Speaking for myself, I say that I am an agnostic by certain knowledge and an atheist by belief. So it is fair to say I am an atheist agnostic. I certainly accept that there can be (and doubtless are) theist agnostics. And I see no problem with agnostic agnostics who hold no beliefs on the subject.
As a mathematician, I think of an analogy with mathematical knowledge and belief. Every mathematician is agnostic on the question of whether the Riemann hypothesis is true. At a guess, the majority believe it is true, doubtless some believe it false and there is a third group who simply refuse to speculate. (To be sure, there is a fourth group who believe that it might be undecidable.) It should be pointed out that there have been conjectures for which the numerical evidence seemed to be overwhelming that turned out to be false, with the first counterexample somewhere beyond a googol.
In my experience, atheists can be just as eager to shove you in to the mold of their beliefs as anyone else. You don’t owe anyone- theist or not- an explanation of your beliefs.
As for myself, I am yet to hear a definition of “god” that makes any real sense, so I feel at a loss to contribute to the conversation. If people could come up with a definition of god that maps on to reality, rather than using an inconsistent set of undefined attributes (like, what does “Omnipresent” mean in actual reality?), maybe I could comment on that particular concept of god.
These are the sorts of arguments that I find particularly frustrating. People will have specific definitions in mind when they use certain words, they’ll create boxes and try to shove people into them when they don’t fall in neatly by themselves. Unfortunately, the term agnostic has different meanings in popular usage and, as a result, has unfortunately lost a lot of it’s usefulness.
Personally, using the definition of agnostic as the nature of the belief being described being unknowable, then I could be described more or less as an agnostic theist, but I do not use that term because it misses some nuance in my beliefs and the general connotation makes it sound like I’m wishy-washy about my beliefs when, in fact, I’ve put a significant amount of time and effort into refining them. By the same token, I can see some people saying agnostic atheist being the essential opposite of my beliefs in having a well thought out belief that it is unknowable and concluding not to believe. But I also see room for a strict, well-thought out agnostic who believes it is unknowable to the point that making a distinction between theism or atheism is meaningless or impossible.
Really, I think if there’s anything going on in the discussion beyond “God doesn’t exist!” “Yes he does!” which is, frankly, tired and boring, trying to put people’s beliefs into predefined boxes that broad seems to defeat the whole purpose of the discusssion. So, by that nature, it seems to be that for general usage theist being I do believe in God, atheist meaning I don’t, and agnostic meaning I don’t know or don’t care seems fine, and in anything more specific, they’ll either be useless because of how differently they may be definied, or there’ll need to be discussion to agree how how they should be used. I think it’s unfortunate that we inherently assume that anyone who doesn’t have a belief to one end or the other of such a polarizing issue must not have given it much thought, but that just seems to be the way most people view these sorts of things.
Nowhere does it say that atheists have to be rational.
Lack of belief in gods means lack of belief in all gods. If it just meant lack of belief in some subset of all possible gods, then everyone, from Dawkins to the most fundamentalist fundy, would be atheists. So if you reject all Gods with human traits but believe in a higher spirit which is hiding out somewhere, you’re not an atheist, which is cool.
I think it is possible for people to swing in and out of belief, which just means that some people swing from atheism to some form of theism and back again with the tides. Perfectly reasonable.
So your selective use of the dictionary aside, MW certainly agrees with our contention that atheism begins with the simple lack of belief. But indeed, dictionaries are not good places to understand subtle philosophical concepts.
Atheism in particular is often misdefined by religious philosophers, who have a much easier time rejecting strawmen. The common theist cry that atheism is stupid because you can’t disprove the existence of god is the popular version of this.
What exactly was selective about my use? I quoted the whole definition IIRC. The point is that atheism is the assertion of a negative belief. Theism is the assertion of a positive believe. Agnosticism is absence of any assertion, positive of negative. If people don’t like those terms and want to make up their own, that’s fine. If they can create a consensus for their use, even better. I’m just not buying that such a consensus exists. Give me some reason to see my error and I will joyously do so.
If anyone wants an authoritative discussion of this issue, I recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which discusses the issue here.
I think it is in keeping with everything I’ve said but much more nuanced and complete in that it covers several issues not even touched on so far here.
Having a problem with the semantics? If your options are A and not A and you reject both, then that’s the same thing as “not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence”
And from the SEP “‘Agnostic’ is more contextual than is ‘atheist’, as it can be used in a non-theological way, as when a cosmologist might say that she is agnostic about string theory, neither believing nor disbelieving it.”
To my mind that person is primarily an atheist. If you have no belief in god or gods then you are an atheist. You don’t need to make a definite statement that there is no god to be an atheist. You may also say that it isn’t possible to know, but if you don’t believe, you are an atheist.
The problem is, there are multiple common definitions for both “atheist” and “agnostic”.
A lot (possibly the majority) of atheists on this board use the term to mean “does not believe in god” but not necessarily “believes there is no god”.
A lot of people use the term “agnostic” to mean “I don’t know.” By this definition, it’s equivalent to the first definition of atheist.
A more strict definition of “agnostic” is that it’s not possible to know whether there is or is not a god. That’s orthogonal to atheism/theism (using either definition of atheist). That is, one can say “It’s impossible to KNOW, but I BELIEVE x.”
So, the person who was pestering the OP made sense, but only if they were using the first definition of atheist and the second definition of agnostic. In either case, he or she was being a pedantic fool, and inaccurately pedantic at that, attempting to discuss an issue without agreeing on semantics.
In a philosophical discussion, semantic issues are easily resolved: we simply find terms and definitions we agree on and move on.
All the above is merely semantics, and isn’t worth arguing over. Stipulate the definitions for the discussion and then discuss something meaningful. Quibbling over different common definitions is a waste of time.
When someone tries to pin you down like this, and the options don’t seem to make sense, the simplest answer is “It depends on what you mean by the words. People mean different things by those words.” If you want to answer with your beliefs, go ahead and let him assign his favorite terms, but you’re not bound to use them yourself.
Knowledge and belief are not the same, so why are these equivalent? You seem to make this point yourself, below (in the last sentence of the quote), so I am a bit bemused by the equivalence here.
If someone thought that, they should also think that they didn’t know, and so should be also be an agnostic on the first definition. (Which is highly problematic if that sort of agnostic is equivalent to some sort of atheist, given the orthogonal claim.)
My mistake. I should have said “implies”, not “equivalent to”.
The purpose of words is to communicate. Different people use them differently. Anyone who is interested in communicating has to recognize that and deal with it.
Above I cited common definitions of the terms, equivalent to definitions that can be found in dictionaries, and consistent with how people actually speak.
This is a fact: many people who aren’t sure whether there is a god or not, and are not sure whether they believe in a god or not, call themselves agnostics. It might not be the best use of the term, but it’s how people talk, and it’s not an error.
Q: “Is there a God?”
A: “I’m not sure.”
Q: “Do you believe in God?”
A: “I’m not sure.”
IMHO, it’s reasonable for a person to answer this way to these questions. Some would call this person an atheist. Many people who say this call themselves agnostics.
Most people aren’t interested in epistemology. Trying to harass them into pigeonholing them into technical definitions of words isn’t philosophy, it’s badgering.
That direction (agnosticism implies atheism) doesn’t work either, and you give the counter example yourself, viz. someone that believes in God, but doesn’t think they have knowledge of God. (One might have the belief, but not the justification.) The other direction (atheism implies agnosticism) does work, because without belief you can’t have knowledge.
I think you’re correct. I was confused by the whole, “you have to be either e theist or atheist” bit but the why was never explained. I understand the semantics of "if you don’t actually believe {theist} then you lack belief and are an atheist, even though I don’t agree.
Of course our belief systems are intellectual and emotional, which is why, IMO, to strrict definitions to these words doesn’t reflect reality. I see it as a sliding scale with the extremeists of “God is” and “There is no God” on either end. Each degree toward the middle introduces some degree of doubt, or recognition of, “we don’t know” Somewhere in the middle are folks ike me don’t embrace belief or disbelief for various reasons.
