A Quote by Dan Savage
I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism
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From my early 20s on, I would waver between atheism and agnosticism, never coming close to considering that God could be real.
So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
Let me tell you that atheism has never painted a masterpiece. Atheism has never dispelled fear. Atheism has never healed a disease; faith in God has, but not atheism. Atheism has never given anyone piece of mind. Atheism has never dried a tear. Atheism has never given an intellectual answer to the creation. Atheism is bankrupt and empty; it's brain dead.
Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.
If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts.
An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.
Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.
If Anderson was the good cop, and Blake was the bad cop, Jamaal was the complete psycho cop.
People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, “Well, are you a Republican or an American?” The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, “I don't have a knowledge that God exists.” The atheist says, “I don't have a belief that God exists.” You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.
Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy ('love of wisdom') is simply a tool depending on how one uses it, and in some cases, logically understanding the nature of God and existence.
Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy's house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded - after all, the cop was protecting us.
If I see a cop, it's not like, 'Oh, there's a cop who's gonna keep me safe.' It's more, 'There's a cop who might be having a bad day, so don't make eye contact.'
We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians.
With a face like this, there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I've gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts.
When I went through the Simpson case, I was a cop. Then I was a good cop. Then I was a bad cop. Then I had the media camped out in front of my house when I retired. Then, you know, I am the evilest thing on the planet. Then I write a few books, and then I start getting involved, like the Martha Moxley case.
Religion glorifies the dogma of a despotic, mythical God. Atheism ennobles the interests of free and progressive Man. Religion is superstition. Atheism is sanity. Religion is medieval. Atheism is modern.
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