You guys are tying yourselves in linguistic knots. I disbelieve in the belief in a god, and I also disbelieve in the lack of belief in a god? What does that even mean?
Of course I can’t know absolutely that there is not god. It is a big universe, and I can imagine many gods who by definition I’d never know, and therefore certainly can deny with certainty.
The attempt to define atheism as the position of being absolutely certain that there are no gods is an attempt to accuse us of having an absurd position.
As always, we can only make belief judgments on gods theists propose - which have turned to be either falsified by evidence or totally unfalsifiable.
Going from the failure of theists to offer convincing evidence for any god to believing (provisionally) that none exist is a far cry from claiming with certainty knowledge that none exist. I don’t understand why this distinction is so difficult.
Put me on top of a mountain and have some hairy thunderer shove his ass and a bunch of stone tablets at me, and I might change my mind.
But I’d look for mirrors and projectors first.
Why does one have to make up their mind entirely? Sometimes people want the freedom to explore before they determine exactly what they believe in. That’s allowed.
People who are very concrete have to put their ball in a court. Whimsical people who are flexible can mentally levitate the ball above the court, maybe even in a circle. I’m teasing.
Perhaps it is an inherited through evolution to want something higher to protect one.
Belief is a choice, it is like a spouse who is told it’s mate is unfaithful, he/she may not want the truth, but one may want the truth then hire a detective to tell one way or the other, and there are some who do not want to know.
I’ve thought about it plenty and for me the proper stance is agnostic. Although I reject a lot of what believers say about god, I remain open to the possibility of a higher power.
That’s why those subcatagories seem pointless and unessecary to me although I’ve run into posters who insist on using them and try to jam me in one.
It’s been said agnostic, is about not knowing while theism or atheism is about belief, so that means you can’t just be agnostic. Bull pucky I say. IMO, one of the three is something a person chooses for themselves when the subject comes up. Any reasonably honest person will acknowledge they can’t know. That doesn’t make all reasonably honest people agnostics IMO, except in the broadest least usefull sense of the term.
Right, that’s your stance regarding what can be known. You made this evident in your earlier posts. You already said you weren’t using a definition of agnosticism that is mutually exclusive of atheism or theism, but then you show otherwise (which I already went over). You seem to be doing it again here, where you say “for me the proper stance is agnostic” as if that says anything about what you do or don’t have a belief in.
“If they answer with ‘No I don’t believe in God or gods’ they are atheist.”*
Of course you can’t “just be agnostic” if you’re defining it in regards to knowledge and the other two words regarding belief. Can I “just be Irish” if I’m also Catholic?
When you said “I’m not a theist” and “I’m not a believer”, was anyone able to determine if you were an agnostic based on the definitions you provided? Were they able to tell if you were a theist or atheist based on those two statements and the definition of “atheist” you provided?
You either believe in some God, or you do not believe in any God. How complicated is that? If you believe you certainly can be open to the possibility of being wrong. We believe in lots of stuff we discover is not true. There are theists, and atheists, who don’t seem to be open to this possibility, but that does not change the status of their belief.
My understanding of agnosticism is that it is not about knowing or not knowing (since I suspect many theists will admit that they do not know God exists) but about the possibility of knowing.
However agnosticism, as commonly used, seems to be about being unwilling to come down on one side or the other of the belief question. I don’t get that as a real internal position, but I do understand that it might make one’s life a lot easier if you say that to others. Especially given that the majority theist culture has reason to try to make atheism look like an unsupportable position.
It’s not complicated. I just don’t agree it’s either or. I don’t think anyone is required to either believe or not believe. One might say an agnostic is still looking at the issue without deciding one way or the other. I know that’s true in my case. I feel no compulsion to decde. I’ll either know when the time comes that something exists beyond this mortal physical life, or I’ll know nothing because nothing exists.
But let’s look at it another way. A sliding scale of degrees of belief
On one end the most ardent believer, on the other , the most ardent nonbeliever. Somewhere in the middle , a group who are agniostic. Who decline to choose belief or non belief. Right next to the agnostic , a hairs breadth away in degrees of belief, is the Theist who may have some doubts and acknowledges the problems with belief , but still identifies as someone who believes in god in some form, perhaps the mysterious undefined other.
The agnostic next to him has many similarities, the difference being he cannot in good conscience identify as a believer. He has one too many doubts to say “I believe” but finds enough unanswered questions to not choose" I don’t believe"
Further down the line is the agnostic who is a hairs breadth away from Atheism. He more skeptical than his fellow agnostic, but still unwilling to declare "I don’t believe. Nerxt to him, someone who has made the decision to declare themsleves an atheist. znd so on.
I believe there are people who may intellectually recognize they can be wrong, and can’t prove their position but are not really open in a real sense to it. Their strong conviction is that they are right, either in their theism or atheism. That differs from the agnostic who has not made a conviction either way.
This is part of it. For me and perhaps other agnostics it’s the thought that while there may be nothing, because we certainly can’t see any objective evidence, it may be that there is something that we simply can’t identify from this world.
while I’m sure there’s lots of people who don’t give it much thought and might make some declaration for societies sake, I made a conscious decision that my position is being an agnostic. I’ve examined and discarded a lot of specific beliefs about god and organized religion, but I haven’t discarded the idea that there may be something more although I won’t declare I believe there is.
The other point for me is although we apparently can’t really, know, it also isn’t nessecary to know or believe, to value the principles taught by say, Buddha or Jesus.
,
I don’t get that you don’t get this
It seems odd to me for anyone to try and present atheism as an unsupportable postion. Anyone who is intellectually honest will acknowledge that there is no objective evidence and that religious beliefs don’t provide satisfactory answers to questions about human suffering.
I realize people don’t always understand atheism because they’ve been so surrounded by religion that it’s hard for them to wrap their heads around. I get pretty disgusted when people discribe atheists as “beleveing in nothing” I wonder if they get how judgemental and “unchristian” that is.
Apologies for the snip, but I believe I have not changed the meaning of what you said.
Here, even as an atheist, I have to disagree, because too much depends on the subjective value of “satisfactory” answers. Religion does provide satisfactory answers…for at least some of the millions who believe in those answers.
I hold the answers to be unsatisfactory. But, for millions, “God loves you” and “There is a Heaven” is completely satisfying. It answers their need for comfort. It promises they will be together with their loved ones again after death has separated them.
To me, this is a groaning load of sheep shit. But for millions – fuck, for billions – it is of immense moral value.
We’re just more critical than those billions are. What satisfies them comes up terribly short for us. But that’s the thing with faith: it only has to be subjective.
This is a measure of a mental state, not a decision. At any moment you either believe or you lack belief. I’ll accept that an undecided person can oscillate between these positions. At the moment of decision this can be very high frequency, but for some it is very low frequency - the moments of doubt we hear about. And in our society you often try to convince yourself you are on one side, when you actually are on the other. I did that, until reading about how the Bible was written kicked me over the line.
Perhaps agnosticism in your view is the state of the frequency of oscillation being above some level. Or perhaps it is a case of Schrodinger’s Agnostic - open the box to determine whether you believe or not.
What you declare yourself as is immaterial. We have tons of declared theists who turn out to be atheists, and I’m sure that in the Soviet Union there were lots of declared atheists who were actually theists. It is an internal state, not an external one.
Anyone with any sense realizes that we can’t prove anything universal in this matter.
And you just oscillated.
That’s progress at least - you used to be a devout deist. I know people who are comfortable believing that there is a reason for it all, but who reject all earth religions and know that there isn’t any evidence for their reason, That is pure belief, and really can’t be argued with.
Lack of belief isn’t something that needs to be supported - it just is. Believing in no gods doesn’t really need support either, but since it is a stronger position it needs some support - but hardly proof. Weak atheism is like presumption of innocence in a criminal trial - it is where you start, and where you stay until the prosecution
provides evidence to change your mind.
ETA: The problem of suffering only concerns that subset of gods who give a crap. It is an argument against certain varieties of the Christian god, but not a lot else.
Dam it!! ONce again I lost a rather lenghty reply when I tried to copy it. I’m going to try doing it in word and then coming to the SD but that will have to be later.
Really? Because that’s not what you said regarding how you define the word earlier. You continuously change the definition.
Atheism and theism are in regards to what one believes or doesn’t and the definition of agnosticism you prefer to use is the position that one can’t know with complete certainty. You don’t have to make any decisions to be an atheist.
Another flip flop. You said that using the definitions you prefer, one can be an agnostic atheist or agnostic theist. Now you’re using a definitions where that can’t be so and being agnostic is about whether or not one “chooses” to believe or not and is a middle ground between theism and atheism. You’re not being one bit consistent.
I’ll quote you again:
*“I’m not a theist”
“I’m not a believer”
“If they answer with ‘No I don’t believe in God or gods’ they are atheist.”*
I’ve never met an theist that has claimed to have “chosen” to not believe.
And now you’re defining agnosticism as not making a conviction and claiming that atheists and theists necessarily have? One couldn’t be an agnostic atheist or agnostic theist this way either, could one? I don’t know many atheists that have a strong conviction they are right about anything as making a claim that any gods don’t exist isn’t necessary. They just need to be without belief. You acknowledged this before but your definitions keep changing.
According to what you wrote above, atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Yet, you claimed using your definitions that they’re not. You made these statements:
*"You claimed I implied atheism and being an agnostic were mutually exclusive when I implied nothing of the sort. "
“I call myself an agnostic because my response to “Does God exist?” is I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either.”*
Your definitions have changed repeatedly throughout this thread.
Wow, I’ve been gone for about a hundred posts and you’re still trying to tell people that they are atheists, when they are self-described agnostics. From an intellectual standpoint, the differences between atheism and agnosticism should be easily understood.
This is not a wrestling match where you try and pin the other person on their back… If someone says they are agnostic, it should be quite clear that they are not an atheist. Why? because they didn’t say they were an atheist…
Is agnosticism more or less healthy on the psyche than atheism or theism? Who knows.
That is entirely possible and may not be limited to technology. They may have evolved senses or abilities far and beyond our own, which allows them to do god-like things.
Okay, but I really don’t see how Der Trihs could be entirely correct on this matter. His viewpoint that, “all deities are religious,” may encompass a vast majority of theists, but does not cover all forms of deistic beliefs. Take Deism for example, it’s the belief that a deity created the universe and it dismisses religious dogma. There are no limitations on what a deist might think. They might fancy gods that have omega-gods and the like, but they also don’t claim to have any specific knowledge of these deities and they don’t worship them. The only assertion that deism makes is that the event of the universe was put in motion by a deity. It generally goes hand in hand with science.
No… It requires an appeal to the supernatural. A deity, in the sense of an intelligent mind, who created the universe, cannot co-exist with natural physical laws in any meaningful way. A deity is a supernatural concept, even if totally divorced from religious dogma, creeds, requirements of worship, and so on. It’s inescapably religious.
It isn’t compatible with science at this point in time, for the lack of any evidence. So far, the best evidence points to a non-thinking, non-intelligent, non-willed, non-personal origin for the universe.
(You can say that this “person” is totally beyond any concern with us – he doesn’t hear our prayers, doesn’t provide miracles, doesn’t reveal himself to us – then he is indistinguishable from a non-person. If all he does is create the universe, and then sit back and observe it…he might just as well be an inert cloud of gas. The explanatory value of the hypothesis becomes nil.)
I suppose in your mind it must be. But for all a deist claims, a being might have created the universe the same way we created the internet, or computers in general. Our minds simply do not have the capacity to understand how such a thing might occur.
No no no, you misunderstand. I didn’t say that the claim that a being created the universe was compatible with science, I was just making the point that deists often believe in science the same way an atheist does. The difference is that their life experience has allowed them to conclude that the universe could not have come about without being purposely created, as opposed to an atheist’s position that science has not shown a significant possibility for deities at all.
It seems that you’re looking for ways to attribute a religious significance to a deist’s beliefs when that’s not really necessary. You are looking at this deity as if it should have a similar/comparable intent as the Christian god. You are also applying needless characteristics to it like, “sit back and observe it,” when the deity might be in constant construction or maintenance of some sort. Who knows, I’m just pointing out that there is no way to determine the fundamental significance (from our perspective) of said deity.
BTW, the wiki definition of deism does not fit the wiki definition of religion. I can only conclude that deism is not a religion, and therefore, it is an example of a deistic belief with no correlation to religion. I know, a redundant statement, but necessary to make the point.
I define a religion as: “An organized body of thought having both a mythos and an ethos.” The mythos, in my definition, necessarily entails an appeal to the supernatural. The ethos is the list of obligations or taboos: prayer to the east, not eating fish, memorizing verses, whatever.
A pure deist doesn’t have an ethos. There isn’t anything he is obliged to do…or not to do.
However, his mythos still entails an appeal to the supernatural, so I’m not letting them get of Scot free!
For something to be inherited through evolution, it must have a purpose - like all thoughts and contemplations.
It is definitely protection as an aspect, but ultimately serves as a purpose. We see myriad beauty around us, it speaks to us through emotion, it fuels our ambition, it provides a canvas for meaning. It emphasizes the importance of our being here. Belief is the way to provide for us when we suffer, the spirit of all complex reality and the antidote for ambiguity. When facing death, we face life. It happens to all of us - never met a soul who didn’t search when they knew they were facing the end. If it were nature, and an ultimate truth, we would die without a question. What’s with all the questions?
