There are various technical definitions for atheism/agnosticism, but I think most people’s contemporary gut-feeling definition is that atheists reject the possibility of a god while agnostics don’t care if there is/isn’t, but they definitely don’t believe in capital-g God.
Roughly speaking, an atheist doesn’t believe in God. An agnostic believes questions of God’s existence and nature are unanswerable. The categories are not mutually exclusive. I consider myself an agnostic atheist (or an atheist agnostic, depending on my mood), and neither one necessarily entails a definite disbelief in gods.*
But just as you have multiple Christian sects which refuse to recognize each other as Christian, there are various shades of nonbelief (see “strong atheism,” “weak atheism,” and other such attempts at subdivision). Unfortunately, some nonbelievers resort to perjorative (and fundamentally incorrect) cliches such as “an agnostic is an atheist who lacks the courage of his convictions” or “an atheist is a theist who thinks he is God.”
ETA: In interest of full disclosure, I do not believe in anything I would call God, which makes me an atheist. I will allow for the possibility that something somebody else might reasonably call god or God could exist, but I think anything worthy of the name would defy comprehension; hence, agnostic.
There’s some truth to this in that unfortunately “agnostic” has come to be a synonym for “ambivalent” or “apathetic” in some people’s minds. But the term was deliberately coined, not all that long ago, by a passionate and opinionated philosopher who defined it thus:
“Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.”
IMPORTANT SCRIPT UPDATE
I have removed the trait badging feature of the script and moved it into its own script.
This accomplishes three things:
[ol]
[li]People who don’t want or don’t like the badging feature can now still enjoy the other features.[/li][li]The speed of the interface features showing up has now greatly increased, because now both processes are independent of each other.[/li][li]If you have both installed, you can toggle one or the other on or off by enabling/disabling the individual scripts.[/li][/ol]
IF YOU ARE A BETA TESTER:
Instructions for updating to the newest version and/or adding badging should appear in the script updates window. If you have an older version that doesn’t feature the updates window, you can install the latest version using the original url I sent you.
Other people are handling the atheist-slash-agnostic-slash-antitheist dealio, so I’ll just address this part of your post. And what I’ll say is that your position sounds Kuhnish to me. But I will acknowledge the validity of your view, while expressing my respectful disagreement with it.
The updates window keeps popping up every time I load a new page on the site, and it won’t go away, even if I hit the close button.
Do you have the latest version? That happens when there’s a problem setting the ‘hide me’ cookie. It should be working better now than it was before.
Yeah, I just installed the latest update. Still getting the update window on every page, and the Close button still doesn’t work. Firefox 3.0.14, Windows XP, if it matters.
Firefox 3.5.3, tried on Windows XP and Vista–no problems here, except it does slow down the XP machine. But that computer wheezes when I so much as think about opening Firefox on it, so that’s no surprise.
Yeah, I think 3.5 or higher is required. Trying to work around that now…
I just installed FF 3.0.14 on an XP machine and the thing works fine. Maybe you need to update your greasemonkey version.
Do this here.
Actually, it turns out the problem is caused because charter members and guests get slightly different versions of the forum. The only people with the problem were charter members. Working on a fix now.
Well, it might be there, but there’s no definitive evidence for it as of right now.
@wierdaaron: working ok so far on FF3.0.13/linux
:slowclap:
That problem has been sorted out.
If you can think of any other kind of links that could be awesomized like images and youtubes are, let me know.
Just want to thank you again for this awesome tool.
If someone is linking to a web site, can you have a thumbnail of the web site pop up? I have seen some other sites that have this ability.
Just to make sure I understand your viewpoint, Lib, are you really classifying biology as equivalent to astrology, or do you have a different term for what I’m calling “pseudo-science”?
It’s the latter. Astrology doesn’t count as a science of any kind, pseudo or otherwise. It’s an amusing pastime, like reading tea leaves or looking for underground water with a shaky stick.
As I said, your ideas sound like Kuhn’s to me, while I use the far more strict criteria demanded by Popper. The essay excerpt to which I linked you explains in greater detail (and certainly with greater writing), but the gist of it is this: a “science” must make risky predictions — i.e., predictions that have a chance to fail, or be wrong. He insisted upon a process called “falsification”, meaning that a scientific theory has to be testable by repeatable experimentation in order to determine whether its hypothesis is false.
Popper told the story of encountering a prominent contemporary psychologist namded “Adler”, and asking him about a particular boy who behaved in unusual and unexpected ways. Without so much as a blink, Adler told Popper the boy’s problem. Popper, confused, asked, “How can you know so much about the boy without even having met him?” Adler responded instantly, “Because of my thousand-fold experience,” whereupon Popper quipped, “And now I suppose your experience is a thousand-and-one-fold.”
In other words, Popper said that science did not “explain things”; rather, it unmasked a thing’s veracity. He cited Marxists versus Capitalists (economic theory) as another pseudo-science, by showing how either side could pick a newspaper headline and claim that their particular theory perfectly explained it. COMPANY GOES BANKRUPT. “You see!” exclaims the Marxist, “this is a perfect example of why government shown own the means of production.” Meanwhile, the Capitalist, upon the exact same news, will proclaim, “You see! This is a perfect example of the market correcting itself.”
In the essay, Popper cites Einstein’s (then almost contemporary) Relativity Theories as genuine science, testable by experiment. Anyone with minimal equipment could observe an ecplipse, and determine whether indeed the sun bent lightwaves as Einstein’s general theory had predicted.
Now, I realize that there are other philosophers of science who have different ways of looking at the thing, but I like Popper’s best because it is the simplest and (in my mind) the most sensible. In fact, the modern scientific method owes its roots to Popper’s research and commentary.
Even so, I must concede that the notion of “falsifiability” upon which Popper’s whole case is based is itself merely a philosophical notion, and is not itself falsifiable. But that’s the nature of deductive reasoning: it must begin with undefined terms and unproved premises, and move forward from there.
With respect to biology and psychology and economics and all that, they do make *some *testable predictive claims. But overall, they are woefully underdeveloped. This could change in the future, and I hope it will.
Wow - weirdaaron, this looks seriously cool. I’d love to give it a try, too, tho’ I’ll need to install Greasemonkey as well. It’ll take me some time to get up and running, so I might not have feedback for a while. Can I get in?
If not, I’m happy to wait for the finished version.
Once you’ve gotten a feel for greasemonkey, PM me for a link to install the script.
Yet another feature addition update…
Amazon Link Awesomization
Any links to Amazon.com are automatically adorned with a little amazon icon thingie.
Not super-useful, but if the link is to an amazon.com product, mousing-over the link will give you an image of that product. Slightly more useful.
Link Preview Images (Testing)
As someone above requested, I’m testing a feature where mousing-over any external link (besides the ones already awesomized; youtube, images, amazon)gives you a thumbnail preview of that website. The reason this is testing is because there’s a chance that manipulating almost every link on the page can cause some sluggishness.
Note that I’m using a free version of the website thumbnail-getter-izer servicce, which only supports top-level thumbnailing (so a link to nytimes.com/fancyarticle/about/brineshrimp.html will show a preview of nytimes.com), and if there’s a link where the service doesn’t have a thumbnail, they’re unlikely to go get you one.
Amazon Monetization For Me (Dolla Dolla Bills Y’All)
Also in testing, the latest version of the script adds an option to add a new Firefox searchbox bar thing. What this thing does is give you the same Amazon.com search functions as the built-in one, except it sends along my referral code, so if you eventually make a purchase on Amazon, I get a small commission.
Note that this isn’t very extraordinary. The built-in Amazon search tool sends mozilla’s referral code, so whenever you use that one and buy something, the firefox people make some money off of you. This just adds an option so that the comission money goes to me, instead.
Note that this is optional (duh), and that I doubt I’d make any money from it anyway, and that if you do order something, I won’t be able to see who orders what (it doesn’t say ‘Sally Waterson ordered Sensual Vampire Erotica Volume 4’, here’s your $0.45). This would just be an optional way for you to indirectly send a kickback my way for making this script.