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Cyran on 19 July 2025
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Jumpin said:

Responding to @Cyran and expanding on my own post:

What I would say is that (from my POV) explains the distinction between irreligion and religion. And, I personally don’t conflate irreligion vs religion with atheism vs theism. This is something I touch on in my last post, using the academic vs vocational study → to many, school is school, and it has a the same outcome; but, there are fundamental differences between the foundation of academic studies and vocational studies, and (to others) this is of extreme importance and relevance. I consider myself an irreligious agnostic. So, functionally, not too different from an atheist from people who don’t care about the philosophical foundations; but, entirely different structures with a distinction of foundational importance for those of us who do.

So, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your position, just that I think our priorities are very different on this subject, so we approach it differently.

And (back and adding to my Hitchens example - which I want to add to) it’s highly unlikely TH Huxley was compromising either, that’s a straw-man by Hitchens → don’t get me wrong, I agree with a large amount of the work of Hitchens (mostly political), but this is one area where I don’t find his views compelling. If Huxley was compromising, the man (Huxley) who they call “Darwin’s bulldog” certainly had an interesting way of showing it with his anti-religious sentiments. Huxley often went further than the atheists on the anti-religiosity: were it a few centuries earlier, he’d be first to be burned by the inquisition. Huxley was a skeptic, not a compromiser.


I’d be interested in your background in terms of religion exposure. To give my own background: I was barely exposed to religion until my late teens - my parents are both atheists, my grandparents and great grandparents were all atheists and/or irreligious. And, before I became wiser to reality, assumed that religion (as it existed) was the vestiges of archaic culture… kind of like old poems, songs, or stories.

To be clear I was not taking Hitchens position that agnostic is a compromise.  Rather they are distinct in nature and explain different things.  Atheist is about belief while Agnostic is about knowing.

I would consider myself Agnostic Atheist but I usually just leave off the Agnostic because it tend to only confuse people.  I do not have belief in a god but I also acknowledge it is impossible to know whether there is a god or not a god.

For the purposes of this topic I was saying whether you Agnostic or not is not a important distinction, because your belief is what will determine action while a debate on probability of a god is more academic than anything else.  

Of course if our definition of the words differ then that changes things so it sound like we more differ in definition then in substance.

As for my background I grew up in a Reform Jewish household so not super religious but definitely my parents believed in god but took the view more that the Old Testament was given by God to teach lessons rather than be taken completely literal so I was encourage to learn as much about science as possible and while I was force to go to Hebrew school and Temple I was never punish for expressing my personal disbelief (by my parents at hebrew school they was less happy about some of my questions).

Religion never made sense to me and I also grew up a huge fantasy fan from RA Salvatore to JR Tolkien etc and to me when I read these religion story they was no difference then the fantasy stories that I knew was made up.  I did find the stories interesting and read stories from many mythology and religions and I came to the same conclusion that it was likely written by men no different then the fantasy books I read.

Around the age 14 I read the Selfish Gene by Stephen Dawkins which is probably when I started to have a fully understanding that I was am Athiest.  From there I started reading many books from other scientists.  Physics interest me the most so people like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkins, Brian Greene etc.