I'm completely dumbfounded that apparently this simple thing is so difficult to comprehend for some.
Yes, this is the compelling feature of many of the people condemning atheists and atheism - they don't know what an atheist actually believes and they appear to be literally unable to conceive of agnostic atheism. They don't disagree with the position. They cannot conceive of it to disagree with it.
One wonders why we see so many in the theist ranks like this, and also, how it is possible. This brings me to the idea of false consensus - the erroneous cognitive bias that we are all basically the same, varying in degree rather than type: "
The tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with us is known among social psychologists as the false consensus effect. This kind of cognitive bias leads people to believe that their own values and ideas are "normal" and that the majority of people share these same opinions."
Here the term is being used in the arena of values, but I'm expanding it to simple understanding. We know that others may know more or less, and be quicker or slower, but we assume that we are all processing information more or less the same way with varying degrees of expertise. Then, one encounters this phenomenon.
It took me years to realize that trying to find the right words to make these ideas comprehensible simply isn't possible with what seems to be over half of the theists in this thread alone. I finally concluded that this will be impossible with many such people. They can no more comprehend such ideas than a blind person can see. It's not a matter of arranging the lighting just right or raising the blinds or finding the right lens prescription to make the blind see. They just can't do it, and no number of interventions will change that. "Just look harder," we say, thinking that there must be a way to get light into those eyes. So, we open the blinds. He still doesn't see. We turn up the lights. He still doesn't see. We bring the image right up to his eyes and he still doesn't see. And we are confused, because we falsely think that he is basically the same, when he isn't.
The problem isn't resolved until we recognize that blindness not only is possible, but here it is. At that point, once we find ourselves dealing with people who just can't seem to see what is shown them, that they have some physical condition that prevents them apprehending the sights we see, we stop trying to show them things.
Now look at this thread. We have a population of people that cannot conceive of agnostic atheism, and a group that hasn't accept that, people who are trying every verbal combination they can think of to show this idea to the blind. This is false consensus - the idea that all others are like you to a greater or lesser degree.
Once we recognize and acknowledge this phenomenon - that such people are the functional equivalent of the blind when it comes to these ideas, and that it is futile to try to explain such a simple idea, that the failure isn't because the explainer hasn't found the right words yet, but rather that the explainee can no more conceive of that idea than a blind man can see himself in a mirror - the next questions are, why are they all theists, and why is no atheists similarly afflicted?
Does this cognitive blindness precede theism, whether genetic or acquired early, and draws people to a god belief, or does having a god belief lead to this state? If the latter, it is a good argument against teaching children to believe in gods. I can't tell yet, but I'm leaning toward it being acquired as one is convinced that faith is a virtue and reason the enemy trying to steal your soul.
If this is a principle cause of this cognitive blindness, it tells us that the damage that this does to the development of the reasoning faculty is profound and lasting. That may account for the correlation of this phenomenon in theists.
Theists like to ask why an atheist wants to come to where theists are to discuss matters with them. This in part is why. Not as they like to say, to argue with them about gods, or to ask for their evidence, or to promote atheism. Most skeptics know that they have no evidence and also don't mind if they want to be theists. It's field work. It's the lab section. It's where individual theists (and atheists) can be observed for weeks to years, and inductions extracted not possible without that extended interaction, and often not possible outside of an anonymous Internet site. I'm certainly not going to have these discussion face to face with people that I know if I want to continue to know them.
Imagine telling somebody at Thanksgiving dinner or at work that they just aren't getting it about agnostic atheism and trying twenty times to correct that. It won't go well. The last time I tried to get into such a discussion was with a man and his wife that I knew through work, and was friendly with. I remember asking him, a Christian, if he thought that I, an atheist, was going to hell. Like a politician, he did everything in his power to avoid giving me an answer.
I persisted in the spirit of the skeptics in this thread, and it ended up being the end of the relationship that night. I should have backed off much sooner, but I did learn that such discussions are a bad idea until I found the Internet religious sites. Only here is this degree of tapping the glass possible. People will engage you ad nauseum if you like.
Anyway, my purpose with this post is to put it out there for the skeptics still trying to find a way into these minds to consider that the task may be impossible so that they can more quickly come to that conclusion and adjust accordingly. It took me forever to recognize that.
