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Vaccine skeptic hired to conduct government study on whether vaccines cause autism
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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These people have co-opted the work "skeptic".
I grew up Orthodox and became skeptical of god's role in my life, now I'm agnostic.
My parents became "skeptical" of vaccines. Once they found their first antivax substack they are no longer "skeptical" but rather certain vaccines cause autism and covid vax causes heart attacks.
I find it hilarious (sad) they stop being skeptical once they find "proof" of their suspicions and then claim to be skeptics.
They of course have seen all the research supporting vaccines and deemed it insubmissable because it was funded by big pharma or the WHO (CHINA).
The only science they believe is the shit pushed by their "independent" researchers (crunchy influencers).
🤮
When you're agnostic you're just a closet atheist. It's not that atheists are sure there is no god, we're not, nobody can say that for sure. We can (and do) say, however, that you don't have to worry about made up fairy tale rules, there likely isn't a god. Just be a nice person and you'll be fine.
I used to call myself an atheist but switched to agnostic since I don't know for certain. My agnostic belief in a higher power is NOT the judgemental rule writing god of scripture. More of a default reason for enexplainable things in our universe. As science progresses there are less things where the higher power is needed.
But that's just me.
I always told my parents when they were disappointed in me for ditching the "Faith": I may be a bad Jew but I make every effort to be a good person.
Atheist moment
All of the agnostics I know openly identity as atheists, too.
This is not true at all. That is why agnostic and atheist are two separate words with two separate meanings. I agree with the be a nice person part though.
In practice they're exactly the same. Atheists don't say anything differently than agnostics
I'm agnostic. Definitely not a closet atheist. I actually talk about God with my closest and most catholic friend regularly
So do I, what's your point?
If you say that you believe in God, then you're not agnostic. If you don't believe in God, you're an atheist. Atheist, agnostic, in practice it's the exact same thing
If I were an atheist then I would say there is no God, no afterlife, no soul, none of that.
I am agnostic because I haven't seen evidence that I should rule it out nor accept it as gospel. Pun slightly intended.
It's again the same thing. Could there be a soul? It hasn't been proven either way so yeah, it's possible, but in all likelihood it's just bogus.
Either way, atheists and agnostics say the exact same things, atheists are just clearer about the message
Again, my beliefs aren't your beliefs.
I'm not an "Atheist in denial", I am someone who doesn't see significant evidence to rule out things humanity is incapable of understanding they may be similar in concept to God or a soul
I apologize if I made you feel like I was pushing something on you.
I'm merely trying to say that the teo are pretty much the same. I was like you, calling myself agnostic until I read this line "agnostics are just closet atheists" and that rung a bell with me.
My beliefs didn't change, I just call myself atheist now.
I am not in a closet
I think we can be for sure, religious skeptic is an equally ridiculous term. It's like saying I'm a teacup-around-Saturn skeptic. In any reasonable meaning of the word "certain", "truth", or "sure", the teacup and any deity do not exist nor play any role in our lives. They deserve no consideration except for niche discussions in philosophy and epistemology. We should use the teacup example even in that case, not the deity one.
agnostic arnt aethiest thought.
You can be both. A lot of atheists are also agnostics.
Don't worry, Republicans have been hard at work destroying our public education system so that people in the future won't be burdened with seeing and understanding their parents' hypocrisy for what it is.