pig

martian, yes i would say its a semantic difference. i used to use the same definition that you are using for atheism. i think its fine if you do, but i found that i kept running into people who considered themselves atheists, and yet still had a spiritual side to them. If you look at the definition, it seems that a theistic belief system specifically implies belief in gods or God, as the focal point of the beliefs. Thus, if you reject the existence of an actual deity, then you technically are an atheist.

So, for instance while you call yourself an agnositic, I'd call you an agnostic atheist, based on what you've posted thus far.

As far as the reductionist stuff - its a term I picked up somewhere for a subset of atheism, who I think are the group you are identifying. They throw away all possibility of any other spiritual understanding and reduce all knowledge to the stuff we can make theories about and test in a physics lab.

yep, we're definately using some different terminology. I think your use of gnosticism / agnosticism is fine, but I've usually seen it used it in terms of the belief of whether it is possible or not to know, specifically, of the existence of gods/God. It seems to me you're using it in the more general sense of whether or not absolute knowledge of the universe is attainable. From what I can see, in most discussions of religious subjects, its usually limited to the question of the existence of gods / God; but I found your usuage in the Merriam Webster Dictionary.

As far as it goes, I consider myself a gnostic atheist; but I share your convictions that the absolute most truest true nature of the universe is beyond the scope of subjective / objective descriptions of reality. While we're on the subject of personal beliefs, I can probably say that my spiritual beliefs tend to be a fine line between what I think some would consider "sprituality" and what some would argue might be "undiscovered science." It sounds sort of similar, in my mind, to what loganmule wrote earlier...I have my place in the universe, once I accept that is real, and I'm "connected" to it and through it by mechanism beyond my comprehension. In fact, I believe the separation between myself and the universe, while useful, is ultimately artificial. Its a separation that is required in order for me to function, but in another sense I'm just another part of a whole. That last part, the notion of absolute connectivity to everything else, along with the element of the nature of that connection and my existence ultimately being beyond knowing, lends it a spiritual place in my own mind. Others may use different definitions, but I usually tend to find them to be somewhat pedantic; unless you say that spirituality directly implies, by definition, the belief in a theism.

I struggle with those types of questions. I used to struggle with it alot more, before I said fuck it. Its tough to define other people's spiritual beliefs. It very similar to something you wrote earlier; I used to get very...frustrated....with people who said they believed in brand X of religion Y...but then they seemed to go off an willy nilly make their own set of subrules and exceptions to the rule and so forth. I would personally think "you're not a practitioner of X brand of Y...you have a religious belief based on X brand of Y." It would really bug me, and was one of the first reason I dropped the Methodist Church when I was wee lad. And Methodism is like Christ lite for heaven's sake. A part of me tends to think a Catholic man is a Catholic man before he questions, as long as he follows Catholocism to the letter...if he questions and it leads him to do very unCatholic things then I would argue he would be straying from his faith until / if he returns to his faith. But a lot of people will really argue against that thing, and tell you you have no right to label them etc; I can't say that I necessarily agree with them, but its not worth arguing over.

nope, i don't discount it at all. if something that small has that large of an affect, then it does. what is....is. but - what i'm saying is that just because i can't make every woman on Earth turn into my personal sex slave by sending out super happy feelings to all of them (ie. I can't have absolute control of my surroundings), I can flirt with them and bring them over to my dark little piggy side (i can have some affect on them, sometimes...) The reason I mention it at all is that normally when you get into discussion of atheistic spirituality / mysticism and you start talking about the separation between yourself and the world, and the being in communion with the "oneness" of the world, then the questions arise as to why you don't have some serious jedi mindpowers? Or can you? Can people levitate or read minds....or turn water to wine? or you get into issues that, if you're part of a larger design, then can't you just sit back and coast? my feeling is that, as a part of the larger structure / reality...you are reality at work. while you do your little thing in your scale of length/time...reality is simultaneously doing things on its scale. like molecules zipping around into each other responding to pressure and temperature are causing water to boil. both molecular and macroscopic descriptions are accurate, and simultaneous. neither description accurately captures reality, but they're good enough and convenient.

my question is...do you know this? or do you accept it because it's convenient, and the alternative is useless?

i agree with you, and i personally feel pretty confident that our understanding of our perceptions of reality are nothing but the allegorical shadows. but they're pretty useful. i think its still an act of faith...its just very pragmatic. I think all knowledge is exactly that...but repeating the caveat "within the best of my understanding of my interpretations of my perceptions..." gets kind of old...so we drop it. then we forget it, if we ever realized it in the first place. then we take the shadows as reality, not because we simply have to in order to keep going, but because we genuinely think they're real.

The thing is, I personally take it on faith that our perceptions are pretty close to the actual universe. Basically, it doesn't really bother me that much. Part of that feeling is my personal realization that there is no use in dwelling on the opposite overly much. I've found it to be pretty much useless; not even constructive to attaining new knowledge.

logan,

your last paragraph sounds familiar. can you say that faith really comes before the belief system? I've always tended to think its almost simultaneous...sort of gaining trust in yourself and your beliefs. if new knowledge came to you tomorrow that changed your beliefs, would you stick to the old rigidly, or would you change with new knowledge? is adapting to new knowledge part of your faith? i guess, utlimately - what do you have faith in?

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style