believe in something, you have to know what "something" the question is about. The concept of "God" in western society is often so vague it is impossible to have an opinion either way - for some it means "the absolute", for some it means "the force of creation in the universe". I don't think you can meaningfully say you don't believe in such unspecific concepts. But if you go into more concrete religious beliefs, like "God created the world in seven days" or "God punished the wife of Lot by turning her into a pillar of salt" or "Jesus is the only path to God", then it is easier to decide whether or not you actually believe it or not.

My impression is Biblical literalism is more widespread in the US compared to Europe, which in turn is easier to decide for or against. Especially the discussion about evolution vs religion is almost entirely absent in Europe. Framing evolution as opposed to a belief in God means it is pretty easy to become an atheist, since we have overwhelming evidence for evolution.

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