Oops; this comes back to the “two kinds of atheist” idea. I’m the kind who says “I know there are no gods,” but you’re the (objectively more reasonable) “There is no evidence” variety.
And, aye, if evidence pops up, you can say, “There wasn’t when I said that, but there is now,” so you wouldn’t have to admit having been wrong. If really strong evidence pops up, I’ll have to say, “Bugger me with a bottle of bitters; I sure was dead wrong about that.”
Same for the two varieties of agnostic. The “I don’t know” variety can, when God walks in the door, say, “Well, now I do.” The “Unknowable” variety, like the hard-edged atheist, has to say, “I was wrong.”
(Of course, I reserve the right to challenge the evidence, and would probably do so up to – and beyond – the stage of denialism. Well, why not? It’s my turn, innit?)
Except that when you turn the situation around, the hard “God is Unknowable” agnostic has rigged the system so that she/he cannot be shown that gods do not exist. It’s a magic wall that no amount of evidence can surmount-in fact, by it’s very nature the “God is Unknowable” stipulation doesn’t even allow for evidence to be presented in the first place.
in the case of god, we have deliberately imagined/insisted on a ‘beginning’ or ‘creation’ of the ‘universe’ and created a god for it. then we have special pleaded our arses off to exempt him from any beginning.
No, we have not. A common pre-Hubble view of the universe was the natural and intuitive one that the universe is static and eternal. When this ran into difficulties many insisted on theoretical formulations that preserved a steady-state model. It was only after discovery after discovery led inexorably to conclusions about the universe arising from a singularity that occurred about 13.8 billion years ago that this became widely accepted. We were more or less dragged kicking and screaming to this strange and counter-intuitive conclusion. Whether, and how, this relates to God is a matter of philosophical interpretation.
But your thoughts on the matter seemed to be that a lot of the people on here who claim they are atheists actually seemed to match up to what you’d consider to be an agnostic viewpoint.
So with that in mind, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to say that it’s agnostics despising agnostics?
it is not my understanding that this ‘singularity’ is an actual thing from which ‘the universe’ sprang. my understanding is that the ‘singularity’ is where our maths/models relating to the early universe breaks down. is this not right?
could you quote any leading cosmologists that actually think that the stuff/energy from which the universe is made had some kind of magic beginning?
relates to the who or the what now?
this storybook ‘god’ character only gets discussed in a semi serious fashion because of the passive-indoctrination we all go through.
That’s a pretty good summary. It is possible to believe that no possible god exists - but I’m not sure that’s supportable. Belief doesn’t have to be. However atheists lack belief in any god they never heard of. Doesn’t it make sense to lack belief in something you have never thought about?
Which demonstrates that agnosticism is orthogonal to atheism. They are talking about different aspects of thoughts about gods, and can therefore overlap.
Here you switch to statements about knowledge, not belief, as makes sense in defining agnosticism. Atheists can say I don’t know if there is a god in some pocket of the universe, but I certainly lack belief in such a god.
Yes we do. Multiple gods are a perfectly acceptable answer to the definition question. However even if a theist says there are multiple gods, he is going to have to get down to defining them one by one at some point.
Neither. The insult is that agnostics are scared to come out of the atheist closet because of the real bias against atheism. If agnosticism is defined as “I haven’t made up my mind yet” the theist majority treats them better, not wanting to drive them into atheism.
Then there is the refusal to acknowledge that the position “it is impossible to know if there is a god” makes no sense, as we’ve already discussed. (It is of course impossible to know that there are no gods anywhere - that does make sense and is pretty much universally accepted.)
That’s not showing up in my book. And you seem to be evading the question. Do you believe that a god can make himself known or not? If you do, then you shouldn’t talk about unknowable gods in general.
An atheist non-agnostic. Of course not by your definition of atheism, the definition no atheists accept.
You do distinguish them above, and you wind up showing how atheism and agnosticism as orthogonal.
And the threshold doesn’t matter. However there are only two choice at some moment in time - belief or lack of belief. What you said in your previous post about the choice being belief in something or belief that the thing does not exist ignores the lack of belief option. You seem to be using this as a definition of agnosticism at times - atheists say lack of belief is atheism (weak atheism) also.
And contradicts your use of knowledge in your definition above. And forget definitely. Being definite has nothing to do with anything.
What have you gotten wrong? Ignoring the lack of belief option. Thinking that strong atheism is the only atheism that there is.
The positions are orthogonal, so some people may be both. Even theists may think that God is so mysterious that he cannot be known. Deists fall into this class by definition if you limit gods to deistic ones.
This is the strong atheist position.
And you wonder why I accuse you of mixing up belief and knowledge.
First, lack of belief in any god is atheism. Full stop. Second, it is different from drawing conclusions about anything. Say someone thinks that the universe is so awful that the very concept of any god ruling it makes him sick. To not be sick, he believes no gods exist. I don’t think he’s concluded anything, he doesn’t even want to think about it, but he’s still a strong atheist.
He can be almost anywhere in the continuum. It is an orthogonal position.
We’ve said a zillion times it is not about knowledge. Just belief. You can believe in things you don’t know, and certainly can lack belief in them.
Me. I believe aliens exist.
You start to list stars, one by one (bring a lunch) and ask me if I believe there are aliens around that star. I have to say know. When you get done, and I have never said yes to any of your questions, you can ask me why I believe aliens exist again? However in this case if you asked me if I believe aliens don’t exist around each star, I’d answer no also. I lack belief, period. Though I’m very willing to start believing in an alien when we get evidence of one.
Why do I believe there are no gods but don’t believe there are no aliens? Because the model of the universe I have says that aliens which do exist might be unknown to us, while if a god existed he would have dropped in and left evidence. I believe that UFOs don’t exist for this very reason.
That would be equating Occam’s Razor and the Null hypothesis.
And…? The fact that the universe has no known physical description at t=0 doesn’t invalidate the useful descriptions we have of it for any positive non-zero value of t, which are “useful” in the scientific sense of being consistent with observations. The paradox of the non-physicality of the singularity can either be dismissed as irrelevant because it has no observational consequences – though the inference of a beginning arises from observational fact, or we can try to explain it away through novel theories of spacetime geometry. Either way we’re dealing with something that transcends physical reality as we understand it. It is not, however, in itself, an *a priori * argument for God.
Could you quote where I ever claimed that it came about by “magic”?
No, the concept of “God” can be discussed in a serious fashion in any philosophical context that isn’t limited by the silly assumptions of traditional institutional religions.
That’s fair enough, and probably indeed the reason that it’s a popular discussion. It is not, however, the reason that I discuss it and I am surely not alone, and it’s not generally reason that it’s discussed in philosophy.
It may seem to, but that’s a frivolous point. To me the small-g “god” is a word that suggests ancient mythology, and just begs to be pluralized. I tend to capitalize it just because it seems to suggest the unity and primacy of a single idea. I find it hard to believe that any serious discussions about the nature of God (or god, if you prefer) are over the question of whether the anthropocentric Judeo-Christian God as depicted in the Bible literally exists. Really? Is anyone who isn’t a raving born-again evangelical lunatic worried that perhaps God is getting pissed off that people don’t believe in him and may be getting ready to smite us with some seriously bad weather?
I too find it hard to believe that any serious discussions about the nature of god or gods are over the question of that particular God - that’s why I find it interesting that so many people, when speaking about the former, tend to use the latter term. And I wonder whether at least part of the reason you associate “God” with the unity and primacy of a single idea and “god” with ancient mythology is as a result of the kind of bleed-through of the deity usually associated with that term through culture.
i disagree. it’s an inference for a much smaller, compressed, or different state. ‘beginning’ seems like such a sloppy, loosely defined concept. an incomplete description based on what we think of as ‘beginnings’ for abstract objects here in our local part of the universe. beginnings seemingly being new combinations of perhaps eternal ‘stuff’.
an argument for the who or the what or the how now? this badly defined god concept is a (bad) solution looking for a problem. itself a loose a concept attempting to explain this loose ‘beginning’ concept.
no i cannot. i’m just using ‘magic’ to describe what a god might do. how would you describe the creative act of a god?
i disagree. our passive or first-hand indoctrination virtually ensures that. i don’t think i’ll meet a westerner before i die that hasn’t already had the concept of a magic, personal god squirted into their skull.
It’s happening now - Westerners who are casually atheist are having children and not indoctrinating them. It’s near impossible to get away from all the social advertising of religion - particularly around Christmas - but I’m confident indifference to religion will grow.
I was listening to a Bible radio station, and the commentator was bemoaning secularism in Britain. She told an amusing story about a delivery man who asked, “What is Easter about, then?”
I can’t really say I’d like to live in a land where the meaning of Easter is unknown; I can’t find myself celebrating ignorance of any kind. And…I really doubt that the “man on the street” in Britain is that ignorant.
But the angst and woe and hyperbole in the radio comments were vaguely amusing. It echoed the usual “War on Christmas” crap.
There are various theorems on this, I believe some physicists say that they all break down, I think quite a few others say only some, can’t imagine they would have anyway of experimentally testing it on the Planck scale.
AFAIC, God really is unemployed these days, scientists never have had a use for him, anyhow. It’s a very natural world, there really is nothing else left for God to do, not that he ever had anything to do, and that includes lighting the big firecracker. For the last few decades, the physicists and cosmologists have really got going on this with Hawking and other names often being brought up. The conservation of mass-energy laws that have been confirmed empirically time and time again with many experiments over the last century, and the oscillations of a vacuum fluctuation energy that ties in nicely with Einstein’s theories give an explanation of what was certainly possible what caused the BB, with God once again not required, needed, wanted, or of any help at all as usual. There are many things that can be extrapolated out of this, and none of it points to God. The long and short of it, is, mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed and in the universe it has always remained constant.
As a transcendental agnostic I presume that if there is a ‘god’ then he/she/it has a lower opinion of religion than I do.
Maybe there are people who know there is a god and can prove it. But if so wouldn’t they have figured out why this god doesn’t just reveal himself? So by agnostic I simply mean that I don’t know and do not presume what anyone else does or does not know. But no one has provided me with good enough evidence yet.
Apatheism Forever! Or at least until The Big Guy decides to give up on The Mystery.
I suspect there’s something to this, at least in terms of atheist perception of agnostics. Can’t say whether it’s true of agnostics in general–it’s certainly not true that I care much what theists think of me.
However, I hate when anyone can say “I told you so to me”, and I’m thinking I would hate it more if theists could do it (and be right). Still, I don’t base any part of my core personal beliefs on what a theist (or really, anyone else) might think.
I agree. I would say that I’m pessimistic about us ever really knowing, but I wouldn’t declare that the answer is unknowable.
As you’ve pointed out, there are many posited gods that, if they existed, we would know. And I don’t personally waste a great deal of time supposing that, say, the Christian God exists. I believe that He doesn’t.