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Ep 331: Gurwinder Bhogal Examines Human Nature
The Seen and the Unseen - hosted by Amit Varma
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Useful Delusions
Agnosticism deals with knowledge and atheism deals with belief/nIt is possible to not believe in God and also believe that the truth is unknowable by us/nReligion can still play a useful function despite being a useful delusion/nLeft and right are almost meaningless terms and both embrace simple narratives to explain the world/nAn old saying goes that if you're not a communist at 17 you don't have a heart and if you are a communist at 30 you don't have a brain
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Speaker 2
And that's actually not true agnosticism deals with knowledge you cannot know something and atheism deals with belief so it is possible to not believe in God and at the same time believe that the truth whatever it is is unknowable by us it would be hubris to think otherwise. So in that sense I am both an atheist and an agnostic and it is also possible the third sort of thought there is that it is also possible to believe that religion plays a useful function you know despite all of this, despite the truth. Like many of the things that help us in our lives are useful delusions and it comes to choosing your delusion. But in India frankly it's played an increasingly toxic growth in recent
Speaker 1
decades but I'll come back to that. Yeah I mean that's the Hindu far. But
Speaker 2
anyway that's one other day. So a bunch of things on ideology and leftism and workness that I sort of wanted to share my thoughts on and then we can go further. Like one you know there is this like first of all I'm an equal opportunity offender like you hated by the left and the right equally and the left and the right are almost meaningless terms you know I find them to be extremely similar in their embrace of simple narratives to explain the world. And the way I think about it is you know there's this old saying about how if you're not a communist at 17 you don't have a heart and if you are a communist at 30 you don't have a brain.
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