Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
That makes sense, sadly I don’t see anyone especially where I live (Utah) being REASONABLE enough to think it through….
The problem described by this meme is something I deal with all the time. People generally think of what Greta has described above as agnosticism rather than atheism. Even my college philosophy textbook had it that way! It leads to a lot of unintentional strawmanning.
It is dogmatic and intolerant to be sure that there is no god, yet being sure that there is a god is all hunky-dory.
Nice hypocrisy there!
Brian West | March 16, 2010 at 03:15 PM :
It is a test of faith. It will prepare you for the duties you will have in the Celestial Kingdom. These trials will make you a strong soldier in the service of Heavenly Father …
Actually – if they’d care to provide some evidence that God exists, we could at least have a coherent conversation about it.
@heironymous: talking about God? God exist for sure.
@Brian: Yes it’s a test of faith, but a different one. There are those little gnomes that you can only see when you believe in them and they hate christians. And those gnomes are gonna torture you eternally when you fail to see that there is no God.
I think, Corbin, that a lot of agnostics call themselves that because, although they don’t believe in a god (ie, they are de facto atheistic), they aren’t completely certain and choose the term ‘agnostic’ to reflect that uncertainty. I also think it’s a safer label for many people since it sounds more considered and isn’t so synonymous with terms like ‘strident’, ‘arrogant’ and even ‘immoral’.
I thought that, formally defined, an agnostic has decided that the existence of the supernatural is intrinsically undecidable. That may not be how most people use it, however.
I think that there are a lot of de facto atheists out there, it’s just that not all of them care enough about the topic to adopt the label for themselves. One fellow I know doesn’t believe in god, but also doesn’t like labels, so he doesn’t call himself an atheist. Richard Dawkins, when asked, said he didn’t call himself an atheist for the same reason he didn’t call himself an afairyist or an ateapotist.
This is one thing I’ve been asked by believers: “How can you be absolutely sure there is no god?” — at which point I have to say I never said such a thing– I am merely reasonably certain. There is no such thing as “absolute certainty”– one can ONLY be reasonably certain in all matters, and that is all that is necessary.
The desire for absolute certainty belies insecurity, and perhaps intellectual laziness, as if the “truths” of the universe we live in should merely be handed to us (by whom?) on a metaphysical silver platter. No, you gotta use your brain!