Not at all but that’s not really the point. Agnosticism is all about the receiver of the information. God could certainly reveal himself in the Bible as some believe but an agnostic claims that doesn’t prove he exists. I could see God in all of his glory during a NDE but an agnostic would claim that it doesn’t prove God exist but rather are chemicals in the brain. In fact, if you believe the Judeo-Christian-Islaminc tradition, God has repeatedly revealed himself to us but if that is true, can you prove he exists?
Is this a question about me personally or epistomoolgy in general?
Personally, something is knowable if there is an absence of a possible (within our knowledge so yes the definition is circular) counterarguement. Memory is fallible as are some facts such as Aristotle’s views of gravity. Part of the consideration has to be that everything we know is through the filter of experience.
Think of it this way. A person has a fact that they “know” but is incorrect. Say its that “Cambridge study on misspellings” or that duck’s quack doesn’t echo or that Al Gore won an Oscar. What do they know? Is it possible to know something that is incorrect? For me the answer has to be yes with the caveat that my “knowing” is fallible otherwise we are looking at a pure skepticism in that nothing is knowable.
So I’m walking down the street and God in all of his glory comes from the Heavens. Is there a possible or better yet reasonable expalination? Sure. An alien that has studied our culture. A temporal lobe seizure. So that is where faith comes in. I have faith that I saw God or that I saw an alien but I can’t prove it to anyone, even myself.
Actually, a strong atheist would say “I don’t believe there is” to the second question.
A weak atheist would say “I have no belief in god, but I also don’t believe there is no god. I lack both belief in god and belief in no god.”
As in science, all knowledge is provisional. It is not that it is impossible to get evidence that would make me believe in a god, it is just that for thousands of years such evidence has been non-existent, and whatever evidence is claimed is unconvincing at best and of fairy tale quality on the average.
Knowledge and belief are two totally different things. If you don’t get that, the atheist position makes no sense.
This is an amazing discussion. It’s not atheists/agnostics arguing against believers. Its non-believers each arguing that their brand of non-belief has the strongest rational foundation.
Really? Any of you see the humor of the absurdity in this?
I call myself agnostic, in all matters, not just with regard to woo stuff. It’s the general policy of being honest with myself and others about what I have personally experienced, which is the only set of things I can honestly claim to really know about.
There’s lots of things I can infer are likely or not from that base, and of course my behavior reflects that, but there’s no reason to actively Believe in or against things I haven’t personally experienced.
OTOH I’m sort of also the opposite, because I simultaneously believe in EVERYTHING. The universe is made of information, and may be infinite, and the brain can be made to simulate just about any kind of experience. So in that sense, if anything could exist, and we have the ability to have any experience, then really everything imaginable exists in one form or another. All that’s left is just categorization.
I don’t see the ‘debate’ here. It really doesn’t matter what you call yourself as much as the way you live your life. You don’t believe in gods, religions, mythology etc. and therefore live as if they didn’t exists, for all intent and purposes you’re an atheist. Weak, strong, semi-tumescent, who cares?
I’m also perfectly content saying “I don’t know” when asked about Genesis, yet I don’t see the (semantic) problem in calling myself an atheist. In fact, there is tons of stuff I don’t know. But I do know I am an atheist.
Which brings up an interesting question: What do you call all the people that don’t believe in God, but still fear him? People who live their lives a certain way because they fear hell, even though they don’t believe in it? Still atheists?
I myself call myself an “agnostic” because, while I think that there’s a 0% chance of an Abrahamic God existing, I don’t know what caused the big bang. It doesn’t matter if such a being would have a human-like mind. I’m using the term god pretty loosely, perhaps. If the big bang started with something farted, then the farter is god (relative to me, anyway).
Just you. Can’t have a discussion with epistemology in general.
Hypothetically, suppose that absolutely everyone is already in agreement that knowledge isn’t absolute. We can be mistaken, we can have collected incomplete evidence, our reasoning can be fallacious. All these are given. What are agnostics actually saying, then?
This is how I think a lot of us in this thread are. Of course we can’t know to that level of exactness whether there is a god. But that is not what anyone means by “to know” in the first place!
I think this is a good argument for the previously mentioned ignosticism. (A new one for me! Thanks to comrade sven.) An inability to distinguish one entity from another is not necessarily the mark of a limit of knowledge, especially when we’re discussing empirical measures.
Most people tend to use agnosticism, in my experience, to refer to knowing or not knowing (usually in conjunction with theism/atheism). For instance, “I don’t believe in God, but there’s always that small chance in the event we get some evidence,” or “I believe in God and I am certain he exists,” etc.
To be a “pure agnostic,” to me, doesn’t really make sense. It’s trying to imply lack of belief system. It’s like saying “I am not atheist nor a theist.” But if you’re not a theist, you are atheist. It doesn’t mean anything to me to say “I am not-X and also not not-X.”
I think most people use “pure agnosticism” to imply that they don’t know and don’t really care. I’d still describe these people as atheist, either way.
Regarding the other definition of agnosticism, it can also refer to what is knowable.
For instance, I am agnostic regarding the origin of existence. I don’t think we can ever possibly know “why there is something rather than nothing.” Some people like to invoke God as the creator behind existence, but this isn’t satisfying if you wish to ask what made God. At some point, we have to acknowledge that existence exists and that it may not even make sense to posit “true” nonexistence. It may be a meaningless concept. Either way, it’s a question I don’t think we have access to even if we wanted to, fundamentally.
I don’t believe in zombies, but I’ve still been scared by them. Actually, I think most of my fears are of things that aren’t actually real. Nothing like a good horror movie, game, or book. Of course, when you’re afraid of zombies, it’s an irrational fear. When you’re scared of god, saying it is an irrational fear is rude, or disrespectful. Though I think we have more evidence of zombies than gods. Wasn’t there a documentary by some fellow about a group of people hiding out in a farmhouse from a zombie onslaught? I think Romero was the chap.
Hang on, are you actually asserting that atheists are just as religious as Christians?
I agree, by the way, that it’s awfully rude and presumptuous of people to respond to you by saying that you are using the words “Atheist” and “Agnostic” wrong, as if there is one and only one definition for either of those words.
No because agnostism isn’t a statement on belief at all, it’s a statement on knowledge.
You can be a theistic agnostic or an atheistic agnostic…you can be a gnostic theist or a gnostic atheist.
There are a lot of people here arguing from the gnostic atheist point of view. Most of the agnostics lean atheist as well. But I’m a theistic agnostic, though an atheist if you define god by Judeochristian terms.
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Hang on, are you actually asserting that atheists are just as religious as Christians?
[/QUOTE]
Well, only if I’m using the term ‘rethink’ incorrectly. Apparently in your world ‘rethink’ means’ asserting’. Obviously my grasp of the finer points of grammatical definition are really the issue here.
FWIW, the ‘Hang on’ bit was very dramatic…it really pulled me into the moment.
Yes, because I’ve constantly asserted that only my definition is valid, and I wasn’t trying to be ironic by basically making the exact same argument given to me in the past about the definition of agnosticism by making arbitrary and contradictory (with my own position IN THIS THREAD ABOUT THE FACT THAT NOTHING IS 100%) assertions about the definition of atheism. You got me…well done, Max…well done.
Glad you caught how rude everyone was as well…that makes me feel better.
Uhh, I have no idea what you’re talking about at all or why you’re responding the way you are.
You posted:
That seems a bit ambiguous to me… it could be saying “I used to disagree that atheists are just as religious as Christians, but then I rethought that and have now changed my position”. Or it could be saying “I used to disagree… but then a bunch of people acting that way made me at least vaguely reconsider, but I still maintain my original position”. Or it could be saying something else entirely.
Which is why I asked what it is you’re actually saying, I would like you to clarify a statement I found to be ambiguous.
As for the other half of the post, I was attempting to be non-ironically supportive of you. I think people in this thread are being jerks to you, and was attempting to be sympathetic, and then you snapped at me in a weird way I don’t quite understand.
You got me…well done, Max…well done.