I like to say I’m a polyatheist (note the a) rather than [mono]atheist. I disbelieve in many gods, not just in one big god.
Regular monotheism is hedgehoggy, regular polytheism is foxy.
Disbelief inverts this. Atheism is foxy, polyatheism is hedgehoggy.
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An atheist knows a thousand little reasons why God, singular, cannot exist (fossils, spaghetti monster, anthropic principle).
A polyatheist knows 1 big reason why *any* god or multigodplex cannot exist.
One of my few epistemic commitments that is hedgehoggy is polyatheism.
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I can’t precisely articulate my 1 big polyatheistic disbelief (and feel no particular need to do so, since I think theism/atheism debates are futile+pointless) but suffice it to say: polyatheism is as much stronger a position than atheism as atheism is stronger than agnosticism.
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I can't really feel the difference between the two. Atheism comes from recognizing that a god (of any kind) is not a part that belongs to this particular puzzle of life. Does not matter how many nuts and bolts there are, they dont belong to a LEGO set as a class, not individually
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There aren’t many places in the world where you can experience proper polytheistic cultures/belief systems. They’re different. Saints/angels give Christianity a bit of polytheistic flavor but it’s not the same as full-blown polytheism. It’s like hybrid of monotheism and animism.
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Hm, what are the deities used for? If they are seen as somethings that influence the world somehow, then the general argument stands the same. Otherwise i have no idea.
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Complicated 🙂
Physics today is in 2 pieces (quantum mechanics and general relativity) but most of us think there’s 1 GUT out there right?
What if instead it were 100 patch theories which cannot be unified for deep reasons?
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Um, so atheism would be a GUT that ignores the patchwork, and builds from repeatables instead? Still don't see why the general argument won't work there.
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Ok... Core axiom of science is "doing the same thing tends to produce the same result". The universe is knowable. Core axiom of N-deity (N>=0) religion is "whatever authority says is true". Gods have fundamentally unpredictable wills, whims and tempers, the universe is unknowable
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