Walking With Wayne - Agnosticism and what is a God?

Welcome to the first of hopefully many quick discussion videos, where I'm either walking around or driving in my car, talking about whatever comes to mind, usually something philosophical or something I've noticed. These are different from the vlogs because they aren't about current events in my life persay, but rather my viewpoints on larger issues.

Today's video is a response to Hgryphon's questions in my last video about religion. I discuss what the nature of a god could be and how we could know if a "god" figure would ever exist in the future based on meeting anything that's superior to mankind. I invite all people to leave comments letting me know what their thoughts on the issue is, from all backgrounds of faith!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Wayne
• WH
• Charron
• Walking
• discussion
• forum
• issues
• atheism
• agnosticism
• god
• gods
• nature
• intelligence
• debate
• confusion
• clearing
• elaborating
• Lurdanjo
• Danji
• Duraji
• aliens
• androids

[AMomentOfClarity2011]

What purpose does it serve to call another being a god anyway? IF its just a term for a more advanced being than ourselves, then anything superiour to us would be godlike. Does the term god have baggage. Does it require worship? Or obediance? If we went a thousand years into the past would we deserve to be called gods and worshipped?

Hardly. We might rule or be considered wise, but 'superior' is a dangerous word to throw around.

Have you ever seen Stargate (tv series). It poses that question.

[AMomentOfClarity2011]

"I have to say there is no god" (to be an atheist). No. Its simply disbelief in the claims.

You dismissed all the theist religions, so you are an atheist to those claims. Theist = believer in a god. A-theist = not a believer in a god.

It has nothing to do with saying you KNOW anything about the issue. Gods in general are unknowable. But you can still form an opinion.

[AMomentOfClarity2011]

"superior to mankind" can mean a lot of things. Also our view of what superior means may not translate to what we encounter.

The likelyhood is we will never encounter another alien race physically. At most we MIGHT detect distant communication. The biggest issue is the technological/moral limit. Do all intelligent beings destroy themselves eventually when they reach a certain stage of development. Technology develops faster than our ability to be responsible in its use. That might be universal.

[AMomentOfClarity2011]

I am an agnostic atheist. I do not consider the marxist viewpoint of us being the ultimate being in the universe. However the agnostic part of me simply says I don't KNOW what is out there, and therefore I withhold an opinion on a 'god' if undefined. I don't believe in the claims people make about gods in general. Belief is a subjective opinion on the claim.

There is a high likelyhood that if life exists, some of it will be more advanced than us. That does not mean they are gods.