Confessions of an Anonymous Coward

Friday, June 01, 2007

My Kind of Atheism

So, after seeing it on a post in King Aardvark's Kick in the Nuts, I decided just for the heck of it to take a "What kind of atheist are you? test. Here's what I got:

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.

Scientific Atheist

83%

Agnostic

50%

Spiritual Atheist

42%

Theist

33%

Apathetic Atheist

33%

Angry Atheist

33%

Militant Atheist

17%

What kind of atheist are you?
created with QuizFarm.com


Now, obviously, this kind of online multiple-choice test is anything but rigorous, and I went through it pretty quickly, without giving a lot of thought to my responses, but I think in this case the results are probably more or less accurate. Considering my currently semi-clandestine atheism, I'm certainly anything but a militant atheist, though sometimes I think maybe I sort of should be. It's not surprising that "Scientific Atheist" came up first; I'm a physicist, after all (well, a doctoral student in physics, who's done some physics teaching, anyway), and I think I do have pretty much a scientific mindset. I was mildly surprised at first that "Agnostic" came up second, but after some thought it kind of makes sense--it doesn't exactly fit, but it probably fits better than anything else on the list other than "Scientific Atheist". After all, it's not as if I'm 100% committed to the idea that there cannot possibly be a god--it's just that I'm not aware of any good evidence toward such a being's existence, and in the absence of such evidence it's more reasonable to conclude that probably no such being exists.

(Okay, I guess what is kind of surprising is that "Theist" came up as high as it did, tied with "Apathetic Atheist" and "Angry Atheist". I may not be much of an "Angry Atheist" or an "Apathetic Atheist", but those probably describe me better than "theist". For that matter, while I may not be much of an "Angry Atheist", I'm probably more of that than an "Apathetic Atheist". Ah, well; I guess there's little point in quibbling too much about the exact ordering of the lower-ranking choices.)

Anyway, I guess that's what kind of atheist I am, more or less. Anyone else?

2 Comments:

At 6/01/2007 11:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

militant agnostic
One of the questions alluded to the attitude of a "militant agnostic", which is an adequate description of my view.

The question is "Does God exists?"

the standard agnostic answer: "I don't know."

the militant agnostic: "I don't know. And neither do you!"

 
At 6/01/2007 1:19 PM, Blogger King Aardvark said...

All it means is that you're just more calm and reasonable than I am. I'm ready to snap at any moment and blow up like an A-bomb.

Ok, not really. I'm just a little pissed that's all.

 

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