You gain consciousness but your senses aren't working (you can't see anything, you can't feel anything etc.), you start to wonder what is around you. Is there a chair nearby? Is there a Thomas the Tank Engine toy nearby? Is Brad Pitt stood in front of you? Is there a unicorn stood in front of you? The answer to each of these would have to be that you don't know, and you have no way of knowing. You would take an agnostic type position in relation to these things (agnosticism relating to knowledge).
Once you have accepted you don't know, you think about what you believe. It seems that it wouldn't be a great surprise to regain your consciousness and find you were right to guess there was chair nearby; this would be my metaphor for the theist or other believers of the supernatural mindset. It would seem a greater surprise to regain consciousness and find you were right to guess a Tomas the Tank Engine toy nearby, greater still to find Brad Pitt stood in front of you, and to my mind an unbelievably massive surprise to find you were right to guess there was a unicorn stood in front of you; the more fantastical the guess of what is nearby, the more unlikely it's actually going to be there, the more rational it would seem to not believe it's there when you don't know. To my mind atheists are agnostics who find the notion of god to be fantastical.
However it doesn't end there, theism is dogmatic and this allows it to become a way of facilitating bigotry, which is otherwise shunned. When atheism is a response to this, by putting itself in opposition to religion it becomes a natural extension of the fight for equal rights, and any intolerance of religion is actually just intolerance of sanctifying and facilitating bigotry.
Anyway that's my two cents out into the universe, I'll allow readers comments but I don't think I can be bothered to do any responses as that sort of thing just takes up time I don't have. Of course that's if it gets read by anyone anyway.
Might write something else sometime, until then!
Once you have accepted you don't know, you think about what you believe. It seems that it wouldn't be a great surprise to regain your consciousness and find you were right to guess there was chair nearby; this would be my metaphor for the theist or other believers of the supernatural mindset. It would seem a greater surprise to regain consciousness and find you were right to guess a Tomas the Tank Engine toy nearby, greater still to find Brad Pitt stood in front of you, and to my mind an unbelievably massive surprise to find you were right to guess there was a unicorn stood in front of you; the more fantastical the guess of what is nearby, the more unlikely it's actually going to be there, the more rational it would seem to not believe it's there when you don't know. To my mind atheists are agnostics who find the notion of god to be fantastical.
However it doesn't end there, theism is dogmatic and this allows it to become a way of facilitating bigotry, which is otherwise shunned. When atheism is a response to this, by putting itself in opposition to religion it becomes a natural extension of the fight for equal rights, and any intolerance of religion is actually just intolerance of sanctifying and facilitating bigotry.
Anyway that's my two cents out into the universe, I'll allow readers comments but I don't think I can be bothered to do any responses as that sort of thing just takes up time I don't have. Of course that's if it gets read by anyone anyway.
Might write something else sometime, until then!
