[ExI] Fw: Re: atheists declare religions as scams.

[John Clark]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 9:00 PM, Darren Greer wrote:

>> people who go to great pains to point out that they are a agnostic not a atheist seem a little silly to me because, judging from the equal respect they give to both believers and atheists
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> Who said an agnostic has to afford anything approaching respect to an atheist or a believer based on their belief or lack of it? An agnostic could just as well despise both camps

Who said? You said, and you said it just above; you describe an irrational agnostic who gives equal respect to both believers and atheists. In fact, regardless of what a dictionary may say, in usage (which is far more important than definitions) the word "agnostic" means pretty much what you say it does. And that's why I call myself a atheist and not a agnostic. 

> I like Carl Sagan's fictional scenario: if we're going to look for a universal creator, let's start by digging around in irrational numbers.

Well, unlike God we know that Chaitin's constant (also called Omega) exists, and if even a few hundred integers in that irrational number were known it would solve most of the problems in number theory, a few thousand would solve them all, unfortunately we also know that Chaitin's constant can not even be approximated by finite beings like us. 

 John K Clark 


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