The Virtual Gigolo

Another game with semantics.

From the same source as before:
1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
3. Of or relating to a deity.
4. Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous.
5. Of or relating to the miraculous.

3, 4, and 5 are definitions that might be reasonable, but in discourse usually come out of definitions 1 and 2 so we shall ignore them for now as being specialisations of the earlier definitions. Definition 2… “seems”, maybe this is the important point. As for definition 1, surely if anything can have an effect on the natural world… or for that matter anything that exists at all, must be natural. If something exists, it is natural, and hence not supernatural. Thus the word “supernatural” defines itself out of existance.

Does agnosticism make sense as a position? Who knows if I’ve even mentioned this before…

Anyway, surely agnosticism alone is meaningless. According to dictionary.com agnostic means:
1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

Taking an atheist as one who believes there is no god. Taking either definition there, is it possible to either believe it’s impossible to know (I would say this is the case) or be skeptical without actually believing one way or another? Can you really not believe there is a god and ALSO not believe there isn’t a god? You can claim to be open minded about it, but you must also have decided deep down which position is more likely?

If someone told me there’s a bus outside, I could certainly not know whether or not there is a bus outside, but surely I would believe one way or another whether there was or not (based largely on how much I trusted the person who told me).

Or maybe not, maybe it really is possible to not believe anything at all…

Certainly it makes sense to be an agnostic theist or agnostic atheist, though ie someone who does or doesn’t believe there’s a god, but also believes it is not possible to know for sure.

Now, I realise that the Mail doesn’t rate as one of Britain’s quality newspapers… having a reputation for a similar level of Bias and integrity to Fox News, and Peter Hitchens is fairly low on the integrity scale as well. However, a double page spread in a paper with one of the highest levels of readership among low to moderately educated people in the UK entitled “Did Darwin get it wrong after all?” and detailing the discussion about Intelligent Design seems liable to give it a certain unwarranted level of legitimacy in the public eye (though the article itself is not strongly pro ID, it doesn’t point out the flaws in considering it a science and seems somewhat sympathetic). Maybe this discussion is going to start to be seen this side of the pond in the near future.

If there is any phrase that annoys me more than “whatever” it is “hey guess what” when used in that putting-down manner. That is to say I don’t mind when someone really does expect you to guess (even if they know you won’t be able to), but when someone uses it to start their point in a discussion. “Hey guess what, some people don’t like to have cats outside” as if to say “you’re really stupid if you don’t agree with this blindingly obvious statement I’m about to make”.

Most annoying.