Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Dear First Response commercial woman:

No, you can't be "a little bit pregnant." Either a zygote has implanted itself into your uterine lining or it hasn't.*

It's like so-called agnostics. You can't just be agnostic, no matter how much you want to get out of calling yourself an atheist because you don't want people to think you worship Satan and eat babies. You're either an agnostic atheist (you don't know if there's a god but you don't believe) or an agnostic theist (you don't know if there's a god but you believe anyway). But either way you have an opinion, and that opinion makes you one or the other. It is impossible to neither have belief nor lack belief. If you're really not sure, well, that's not belief now is it? In other words, you're an atheist. A "weak" atheist, certainly, but an atheist none the less. Calling yourself an agnostic doesn't change that.

Embrace your atheism, join us, help us rule the world. And eat babies. They're totally yum.

*I don't count having a non-implanted zygote floating around in there as "pregnant," since most of them are naturally aborted, but if you do then replace "zygote has implanted in your uterine lining" with "sperm has fertilized one of your eggs," shake well, and enjoy.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah! I noticed that commercial too.

    Stupid!

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  2. Oh yeah, and I used to jokingly refer to agnostics as either "lazy atheists" or "uncommitted atheists".

    I wonder if the antichoicer who is all over jamie's balls will be on this one too. You should be so lucky!

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  3. Actually, your understanding of agnosticism is incorrect, though sadly common. Agnosticism does not make a judgment one way or the other about the existence of a god -- theistic, panentheistic or otherwise -- and deems ultimate knowledge in such circumstances to be inherently unknowable.

    To be theistic or atheistic is to make a value judgment concerning the existence or non-existence of a god. Period. There's an absolutist stance there that is totally at odds with agnosticism, and should in any way be confused with the position of an agnostic.

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  4. I understand that.

    If you say that it is impossible to know if there's a god, that says nothing about your belief in him. You still either believe or you don't. As I said, it is impossible to neither have nor lack belief. It is a digital question, not analog.

    That agnosticism is a seperate issue from theism/atheist was exactly my point, but perhaps I was unclear.

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