You are right that it adds more confusion. However, I think that the distinction is necessary. It’s just like my example where I asked “Do you believe that the next car you pass will be blue?”. It makes no sense (in most circumstances) to believe that it will be or that it won’t be. In fact, it would be irrational to actually believe one or the other. However, it may be useful to “operate under the assumption that” it will be or won’t be blue, without actually believing the assumption.
Now that statement is absurd.
It is most definitely not your prerogative to determine what is absurd to someone else. You can determine what is absurd in a common framework, but that’s about it.
It would be helpful if you were to use the same definition of “belief” as everyone else. You certainly can’t claim that someone believes (or doesn’t believe) something when you aren’t even using the same definition of “belief” as they are.
That’s like you saying “I ate pancakes for breakfast”, and me responding “No you didn’t. Pancakes contain cyanide, so you’d be dead if you ate them for breakfast.” Having redefined “pancakes” invalidates my assertion.
False. I neither believe that you have a penny in your fist, nor do I believe that you do not have a penny in your fist. I have no idea, and it would be silly of me to actually believe one or the other.
Ex Machina was not “redefining” anything, but was merely correcting Apos who had said
It was Ex Machina’s claim that this was a belief not an assumption, which, I am sure you will agree, is a EM’s prerogative.
You are generally correct that one cannot prove the non-existence of anything, but I don’t think that you are right to suggest that science cannot make conclusions in the absence of evidence. Certainly the statement, “there exists no god,” is falsifiable, and the statement, “there is a god that we cannot measure,” gets cut to shreds by Occam’s razor (and isn’t itself falsifiable).
There are myriad things that cannot be known, one that has been mentioned in several atheist-agnostic exchanges on this board is the proposition that we exist in some kind of a “Matrix” – that our whole world is an phenomenological illusion.
The parallels with the proposition of the existence of a god should be obvious – not only do we not know the truth value of the statement, the system is designed so that we cannot know it.
My “atheistic” stance on this is that the absence of evidence is sufficient for me to believe otherwise, the “agnostic” stance presumably would be that they cannot know, therefore they have no belief. Yet, if you hit them with a baseball bat they will yelp and scream as if you’d really hit them! Which is it? If they truly have no belief in their entire phenomenology yet still get on with their lives, as if that phenomenology is real, then their agnosticism is so much sophistic pap.
What do you suppose science should make of such a proposition?
I think you are a “true believer” in the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow (and no less so because no one has bothered to pin you down on the matter) – in what way are you even slightly agnostic about it?
There is nothing special about beliefs in the existence of a god (and let me make a plea, can we talk about “a god” (or “gods”) and not “God” (or hush-my-mouth “G-d”)?), we treat all propositions on the grounds of evidence, and absence of evidence is sufficient to form a belief upon.
Consider the Goldbach Conjecture (that all even numbers can be expressed as the sum of two primes), no one has found a single counter-example yet it still is not proven (and possibly never shall be, or could be). But ask me if I believe in GC and I’ll say yes – even though no one has ever tried to pin me down on the subject!
As Ex Machina has implicitly stated several times – if our beliefs were only based on absolute, irrefutable proof then we could believe nothing.
That’s not what I was trying to say. I was saying that you were attempting to draw a conclusion (which is fine), but that you lacked the knowledge of the point of view you’re mimicing to draw a sensible one.
Anybody who takes a wishy-washy position can be sure he won’t be proved wrong. Observe: “maybe evolution happened, and maybe god put all the animals and people on the Earth in six days. I can’t know the truth.” “The Earth might be 4.5 billion years old, or it might have been created 12 seconds ago. I can’t be sure because there’s no way for me to know.” “Maybe the moon is made of rock, or maybe it’s made of cheese. I can’t know that, because I can’t know if anything is true, including the testimony of the astronauts who’ve been there. The rocks they’ve brought back might just be really hard cheese, or they might be fake.”
If you claim you can’t know something - ANYthing, on any subject - you can ALWAYS be sure you can’t be proved wrong. “I don’t know” can’t be disproved. So the fact that agnostics know they won’t be proved wrong doesn’t count for very much, that’s the entire point of holding the position. That’s called hedging your bets. It’s fine if you really don’t know, but I don’t think you don’t win any points for it, and the problems with the position have already been described in detail.
And an agnostic, depending on that person’s perspective on the existence of one or more deities, says (for example): “I do not know if any deity exists”; that you see the existence of any deity as absurd does not cement its status as such in the mind or heart of any other individual.
It is clearly your right to so define absurd and not as you see it. However, your right ends where my right begins, as my right ends where Siege’s right begins, and so on.
This agnostic, in case you were looking for fact instead of your own belief projected onto someone else (an occurence of which I am decreasingly hopeful), does NOT say “I do admit the possibility of an absurdity” since I do not see it as the absurdity you have proclaimed it. I say that I do not know for sure if one or more deities exist(s) or not. I do not see it as absurd that said entities exist or not. I understand the positions (or at least I try to understand them instead of denigrating them and terming them absurd) of both those who say that one or more deities exist(s)do(es) not exist and those who say that one or more deities exist(s) do exist. I remain unconvinced either way.
And when you reduce the argument of an agnostic to a strawman built for your own personal destruction, you waste your time and mine. Please stop telling me what I believe and what I posit:)
Furthermore, I do not say that nothing can be proven (here or otherwise). I do not know. It is possible that some day I will be able to prove it (either way) to myself. I simply don’t know. And the notion that my stance on this issue is pure theory seems a bit naive to me.
And when you look at the real world and see that your projected view is absurd, what happens then? What happens when you must actually address the reality of an agnostic’s view instead of merely pre-supposing it? Don’t build a strawman and then tell me my religious view is X or Y. Address it as I have espoused it to you. Otherwise you are wasting your time and mine.
An atheist has to reject the views of an agnostic just as a believer must reject the possibility of non-existence posited by the agnostic.
Stop projecting your view onto me. TO YOU, Agnosticism=possibility of absurdity. TO ME that is not the case.
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A good agnostic like yourself would allow me the possibility of omniscience without becoming snippy.
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You, who call agnostics craven cowards, their beliefs demented … you would call out someone else for being snippy? What sort of selective reading do you practice?
You’re treading on very thin ice with me, Ex Machina, especially regarding that last “snippy” comment. Do you really want to be Pitted, do you just not care, or are you trying to call my bluff?
Yes. An absurdity is not if it exists.
I think it’s somewhat amusing that Ex Machina has his “prerogatives” and other’s don’t seem to be entitled to their own. I looked up the word twice to see if the definition had changed, but maybe there is an atheist version, I am unaware of?
So you believe science can make conclusions in the absence of evidence? It seems to me they can posit a theory or make a statement with qualifications, but to take a hard position would involve evidence. You, I’m sure have more knowledge of science than I do, so I’ll take your word for this.
Even though I believe that this is absurd, I have no evidence that counters it, so no right to tell them their beliefs are wrong.
None of this is exclusive to G-d, there are many things we can’t know. I’m sorry, I tried; I just can’t change G-d to “a god, gods” or whatever you’re more comfortable with. Hush my mouth, they’re just letters on my keyboard TGU, they won’t hurt you, get over it!
I am like an agnostic as far as my beliefs about life on other planets. That doesn’t generate any kind of derision or negative labeling. Why does the same thought process, when it involved a deity, suddenly become somehow disrepectful?
I would think that science would depend on evidence and in the absence of any kind of evidence one way or the other, would conclude that scientific involvement in this was inappropriate. Science deals with facts, tangibles and IMHO can only report that there continues to be no evidence of G-d’s existence.
I was an agnostic before I became a gnostic (not a capital-G Gnostic in the historical sense, just in the sense of “one who knows”). I was not an agnostic in the almost-atheist sense of “I can see no reason to believe in God, or Invisible Pink Unicorns for that matter, but I cannot claim to know for sure that either of them do not exist”. I had had personal affirmative experiences with prayer. And in response to those experiences I had gone through moderately extended periods of believing in God.
Ultimately, though, the subjective experiences wrought by prayer did not provide an answer to “what is God, what does ‘God’ mean?”, which made an affirmative answer to the question “Do you believe in God” flimsy to the point of meaninglessness, so I would go back to reserving judgment. There was something afoot there within the process of prayer which seemed to be more than strong emotions playing cognitive tricks on me, wish-fulfillment denial of reality etc etc., but whether or not it involved correspondence with a consciousness other than my own and/or “that which is good” and/or “that which is power” – ?? I could not say.
I believed then, as I believe now, that a very large plurality (probably an overwhelming majority) of those who “believe in God” are people who “believe” things that they were taught with very little questioning and with very little of their belief based on any personal experience – perhaps at best a handful of experiences that served in their minds as illustrative examples that they had already determined that they would eventually find, and which they subjected to very little scrutiny.
I also believed then, as I believe now, that a large portion (possibly a majority here too) of those who style themselves as “atheists” are people who have rejected “God” on the basis of the oversimplified babytalk and the institutional hypocrisy intrinsic to organized religion – e.g., semi-translucent bearded dudes in the sky, divine saviors who “had to die” in order that our collective sins would be atoned for, churches soliciting donations as hedges against the wrath of God in the hereafter, etc etc – and that most of them, having dismissed these as tripe, considered this to have decided the entire issue with very little consideration for meanings that are other than the most bluntly literal concrete and physical in venue.
Since prayer was what I had to go on – that and a sense, after looking at world and life and human circumstances, that regardless of whether there were a God, there ought to be – I prayed for understanding and wisdom. If I were to believe in God, and not simply wish for there to be a God, I needed to understand what that meant, and it had to make sense in a fashion coherent to thought and not just “faith and prayer”.
And now according to Ex Machina, I am not a “believer”. But of course he has the knowledge of my POV, to draw a sensible conclusion on this? :rolleyes:
A belief is not wishy-washy because the believer admits that there might be further information he doesn’t have. Your above examples all have empirical evidence attached to them and it would be fair to label any “wishy-washy” beliefs about those, as absurd. As for G-d, we have an old book, some anecdotal type evidence, some of us believe we have personal evidence and there are simply a lot of people who believe in the concept. Not having proof doesn’t make it true or false. Just not yet known.
If someone can admit that they genuinely don’t know, this shouldn’t be considered a position of weakness. I agree that it would be “hedging your bets”, if you held this position because of fear or some wish to not be found in error. I don’t agree that someone else can or should make a surface analyzation of your beliefs and come to his own conclusions about them. Belief in G-d is not a black and white issue for many and this is for numerous reasons. A committment is not mandantory and insisting that we should all make a hard unshakeable decision either way, is not reasonable or required.
Irrelevant. All you have done is alter the statement. You are addressing the cause of belief when the statement is about the consequences of belief. If you read the statement about the penny carefully you will see that belief is assumed as a premise. It is rather obvious. You are merely addressing a different issue which is whether belief is reasonable in the first place.
If you make the statement "I do not **believe ** there is a penny in your hand then you have to make the statement “I believe there is not a penny in your hand.” You are merely assigning a quality of knowledge to belief when belief is an absolute in itself.
If the question was “*would * you believe…” then you would have an argument. But the example says “if you don’t believe”, which establishes that you don’t believe. The confusion comes from the example because belief would be obviously arbitrary unless there was good reason to believe there was no penny. But it becomes clearer when you use a different example. Substitute an aircraft carrier for the penny and you will see the difference.
I’m also an atheist. Wrap your head around that one, wrappy head.
No, the very nature of an atheist is to not believe that there is a god. Your particular beliefs are your own.
You’re just flat out wrong about this. That’s just not how doxastic logic works. If I don’t believe that there is a penny in your hand, that doesn’t mean I believe your hand is devoid of pennies. It would be ridiculous for me to believe either without evidence of either, because your hand either could or could not contain pennies.
~BX is not logically equivalent to B~X. ~BX is compatible with ~B~X
That’s not my problem, I didn’t make that comment. I understand what he means, but I have no dog in that fight.
The agnostic position that I’m describing in that manner does not ‘admit that there might be further evidence.’ It says that there is no evidence because it is impossible to know anything about the thing in question.
It’s not weak to admit you don’t know something. What I have a problem with is the position that you can not know it. That’s entirely different.
Which is not the same thing as “believe not.” The synatx matters in this case, being the difference between the lack of a belief and a belief of lack. One is an active assertion, one is merely privative.
Hardly a fair example, since we can reason that aircraft carriers can’t fit inside your hand. That is an example of having a deductive argument to disprove a claim. It’s not relevant to the question of what one must believe in the face of an uncertainty.
(I meant to respond to this also.) If I claim that something is not knowable, than I reject whatever evidence you think you have. So empirical evidence wouldn’t matter.
In math, at least, it’s possible for something to be true and not proveable. I’m left wondering if that’s relevant here.
That’s okay. I’m sure the irony of it’s lost here anyway.
Oh you’re not talking about that agnostic, you’re talking about the other one.
Okay, I do agree that if someone fails to admit the possiblity of further evidence and just sticks with “not knowable”, then they are absurd, uncommitted, probably fearful. I would lean more toward that person actually being a weak theist, whether they admit it to themselves or not. This doesn’t sound like an agnostic at all. I really can’t think of a reason an agnostic wouldn’t welcome further evidence?
Rejecting empirical evidence is more typical to theism than non-theism. I am open to all evidence, but would of course not be very happy if it didn’t support my beliefs. Are you saying that labeling G-d “not knowable” prohibits future critical thought?
Well math is less knowable for me than G-d is, so I won’t comment on this one. To my everlasting shame, I did once argue that 1=1 was not always true.:rolleyes:
<scrolls pages and pages of complicated articulate discussion>
This is why I don’t post in Great Debates.
<phew>
In general, I agree with your first comment. Does it prohibit critical thought? Possibly. There’s not much point to thinking critically about something you can’t know, is there? It mostly strikes me as just a way to avoid an argument.
Um, no.
“I don’t believe that Gods or Gods exist” is not an indication of a belief, it is an indication of a lack of belief. That’s why you don’t have to choose.
I agree with Ex Machina. The rules are simple: no one knows wether god exists or not. No one ever will (unless he decides to show up of course). The non-existance of god cannot be proved. So either you believe or you don’t believe. Because no one really “knows”. I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in god, just like I don’t believe in Santa. There are religious folks who believe. Then there are agnostics who are simply admiting to be intelectually incapable of taking a position, for whatever reasons.
Who made these rules? Who said he hasn’t shown up? Although since we’re blessed with such omniscient atheists, maybe we don’t need G-d. No wait, G-d can spell. :rolleyes: