The agnostic says: I can’t prove it, and the evidence isn’t compelling enough to take a position, which I recognize would be subjective. I’m from Missouri. You’re going to need to show me something more before I can commit. I choose not to believe; preferring to take comfort only in which has been objectively proven.
The theist says: I can’t prove it, and the evidence is compelling enough for me to take the subjective position that God exists. I take comfort and bridge the gap between where objective proof ends and my moral certainty begins, with my faith in God.
The atheist says: I can’t prove it, and the evidence is compelling enough for me to take the subjective position that god doesn’t exist. I take comfort in scientific advancement ,and the belief and understanding that with each passing year we will more and more"explain away" things that had been attributed to “God.”
It boils down to this: Agnostics apply one standard of proof to the question of God and a different standard of proof to everything else, including common life-or-death questions like “Is that traffic light red?”
Apparently pointing out this epistemological inconsistency counts as “witnessing”. :rolleyes:
I still dont get how you call the agnostic objective and the atheist not. Neither is making a claim that something exists. The atheist says there is no proof of the existence of God, so I dont believe it. This is not an opinion. If there were proof, it would become opinionated.
You make the assumption that there is proof, but there is no actual proof to verify your point. The logic follows that since there is no evidence to prove that God exists, you are not making an opinion on the matter other than stating the facts. It is assumed that if God did exist, there would be evidence to prove so.
As to the comment about comfort, why would we need comfort from something we dont believe in?
To the OP: There’s actually a huge leap in logic in your stated “atheist” position, also. I reverse the order of the paragraphs in question, below, in order to emphasize it.
[QUOTE=DaveBfd, in the paragraph that came just before the previous quote]
The theist is attributing non-evidence to their belief in God. It is not a subjective position to say “since there is no evidence for the existence of God, God does not exist.” It is a rational argument and objective position.
It is this lack of assumption that leads to the atheistic position.
[/QUOTE]
The huge leap is bolded in the second, which originally came immediately before the first. There is an implied “therefore” in that statement. The logical leap is in the assumption that “what has not been proven, therefore must be false.” Unless one can prove the “therefore” by presenting evidence, one is, in fact, expressing one’s belief, without evidence. It is a subjective position, and not at all a “rational argument”.
There is a very clear assumption being made here. And it is a logical leap as large as any theist makes.
In my opinion, “an idea which is impossible to disprove which also has no evidence proving it is” considered useless, and I have no obligation to accept it. But unless I can provide evidence to disprove it, I’m on shaky ground, and am, in fact, expressing beliefs, myself, if I insist it’s false.
God: As an absolute minimum, the concept requires that it be 1) an intelligent being, possessing free will, that 2) intentionally created our universe for some purpose.
Those are both necessary conditions, but since I can steal a hypothetical from an SF story I read years ago where both conditions are satisfied by a couple of scientists, there must be at least 1 more necessary condition. I have no idea what that might be. I also have no interest in examining what it might be until and unless someone demonstrates the existence of an entity that fulfills the first two necessary conditions. Only then am I willing to examine the question “Does it qualify as God?”
Belief: Anything one asserts as true, but can’t prove to the satisfaction of the hypothetical “rational person”.
It’s a logical leap that’s inherent to all a posteriori claims. No fact about the real world can be proven. All we can do is make assertions with relative degrees of confidence based on the evidence at hand.
I’m exactly as certain of God’s non-existence as I am of the non-existence of every other hypothetical entity that’s unsupported by evidence. I.e. not 100% certain (as I am with a priori truths such as 2+2=4) but as certain as I can possibly be about a claim concerning the real world.
Yes, I agree with most of what you said. I answered the OP, immediately after reading it, then read the thread.
We are talking about two different versions of god. I reject the Judeo-Christian god, because it makes testable, and provably false claims. I don’t reject the “creator of the universe, but we don’t know anything else about it” version of god, which is the one I based my post on. I have no grounds on which to reject it. So in fact, we are in pretty close agreement on most of this subject, and have nothing left to debate.
I can’t disagree with that. God is, at least for now, in the “I don’t know” gap. All I can say is that there are an infinite number of “possible” gods. I have never seen an argument that refutes them all. The origin of the universe is unexplained. I can’t reject out of hand “god” as a possible explanation, unless that “god” has been refuted. I do not believe that explanation, I merely can’t completely discount it.
BTW, I’m going to steal that “God is a gap” next time I’m arguing with a GOTG person.
I hate to repeat myself, but nobody cares about the impersonal creator god, except people on message boards. Who cares about a god like that? It gives you no information about how to live your life, no clue about any afterlife, no ideas about morality. No one writes laws banning alcohol sales on Sunday because of that kind of god. No one prays to such an impersonal being from 13 billion years ago. No one complains about the existence or removal of a Christmas/holiday tree from public grounds because of that being.
That’s not the kind of god that a Jehovah’s Witness cares about, that’s for sure.
I’d label you an atheist for all practical purposes, except with an open mind regarding the possibility that some intelligence might have created the universe (even though you agree it may not have been created that way). You’re not really agnostic, since I don’t think your position is that you can’t know, even in principle, whether there is some creator intelligence. You just don’t know right now.
You don’t believe in any specific god, you just leave open the technical possibility that an intelligence may have caused the creation of the universe. You live your life as though no such intelligence exists, or, if it does exist, doesn’t care about your day-to-day habits.
So, semi-agnostic atheist is my label for you (and for Dawkins, really).
Semi-agnostic – he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t think it’s impossible to know even in principle. (I think that, strictly speaking, an agnostic would say that God is unknowable, even in principle – is that a position of faith?)
Atheist – has no belief in any particular god
I don’t know if this is cmyk’s position, but it’s what I get from his colorful (ha!) posts in this thread. Basically, he’s an atheist, but, sure, there could be some deist’s god out there which has no effect on his life.
Hopefully, your head feels better after smacking it that many times.
I would argue that (hopefully) every single atheist is also agnostic in terms of some definitions of God. Only on the basis that some are set up in a way which is unfalsifiable. As much as it would be pointless and some atheists might hold their position out of spite of the meaningless of such a definition.
“I dont believe any God exists, but there are some Gods which would be possible to exist, and if they did we could never find out”
I am still interested by the whole “I dont know” topic though, and why it is such an issue, since RainDog is no longer interested, would somebody else who shares his opinion like to explain my error?
My reasoning is as follows. For God to exist he must create one miracle unexplainable in any way (which may itself be impossible, and lead to an impossible standard of proof even if God did exist).
For simplicity I will make a scenerio,
The atheists logic, according to Raindog (assuming I understood, which I really hope I did so he doesnt feel forced to reply) should lead him to an agnostic position.
My argument is that saying “I dont know” leads to an objective position of negative belief in God.
There is a hidden assumption that “What is defined as affecting us daily (interchangeable term here), but has no evidence to prove so, does not exist”
To call yourself agnostic is to say that a God is untestable or unknowable (by the definition of agnosticism) but the definition of this God is that he has the power to enact miracles, the ability to do so should be testable as a miracle would have to be impossible to parse with our current or any future variation of physical laws, and thus when such an event occurs it is a proof of His existence.
Just because there is a possibility that God could have done it does not mean you should believe he could exist. A possibility of him existing is not evidence attesting to his existence. I think that under such a definition of God you must wait for the miracle to happen and then revise your position if it happens you are wrong. You can say “God does not exist” even with that possibility still being available in some obscure situation. Until there is proof you may hold the position of God does not exist because for all useful purposes, up until the evidence comes out that is proof for His existence, he has not existed in any form other than a definition.
Is this flawed logic? Can anyone make an analogy for me?
Says who? Most atheists that I know describe themselves as non-believers. You seem terribly confident that atheism means something else but I’m not sure why.
And further, as to agnosticism, there seem to be a few definitions of the word but at least originally, in the religious context, it meant someone who believed that it was not possible to know whether a god existed or not. In other words, it was a positive conclusion, ie a definite belief, about the nature of gods and what can be known. Which is a long way from simple non-belief.
Now, I accept that increasingly agnostic seems to be used as a term for someone who doesn’t have a belief in a god but doesn’t think they can positively state that there is no god. This definition makes agnosticism a sub-set of atheism as I use the term
And either way, your usage of the terms doesn’t seem to be in step with those who use the terms about themselves.
What do you hope to achieve by this sort of apparently deliberate misunderstanding of what people mean by the terms they use to describe themselves?
Going back to the OP, and part of his quoting of Raindog:
I just don’t see the similarity. Let’s compare the beliefs of a typical theist (and no I won’t go cheap and pick Fred Phelps) and a typical atheist. I’m assuming for the purposes of this argument that I’m a typical atheist
A typical theist (and no, someone who vaguely believes in some force that created the universe, calls it God, and makes no claims about any implications that it could ever possibly have on the actual world we live in; is NOT a typical theist):
-makes specific claims about the existence of a specific supernatural being
-makes specific claims about supernatural occurrences within the past 6000 years or so of human history
-holds as divine the writings in a particular book or set of books
-is part of a hierarchy of this belief, with teachers/ministers/priests who provide teaching and guidance and instruction
-follows some set of rules, including both day-to-day things and weekly/monthly/yearly rituals and celebrations, based on what he believes God wants him to do
-self-defines this belief as a very important part of who he is
-is part of a self-selecting community of like believers
A typical atheist:
-is aware that various people believe in various different Gods, and has spent some amount of time thinking about the issue, considering the evidence presented for these claims, and does not believe any of these claims
I mean, even if you yourself happen to be, for whatever reason, hovering directly on the 50/50 mark between belief and disbelief, I don’t see any way that you can say that belief-for-a-believer and atheism-for-an-atheist are in any way similar or comparable or equivalent.
