Atheism vs. Agnosticism

If you identify yourself as a non-believer, possibly with some history of hostility towards organized religions, would you call yourself an Atheist, or an Agnostic?

I can’t care less about labels and names. But since they have a practical use – saving time and energy – we can discuss them.

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Once upon a time nefore the chemical outbrake of puberty introduced a wave of changes in my body, it impacted my mind. I rebelled – still quite analyctically – against the delusions of the local culture, which let to tossing out religions amonst some other outdated codes. I turned in to a non-believe and I called it atheism three years later when I learned that I am not only alone, but there may be even a conventional name for the state of my belief system. And it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized agnosticism is a better term to describe this state.

Typically the naive distinction between atheism and agnosticism is tested with whether or not one would answer “No”, or “I don’t know” to the question of existence of *any* God. This is in the grey zone, and a metter of definition and interpretation: How do we define God?

Some believe in Gods because in the hierarchy of beings in the vast universe and possibly beyond, there can be creatures above us. Aliens, Gods, simulators, our own Gaia or some parts of it, concious super-organisms that we may can be their building blocks, etc. All these can have God-like powers over us, by shaping and controlling us. But is that all it takes to be a God?

The problem here is that all these beings, even if proven and spotted, are things just like us. They have weaknesses and struggles for their own survival, and simply put they aren’t “in charge”. They don’t have control. A God that knows how everything at every level unfolds, comes from a much motr strict definition of God and that is a level of God-ness that I am a non-believer in. This is a very generic definition for a God, one who has made everything, knows it all, and can control all existence at all its levels. But to me its existance still as unlikely as exotic concept such as Allah, Jesus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Atheists – including my past self – typically view agnostics as mild atheists. Atheists that have woken up but not quite enough to completely get over their religion, and they may be statistically right. But to me agnosticism isn’t compromised atheism. It’s an ultimate state disbelief. So an agnostic refuses religion, but also atheism itself as a replacement that could be vulnerable to the flaws and biases of any other man-made culture. And this was the point that I had not understood in the spiritual beliefs of not-quite-atheist thinkers like Spinoza, Darwin or Einstein.

So agnosticism that I refer to is more of a non-believer than atheism. And as there are infinitely many ways to define God, there can be infinitely many levels in between agnoticism and atheism. The atheist culture, perhaps in order to unify better against the organized religions, wants these two classes and all in between them to collapse in one. But in my eyes they are quite distinct, and I think there are a lot of interesting belief systems also in between them.

I may be going through another phase of chemical changes but currently I feel like I am somewhere in that in-between space.

“That was my point”

I think those gun owners who compare mass shooting to rape have a valid point.

The main reason behind mass shooting is not guns or victims, religion or the second amendment, is the individual who abuses them, the mass shooter.

The main reason behind rape is not human penis, provocative clothing or rape regulations. Is the rapist.

But of course confiscating all guns from a city will reduce mass shootings. And cutting off everyone’s penis will certainly put an end to the rape problem forever.

One of them just seems a little easier than the other. So it may not be a crazy idea after all.

To cut off everyone’s penis!

You matter!

This made me confess that, honestly, it’s been a while since I accepted (or forced myself to believe) that – just like you – I am being watched.

Not only by some unknown pairs of eyes sitting at NSA envying Snowden for his courage, but also by my grand children – already! – having fun in an extrapolated virtual reality of my life in data-archeological musuems of the future (if my boring practices interests any of them at all).

That’s why I find myself at ease assuming that we are at different simulations at the same time. The human park owner of the future, the alien simulator, God and the big brother are all staring at you.

This at least shows that you matter to someone.

“Dominator” for dummies

Communism aims at a society without the state. So it gives the ownership to the community. The few representatives of the community then represent the whole population and eventually set their own agenda, enslaving the rest. Anywhere they tried it on this planet they ended up making the most authoritarian forms of state.
Communism, whatever it promises, seeks for domination. Communism is a dominator.

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Capitalism aims at economic and political freedom. So it gives the ownership to individuals. Some Individuals will eventually find a way to take up proportionally much more space and use up much more resources than others. Those few end up setting their own agenda, enslaving the rest.
Capitalism, whatever it pledges, seeks for domination. Capitalism is a dominator.

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There are millions of ideas out there, and zillions of ways to implement them. But we know only few. Do you know why? Because they are “dominators”. They dominated first, so we heard about them. We realized they exist.

Take down the dominators, wherever you find them!

Your mom knows better!

Kitchen was certainly one of the areas of life that I tried to liberate myself.

… from culturally reinforced rules and regulations. I understood that “culture is not my friend”, and changed the way I had seen people do Persian food. Especially when I moved to Norway I regarded many of those common recipes as religious superstitions and started to do things my own way.

Amongst others, I got rid of my mom’s superstitious way of cooking rice! That for better quality rice must be “soaked, rinced and drained” prior to it being “boiled, drained and steamed”. So from those six stages I skipped the first three and made a shortcut to the last three to save time.

There I hacked a couple of other things too. Not waiting for cold water to boil in a pot and do it faster in an electric kettle first. Then pouring it in to an already hot empty pot. So deconstructing the axiom of “ingredients first, heat second”. Also removed that useless ugly “damkoni”, the fabric Iranian housholds use to cover the pot’s lid. As I assumed it’s meant to tighten the lid so steam doesn’t escape, though its actual function is to absorb the stem, so it doesn’t condence and drip in the rice.

After all the end result was still delicious!

Now turns out that my shortcuts were costly, sometimes even cancerous. And my mother was right!

Guys, those of you who don’t follow your mom’s recipe will eventually get cancer and die out. Evolution will take care of you and your recipes, so don’t dare to mutate in the codes of the collective wisdom when it comes to cuisine.

Your mom knows better!


– Matrix (1999)


This is the definition of “the Matrix” as explained by Morpheus to Neo.

Now, what other concept suits this definition – word by word – even better than the Matrix? What actual thing in the day-to-day world matches this description just as perfect if not more? That you don’t see it cause it’s everywhere. Like water to the fish?

Mother Earth ain’t virgin!

Watch this awesome video to the end, history of the entire world.

The short story of everything – and I mean everything big enough – seems to be like this: long equilibriums connected with quick leaps.

From all the major leaps mentioned here (that are allegedly self-organized) I can believe in the authonomy of the most farfetched ones, the least imaginable transitions:

– I can buy that cells decided to benefit from the economy of scale and thus shaped organs and animals so quickly to the extreme extent of the Cambrian explosion (2′:51″).

– Similarly I can believe that the technological singularity (19′:17″) that we are experiencing live, is taking place on its own. You may call it the artificial super-intelligence, the transcendental object or as in this video “the thing inventor inventor”. It is currently unfolding before our eyes and it doesn’t seem to be guided remotely. By a typical interventionist conscious God, through any dashboard or something equivalent.

– It is also believable that the sudden increase in the brain size of the human ape and the advent of the double-articulated language (and thus the human mind – 4′:11″) happened without an alien intervention.

The unjustified leap: But there is one mysterious transition. A leap too giant in too short time, to assume it just emerged on its own and on the surface of our planet:

– The geological to biological transformation of the earth (2′:17″). How come as the planet cooled down (and became in a sense fertile) cells appeared so quickly? Every good story that I have heard skips over this leap, ignores the magnitude of such transition and fast forwards. Science knows nothing about this.

So how did cells – such extremely complicated machines – appear on Earth? How were they cooked on a geologically active planet? How did the instruction sheet of all living organisms appeared through rocks? All that advanced DNA computation and dataflows, the advent of life, where did it come from?

The archetype: Just decoding one of the deepest archetypes for further investigation:

Mother Earth ain’t virgin!

Dream: The Inner Book!

Just had the strangest dream in a long while.

There was a divine voice representing the universe who gave me a very rare chance:

Ask any question and you shall know the answer. If you want to know only one thing, any thing, what that thing would be?

Not to lose the chance I replied without hesitation:

If you could tell me everything in one sentence what that sentence would be?

Then the scenery changed, there were lights and clouds and I flew through them. I went inside a book and in there even more clouds and lights and in there another book opened and sucked me in.

This went on and I knew it’s a dream. So I was worried that time will run out without me ever getting the answer. And luckily in the last book right before I fully wake up it transpired:

With no data you can still know everything!

WTF was that!