For those disinclined to click on the image (be sure to scroll sideways)…
I’d put myself in the Bottom-Right corner.
**GNOSTIC**
it is possible to be 100% certain
|
**GNOSTIC THEIST** | **GNOSTIC ATHEIST**
100% certain there | 100% certain there
is a God(s) | is no God(s)
**THEIST** | **ATHEIST**
Believes in God(s) ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––|––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– No Belief in God(s)
|
**AGNOSTIC THEIST** | **AGNOSTIC ATHEIST**
Not 100% certain | Not 100% certain
But believes in God(s) | yet doesn't believe in God(s)
|
**AGNOSTIC**
it is not possible to be 100% certain
Given that the set labeled “Gods I can show you” contains zero members, I’ll take your answer to the question to be “zero.” Which means that–congratulations!–you sure sound like an atheist to me.
I asked my coffee mug the same question, by the way; it gave me a totally different answer from yours.
cmyk, I get what you’re saying with that chart. My quibble is that the phrase “doesn’t believe in God” is ambiguous and is not directly related to the statement above it in the atheist side. Thus my question about members of a set.
Zero can have abstract properties, sure. But if I asked you for zero apples, or stated that I believed in zero gods, the abstractions fall away to the practical.
I appreciate your explanation of what I’m saying–obviously I’m having trouble explaining what seems to me like an unambiguous question. The only thing I’d add to your clarification is that answers to the question such as, “Insufficient data,” “Who gives a shit?” “I’m guessing three but maybe it’s zero or it could be infinity,” or, “I have no idea,” are all acceptable answers; what’s not valid is to rhapsodize about the differences between null and zero, since that doesn’t have anything to do with the question.
Does that mean your answer to the question is zero? (To be clear, though, I’m not asking you how many you believe in; if that’s what you’re answering, it’s a totally different question. I’m asking you how many there are.)
Right–but the certainty statement is “there is no god.” That’s not a position a coffee mug can have. The uncertainty position is “don’t believe in god.” That’s something a coffee mug can do. To make it equal, the uncertainty position should be, “not 100% certain but believes there is no God.” That way, a coffee mug can’t do it.
That’s all I was asking for! I promised you it wasn’t a trick :). Me too–I think it’s zero, but am not certain.
Right–but a baby is, in this same sense, not a sentient being, yet some folks (not, I think, you) are saying that their atheism is identical to a baby’s atheism. And that’s the point I’m making: if you ask a baby this question, the baby is unable to answer it, because the baby has not reflected on the question. A belief in a universe with zero gods in it, however tentative or contingent, is different from having no belief about the number of gods in the universe.
This seems to me like a bleedin’ obvious point, and it may be bleedin’ obvious to you, but other folks in this thread have insisted otherwise. A reflective atheism, in which someone has considered the idea of divinity and decided it’s not likely (or impossible or whatever), is fundamentally different from an unconsidered atheism, in which my coffee mug, my cat, and my infant daughter*, have not considered the idea of divinity at all, much less accepted or rejected it.
I see what you’re getting at, and my stance is, if it cannot be rationalized one way or the other, by faith or logic, then theism, atheism, gnosticism, or agnosticism on the matter does not apply.
Just as, a coffee mug or a baby can’t believe with any certainty or not in the existence of aliens. That doesn’t mean they’re not out there… Or not. So trying to apply that logic is meaningless.
I am certain that there are no ‘Gods’ as currently defined by the various religious folks around.
Does that mean that there are no beings out there that may be ‘godlike’ to our senses? I have no way of knowing the answer to that - but at this point there is no evidence for such.
Absent evidence for - I am comfortable stating with utter assurity that there are ‘no gods’.
Which is why I went thru this exercise - to help demonstrate that simple ‘statement’ that many others - especially the theists - try to use as an argument of why there are no ‘true’ atheists.
Nah. Just another example illustrating his own point that belief can lead people astray.
He has a firm belief in the non-estence of god, (his position–not the default position of atheism), and he draws a conclusion from it that is not really supported by actual facts. It could even be true, but his assertion is only coincidental to the possible truth of his assertion.
Sounds reasonable to me. Religions make all sorts of claims about what we should see if there is a god - claims either invalidated or lacking evidence. I fail to see absolute certainty anywhere in this quote. Clearly proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof in the legal sense - and no one says that is anywhere close to certainty.l
Your first quote has the person saying he knows in a weak sense of knowledge - not absolute knowledge but the sense of know we use in everyday life. Again, he specifically rejects absolute certainty. He appears to have some threshold of probability above which he says he knows things, and thinks the nonexistence of God falls above this. Again, reasonable.
In a world where a rock falling in Russia is recorded on a ton of videos, God is very scarce. Perhaps he is hiding out with the flying saucer pilots.
No reasonable person can say with 100% certainty that no gods exist, because it is a very big universe and God may have created it for someone else. So the nonexistence of any god is unknowable in the strict sense. The nonexistence of our common set of earthly gods is a bit less unknowable. I’m not an agnostic since the existence of a God could be very knowable if he chose to show up.