Response to Mariah on people not appreciating beauty like they used to

I am not inclined to think that people do not appreciate beauty as much as they have in the past. At most I think the locations that people find beauty are less obvious. Some people may spend less time admiring nature or going to art galleries and concerts, but these are traditional places we think of to find beauty. People find beauty everywhere. One of the most common places is in other people’s appearance. When someone puts together a great outfit, wears interesting jewelry, dyes their hair a new color, and tries a different sort of makeup they are creating beauty on their physical person that most of us do appreciate. Many people also appreciate the beauty of homes and gardens that they encounter. There have been many times when I’ll be driving with someone and comment on a house I find beautiful or the flowers in someone’s garden that look beautiful. People also find the views of the mountains in North Adams beautiful. They never have to go out of their way to see them, they are right outside our windows or on our walks or drives to work, but we do find beauty in them. Sometimes we may be walking the same path to class we have walked for months and that day the view will strike us as beautiful. People also find beauty in the way a room is designed. Many people spend a lot of time trying to make their rooms beautiful and may admire other people’s rooms or the room designs displayed in magazines. I do think that people often lack patience and they may have had more in the past. What this amounts to, though, is that a lot of people do not want to spend more than a minute looking at a painting and they may get restless at a concert. In television classes we are told to never have the same shot for more than seven seconds because people will get bored, but this does not mean they cannot find beauty in a quickly viewed shot, a sequence of shots, or the finished product. It is not so much that nothing is good enough for people, but that we often do not want to spend the time that is expected seeking them or that we seek it in ways people do not recognize. Going to the mall when we do not plan to buy anything and just want to see what is there, as I often do, is often more a quest to please the eye with beautiful clothes and other material goods then a search for a new thing to own.

                Has people’s experience of beauty become tied to commercialism?

Agnostic Atheism

Atheism is a belief that there is no God while theism is a belief that there is a God. Agnosticism is not so clear. It does not seem to be a belief at all but a claim that one lacks the knowledge to make a decision. Most agnostics would agree that either God exists or does not exist because if God were in some sort of in between state that would still have to be categorized as existence. What they seem to mean is that God either exist or does not exist but I cannot or do not claim to know. It seems that all agnostics then would lean one way or the other as far as their beliefs, but are reluctant to say that these feelings which are not based on knowledge have relevance in what is or is not true. People can hold beliefs that are not true, but if they know that they may not be true it would be difficult to maintain their view with any level of conviction. This makes it seem like agnostic atheists would be infirm atheists and the same would be true of agnostics. An important aspect of this discussion becomes what the difference is between knowledge and belief. It is only if these are sufficiently different that an agnostic and atheistic or agnostic and theistic viewpoint can be held at the same time. If knowledge is the result of learning and reasoning then one could easily claim that there is no way to know for sure whether God exists. They could also say that they feel it is true or false despite lacking a reasoned outlook. If belief is developed through intuition, enculturation or another method then beliefs are not the same as knowledge because reason is not a necessary component. Maybe it could be said that an agnostic atheist believes that God does not exist and admits that they do not and cannot have a way to justify this belief. An agnostic theist would then feel that God exists but would not have a way to justify this belief.  

If agnosticism is not a middle ground between atheism and theism could someone claim to be neither an atheist nor theist? Is it possible to hold no belief about God?     

Response to Lauren on why people respond negatively to atheists

                I think the negative stigma about atheists stems in part from many people’s belief that atheists cannot have morals. Because atheists do not believe in a higher power determining what is right and wrong people can claim that atheist’s morals can only be subjective and thus not true morals. If everyone can choose their morals then they are not true morals because they do not apply to all people. I do not agree that it is the case that an atheist cannot have morals, but I have heard it vocalized. I also feel that religious institutions teach intolerance of atheists by claiming that anyone who does not believe is damning themselves to hell. I also think that many religious people fear that atheists are going to start fighting with theists over their beliefs and people do not necessarily want to be challenged. Of course, if some people react negatively to atheists because they fear the challenge then they are not completely sure of their belief. There are also very vocal atheists that are quite demeaning of people with religious beliefs and will say so, these are the minority, but they are a vocal minority so people may begin to associate atheism with them.   

This article has some good examples of the anti-atheist sentiments in the United States.

http://www.astcweb.org/public/publication/documents/KeeneHandrichTJEMarch2010.pdf

Since atheists are often not accepted in society, should they voice their opinions to try to explain their position or is vocalizing their opinion just likely to isolate them more?