Beyond god and atheism: Why I am a 'possibilian'

It's called agnosticism. It's not new.<p>"...in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."<p>-Bertrand Russell

What happened to being a good old agnostic? I think that in attempting to fight against being pigeonholed as either a believer or a denier of god/gods, he lights on the notion that somehow being a better (or real) scientist by being open to possibilities is an alternative. With respect, there's already a reasonable alternative to being either a believer in or denier of god/gods: agnosticism. The open mind stuff just makes you a good scientist.<p>Edit: Oops, markstanbury beat me to it.

If you ascribe a very low probability to the existence of a god, then I'd say you're justified in just calling yourself an atheist. And vice versa for theists. The big problem I notice among a lot of people who identify as agnostics (or "possibilians", if you prefer) is that they're treating lack of absolute certainty as synonymous with lack of <i>any</i> certainty.<p>Of <i>course</i> we can't be completely certain. But the same goes for most everything else outside of mathematics, and I usually don't see people being so exaggeratedly careful to withhold judgement like this except on really touchy, emotionally charged subjects like religion. This is a double standard.

I like his take on this. I normally describe myself as an atheist but only because I don't believe that any of the religions I've studied are true. But I am open to other possibilities and I think this guy describes that well.

Atheism is in response to theism. One can be a believer and be agnostic, likewise you can be atheist and agnostic as well.<p>The existence of god is as yet unverifiable in the same way the existence of Bilbo Baggins is unverifiable. So what?

I think this is a good example of meta-contrarianism. (see hn discussion/link at: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730731" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730731</a>).