I think I see what you’re getting at, but I take issue with saying that a response of “I don’t believe you” is blind conviction.
All it is, at the core, is rejecting claims that have no evidence. It’s less a dismissal of someone’s experience than a rejection of the conclusion they draw from it. There is no conviction in not accepting a claim without supporting evidence.
So I think it’s not correct to say I’m an agnostic atheist. I don’t reject the concept of God. Many people have had religious experiences (especially near-death experiences), and I don’t think they’re all lying. I don’t take one persons account as gospel, but in aggregate they tell an interesting story. A story that I have no direct experience or evidence to support but I need not reject or accept the stories as truth.
Same for Sasquatch. Thousands of years of stories on every inhabited continent. Who am I to discount them all as fiction. I don’t need to decide which camp I’m in - believer or non-believer. It makes no difference. It doesn’t become part of my identity. I don’t need to be right or wrong.
I have however seen a UFO, when I was young. It really doesn’t matter whether you believe me. It’s your choice. But dismissing anything for which there’s no evidence is a big presumption. You don’t have direct evidence of many things you believe to be true.
The theory of plate tectonics was once ridiculed. We have pretty good evidence now but it started as a theory.
I think I see what you’re getting at, but I take issue with saying that a response of “I don’t believe you” is blind conviction.
All it is, at the core, is rejecting claims that have no evidence. It’s less a dismissal of someone’s experience than a rejection of the conclusion they draw from it. There is no conviction in not accepting a claim without supporting evidence.
So I think it’s not correct to say I’m an agnostic atheist. I don’t reject the concept of God. Many people have had religious experiences (especially near-death experiences), and I don’t think they’re all lying. I don’t take one persons account as gospel, but in aggregate they tell an interesting story. A story that I have no direct experience or evidence to support but I need not reject or accept the stories as truth.
Same for Sasquatch. Thousands of years of stories on every inhabited continent. Who am I to discount them all as fiction. I don’t need to decide which camp I’m in - believer or non-believer. It makes no difference. It doesn’t become part of my identity. I don’t need to be right or wrong.
I have however seen a UFO, when I was young. It really doesn’t matter whether you believe me. It’s your choice. But dismissing anything for which there’s no evidence is a big presumption. You don’t have direct evidence of many things you believe to be true.
The theory of plate tectonics was once ridiculed. We have pretty good evidence now but it started as a theory.