:smack: That of course should be “Premise 1 contradicts Inference 1”. I cannot type anything without making some kind of erorr!
Actually, the non-cause of quantum foam is uncertainty at the level of space-time. Not very good cite.
I don’t know how you propose we’d try to prove that something does not have a cause by observation, but it looks like the basic principles my which this was predicted do say there is no cause.
Clearly in the macrouniverse something going from point A to point B traverses all points between. Would you consider that a law also. But it clearly does not hold at the quantum level. Why do you think causality is more fundamental?
Just for some clarification, you can’t divide Theism/atheism gnosticism/agnosticism into neat little categories like ontology/epistemology.
Agnosticism was first used by T.H. Huxley because he wanted a word he could use to describe himself. He felt that questions about metaphysics(i.e. about the true nature of reality, existence) were inherently impossible to answer, or even productively discuss. Since the existence of god is one of those questions, he saw it as irrational to even have an opinion on the topic. In the 19th century however, the world was divided(albeit lopsidedly) between the religious, who believed in God, and the atheists, who denied God and held that the nature of the world was purely naturalistic and scientific. So Huxley specifically created the word “agnostic” just so he could BE that third category that all you atheists claim doesn’t exist.
The problem is that it really is a binary situation - there is no third way. You’re either theist or you’re not. You may not be theist for some philosophical point like Huxley, but you’re still not a theist. “I can’t know” is still in the opposite space from “I believe” - any statement that isn’t “I believe” is atheist.
Huh, I think I actually remember this thread.
It’s simple.
Take a piece of paper and a pen.
Write down the name of every single god you can think of.
Put a check mark next to every single god you believe exists.
Count up the check marks:
More than 0? You’re a theist.
0? You’re an atheist.
Where does the 3rd category fit in there?
You’re either a theist or you’re not. That’s obviously true. What isn’t so obvious is that not being a theist makes you an “atheist”
It’s right there on the box…
Not necessarily. I’m assuming that you’re saying that because the word is “a-theist” it means not theist, right? well, that’s not how language works. What you’re doing is called the etymological fallacy, presuming a word has to mean something just because of what it’s constituent parts and it’s origin say it means. Secondly, the etymology of atheism is actually “atheos+ism” which means “ungodly belief”
Atheism has, throughout history, referred to conscious and active positions that reject Gods, not the absence of belief.
Consider he ignostic, who believes that you must first have a definition of God before you can discuss Its existence. That’s not as easy as it may sound.
a metaphysical being responsible for the creation of our universe, often with metaphysical power over how events unfold within said universe.
I think that’s a pretty solid definition
Exactly. Though you aren’t going to get much traction for this perspective around here, since most people here seem to thing agnostic=cowardly atheist or agnostic=atheist and anyone who doesn’t think so just doesn’t get it. Partly because of this thread, IIRC, I set my title to be agnatheist. 
Although there is also a section that believes that it is possible to be both an agnostic and and atheist-that they are not mutually exclusive.
*“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” (Holmes) interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”*
I thought I had killed this thread.
They are not opposite, they are orthogonal. Saying “I can’t know” if a god exists does not prevent you from believing that a god exists. Any deist is a perfect example of this. Now, not being able to know if the interventionist western style god exists is confusing, because, if he shows up and does the appropriate tricks, you’d know he exists to the same level you know the lamppost outside your house exists.
From the other direction, in nearly 40 years of on-line discussion I’ve run across only one person who claims to “know” that no gods exist. However it is perfectly reasonable to believe this without claiming to know it. In fact, except for that variety of god which is logically inconsistent, I’d be hard pressed to know that there is no real god in some other planet in some other galaxy. And the deist god is unknowable by definition.
Saying “often” is a dead giveaway that there might be a problem with the definition.
Would a grad student in some other brane who did a physics experiment which created our universe (but who is blocked from it since we are inside a singularity from his perspective) be a god by your definition?
You don’t say :dubious:
Tell me, what does it mean now, to atheists.
And remind me, is it only an etymological fallacy if I use it?
[QUOTE=Voyager]
They are not opposite, they are orthogonal. Saying “I can’t know” if a god exists does not prevent you from believing that a god exists.
[/QUOTE]
I would argue that it very much does prevent you from having such belief. If you doubt, you don’t have faith.
And Deists, IME, like the intellectual idea of deity, but they don’t have faith in such an entity.
I thought that information removing doubt destroys faith. At least that is the explanation given for why God doesn’t actually do anything these days. But I’ve read of plenty of people with faith who confess their doubts.
We’d have to ask a deist about faith. I don’t know how you could believe in one without faith, given that the universe with or without such a deity looks identical by definition.
You might have more of the right of it than me, or I might not be expressing myself properly - but basically, I think that faith that admits of doubt is one thing, and faith that admits we can’t know is another, far less faithful, thing entirely. Even most doubting theists believe they’ll know when they die, for instance. But you might be right about most Deists, I’m just going by my experiences with people who claim to be such - it’s entirely a reasoned approach on their part, not a faith-based one.
It’s possible to be an atheist and a theist too. You just have to define both words in a way that makes them mutually compatible.
I think one can be an atheist that, by my definition anyway is an agnostic, and an agnostic who, for all intents and purposes is an atheist but simply choose not to use that self applied label, but the two terms aren’t equal, and have subtly different meanings to those who self apply those labels. Mutually exclusive? No, I don’t think they are…I think of them more as intersecting sets, and there is a lot of commonality where they intersect and interpose, but they aren’t the circle within a circle that some here assert.