Generally to 3, I believe.
It has a big effect, actually. For one thing, I don’t waste my Sunday mornings. For another, it informs my political and other social beliefs.
I am currently investigating whether I am a Theological noncognitivist rather than an atheist, although it seems a little bit like taking ones toys and going home.
Actually, it doesn’t. At least, not without additional information. And, even if it did, then “3, so what?”
My point is that individual unconnected symbols have no meaning or value. (Or, perhaps, they can have *any *meaning and value that we give them.)
“1 + 1 = 2” has meaning and value because each component is part of a well-defined whole that has meaning and value.
What is atheism and what is agnosticism, beyond the nitty-gritty of fine distinctions?
So, you don’t engage in the physical activity of going to a particular building where people congregate to engage in some specific behaviors, right? Instead, you do something else. Your beliefs result in behaviors that are different from those of people who have other beliefs.
But your political and social beliefs are practically non-existent unless they somehow affect your behavior, which I’m sure they do.
One question, then, could be: How is an atheist’s behavior different from an agnositic’s behavior?
But, is that an especially fruitful question? Perhaps not, but I suggest that it is more fruitful than “How should atheists and agnostics view each other”?
Define “fruitful”
I’m forgetting about your entire model, which has nothing to do with my model, or the category 3 that’s in my model, which is certainly not limited to those who have never considered the question.
If we leave off the gross incomprehenson of the model and categories, your position appears, as best as I can tell, to be “screw agnosticism; you’re either a theist or an atheist and that’s that”. And guess what: you’re right - by one definition of “atheist”. The one I prefer, as it happens. But these pesky agnostics have a point that there in fact is a trackable distinction between the people who wear “No gods exist you idiots” t-shirts and those who wear “I live in a state of perpetual uncertainty” t-shirts.
This distinction is even modeled in formal logic! Logical arguments consist, basically, of a list of statements that are considered to be accepted as true. To get onto this list, a statement has to be an axiom or logically derived from an axiom. An axioms is any statement that is accepted as true for reasons outside of logic - which (perhaps shockingly) doesn’t require 100% certainty. You just need to believe the statement enough accept the statement’s truth.
That gives us positive statements. Negative statements are just positive statements that start with a “Not” - and follow the same rules as positive statements. Which is to say that you can’t just assert a negative statement as true for no reason; it has to be accepted as an axiom or derived from logic just like any other statement in the argument.
This covers positive and negative statements, which covers all the statements that you have written down in your argument, either as accepted axioms or logically extrapolated statements. But there’s a ‘stealth’ third type of statement: ones that haven’t been written down in your argument. These are important in logic because the entire point of a logical argument is to move statements from the ‘unwritten’ category to the ‘written’ one: to be able to work your logic around to proving the statement you want to prove. Until you manage to do this, until you manage to build up from what you know to your conclusion via logical extrapolation from accepted truths, the unreached statement remains in the ‘unknown’ category, distinct from the accepted-as true and false statements.
Agnostics are claiming that the truth of the “one or more gods exist” statement is one of these ‘unknown’ statements - one that has not been proven either way. You can define such people to be atheists all you want -I certainly do- but there are certainly arguments that can be made that agnosticism forms a distinct third category, at least theoretically.
Of course, there are a couple of problems with the agnositicism position as well, starting with the fact that formal logic isn’t the only way to reach conclusions - or even the one that people are most likely to use in this situation. Specifically, gods are (supposedly) existing in the real world, and thus opinions on them are subject to development by observation and experimentation. In observational and experimental models, you start with the null hypothesis and work from there; the null hypothesis is assumed to be true by default, subject to disproof by evidence to the contrary. By these models the “I don’t know” answer is a non-sequiter; either you’ve shown with reasonable certainty that the null hypothesis is wrong, or you accept it as true until somebody does show with reasonable certainty that it’s wrong. Agnosticism literally has no place in this model.
And I think that demonstrably this is the model that people use when subconsciously assessing the god question. I think it’s demonstrable because agnostics don’t go around trying to satisfy all theoretically imaginable gods. (Sure that would be impossible to really do, but they don’t even try.) Instead they act according to the observational/experimental models - they act in the manner that accepting the null hypothesis of atheism dictates, or they act on an at least tentative acceptance in some specific diety or set of dieties’ existence.
This means that people who claim to be agnostics are saying one thing and doing another - they’re saying that they have an agnostic position that is (necessarily) based on a logical model that allows for pure impartial unknowns, but their actual thought processes are clearly based on a model with a null hypothesis, and in such models agnosticsm isn’t a possible outcome.
This doesn’t mean they’re deliberately lying, mind you - it means that they just really wish they were computers, all logical and above making assumptions and whatnot. They actively argue that the logical model, where ignorance is strictly maintained until strictly proven otherwise, is superior. And while there are situations where such a model has benefits, I think its utility in maintaining ignorance on the reality of Sauron is extremely limited. So, there’s no reason to pretend at having Spock-like logical thought processess - especially if when it’s all over you’re just going to act like an atheist or theist anyway.
You have completely missed the point, which is that the truth of statements based in the real world are recessarily dependent on the state of the real world, which we can’t perceive directly. We need to use the intermediary of senses and stuff, which are demonstrably kind of dodgy at times and are theoretically subject to the manipulations of any theoretical evil magician that might theoretically wander by. The definition of 1, on the other hand, isn’t dependent on anything. We simply defined it, and by definition our definition is factually correct.
Math axioms are true because we say so, and so 100% certainty can be attained. Real world “axioms” are only true if we happen not to be wrong, and so 100% certainty never can, beyond cogito ergo sum and dismissing logical inconsistency (though you have to be careful in doing the latter.) Which makes it flatly erroneous to use certainty in one as an analogy to certainty in the other.
Your certainty in whether the sun will rise in the morning, on the other hand, is a fine analogy to the god question. I’d run with that if I were you.
Statements about possible gods are statements about the real world. To the degree that they can be shown to be logically *self-*inconsistent, they can be logically disproven. This takes out omnimax gods. But not all gods are omnimax, and not all of them can be disproven logically. It’s not because they’re immune to logic, but instead because logic is a GIGO system - you can only get out the certainty that you put into it.
I think you are flat out wrong.
If what you say is true, how do you explain all of the things humans have believed that have no evidence? Do you think that everyone overrides their imperfect reasoning tool (the brain) and suddenly adopts this model only for the question of god? Doesn’t make sense.
People believing things without evidence supports my argument, not yours! Any such people are clearly using an evidentiary model with a null hypothesis, but have just misidentified what the null hypothesis should be. In other words, they have leapt to a wrong conclusion. (Unsurprisingly in the theism case, due to the culture.) If they were following a logical model, or any model that supported agnositicism, then people without evidence would be agnostics! Obviously! If they had no evidence they’d just say they didn’t know!
Seriously, I think you just made my case here.
As for “suddenly adopt[ing] this model only for the question of god”, who are you talking about here: the agnostics or everybody else? I honestly can’t tell. But yes, agnostics do only adopt the “I don’t know” model for the question of god. They’re not agnostic about fairies or dragons or Sauron or ESP or whether rocks feel pain when you step on them or any other wild idea unsupported by facts. The only wild idea unsupported by facts they refrain from speaking on is the god question. It’s special pleading, pure and simple.
Is this a cute joke because we are discussing definitions? If yes, then :D.
If that’s not the case, then if you don’t know what “fruitful” means, please look it up. If you do know what it means, then why are you asking me to define it? And, if you know what it means and you think that I am using the word incorrectly, then tell me.
In any case, people’s beliefs are multi-faceted. Labels can sometimes be counterproductive.
If they are misidentifying the null hypothesis, doesn’t that mean they are not using the null hypothesis model? That’s my point, people don’t “demonstrably” have a null hypothesis and then gather evidence. Sometimes they do, sometimes they try, and sometimes they don’t even try.
Human belief forming methods are not nearly so formulated as you just presented it.
Nonsense. I could develop a mathematical system where axiomatically, 1+1=3, but it wouldn’t be as correct as a 1+1=2 system. This is because the 1+1=2 system isn’t *just *axiomatically correct, but also ties into the real world system. In fact, it wasn’t developed as a philosophical construct from first principles, but rather a descriptive system with a philosophical veneer overlaid on it. Ditto with logical systems. So in that regard, they don’t differ from your example of the truth of real-world systems, because they *are *real-world systems.
I disagree that that is the case with basic arithmetic (the mathematics type I used in my analogy) - Simple counting is very much tied to real-world systems.
I’m 100% certain the Sun will rise tomorrow, too.
No, they’re not. They’re modal statements that have no bearing on reality, only philosophical constructs.
Again, name me a god that can’t.
There’s no one logical system, and logical systems to deal with both possible objects and changing certainties both exist.
But like I said earlier, I’m heading to the view that this is going nowhere until the definition of “god” we’re using is made absolutely clear.
No, I’m afraid not.
I’m asking because the word is a subjective measure, and you clearly have some sort of scale in mind, but aren’t being particularly forthcoming with your standards. That, and you use weasel words like “especially” coupled with it. I explained why I think absolute atheism produces meaningful results for me (in a way that agnosticism wouldn’t) - but clearly you’re taking some sort of “No True Fruit” approach here, which is a game I just don’t want to play.
Ho very noble of you.:rolleyes: If so, might I suggest you leave the discussion to those who actually want to discuss the labels rather than dismiss the entire discussion? Because to me, any continuation of this tack would verge on threadshitting.
Sorry, that wasn’t my intention. I’ll bow out.
I’ll just say that I agree with the basic idea that you express here:
Really? Don’t you think we should establish that there actually is a need, or even a use, for all these labels before we just start rattling off page-long checklists? Seems to me that “dismissing the discussion” is basically the null hypothesis, as it were.
It seems like a god that created the universe, left physical evidence that we have not found/figured out yet, and then walked away, would be a god that is difficult to disprove at this time.
One possible difference in behavior could be that the agnostic (assuming this is defined as a person that does not have a belief one way or another) spends more time thinking about the question in the hopes of some additional enlightenment. The atheist may not feel the need to keep re-evaluating.
define ‘a god’.
In this case, a being/entity with the ability to create a universe. It could be a natural being, in the sense that it’s not super-natural, as in, even though it exists in such a way to be able to create a universe, it is still part of the entire “existence-ness” (can I make up that word?) that encompasses our universe, all energy and whatever else may be out there.
Define “a being/entity”
Who’s threadshitting now?
If you have specific objections, let’s not make this a 10 post process, get to the heart of it and state your position and proactively offer a counter to arguments I may make in response.
At a minimum, a being/entity might just be defined as a “thing” made up of at least 1 quanta of energy. It’s a minimal definition and we are in theoretical-land, but that’s ok, we learn as we exchange ideas. I know that puts it firmly in the natural rather than super-natural, but I pointed that out originally.
I can’t do that unless I know the answers to the definitional questions that are sure to come up. It shouldn’t take 10 posts to get to the meat of things, though, in fact, I think we’re there already. The “god” you’ve just proposed has no supernatural element, and is therefore, definitionally, *not *a god.
See my earlier post for why. Like I said, I’m “heading”, but I’m not there yet.
So an entirely physical object, then. Definitionally impossible by our definition of Universe.
I’d argue that an … “entity”… with no supernatural component is not a god by *any *existing conception of the word.
Not me. I’m asking the questions that’d help *me *answer other people’s questions and hold my end of the debate, not questioning the point of the debate as a whole.