I like to say that the door is shut…but it isn’t locked, and anyone with evidence is welcome to open it.
Um…you do realize that this is exactly what the definition is (wrt God/gods), right? While I’d love to take credit for it, it sort of predates even my old ass. 
(BTW, I knew you’d say that ;))
ETA: I guess I don’t understand the issue with putting things on a probability curve and saying that we will never know, with 100% certainty, that X is true, or real, or not real or whatever. It’s funny, to me, that people get all hurt when I say they are really agnostic, when I’m just riffing on the theme of many of these threads in the past when people told me that I’m actually an atheist and not an agnostic.
How do you figure that I would be to the majority of gods, because I do believe in their existences, all of them, and they make life exciting, like what good is having humanity of you can’t have a bunch of gods on Mt Olympus throwing lighting bolts, giving us gifts of technology and procreating with our women - pretty boring I’d say.
So…you believe in pantheons of gods that conflict with each other when it comes to how the universe and the earth itself was created, along with gods that declare that they are the only gods in existence?
That’s like filling a box full water, then filling the same box full of rocks without spilling any of the water that’s already in the box.
Splitter!!! :mad::mad::mad:
Technically, you’re using the terms in their nontechnical sense. So, if we’re being technical, we should clarify our semantics.
Common usage of “atheism” is to mean “believes there is no God.” Technically, though, it means, “Does not believe there is a god or gods.” It’s basically a skeptical stance, meaning “I do not see sufficient proof.” Most people on this board who call themselves atheists subscribe to this meaning. (IIRC, there’s a poll here to prove that.)
Common usage of “agnostic” is to mean “doesn’t know.” Actually, that’s closer to the technical meaning of “atheist”. The technical meaning is actually quite a bit stronger than atheism: “Regardless of whether there is a God or not, there is no way we could actually tell.” That is, a sufficiently sophisticated entity could easily fool most of us into believing it is God.
Of course, there’s also no way to tell if there is an objective reality; most of us assume that there is and move on. My guess is that if there was an obvious Deity the same way there is an obvious objective reality, most of us would agree “Yup, it’s God” while people would still be able to claim that there is no way to actually know for sure. There is no contradiction between believing something and stating that it’s not possible to be sure about it.
I’m an agnostic of the latter ilk: I don’t think there’s any way to be sure, but if God really were present, I bet He could convince me, if He wanted to, and I’d bite.
I’m an atheist of the technical ilk: I don’t see sufficient evidence, so I don’t “believe.” My best guess is “No way Jose,” but I’m not convinced that I’m right. I’ve been wrong about simper things. I bet most atheists on this board would agree with me, differing mostly in how confident we are in our “best guess”. (My best guess about the Judeo-Christian deity is a very high confidence that it’s invented by man, thanks to all the contradictions, and theology that’s truly bizarre, seemingly attuned a mind set that should have disappeared 500 years ago. I’m pretty confident about that. Plus the NT says stuff that I personally found to be completely false.)
Right. Technically, the only thing we know is that something exists, based on the indisputable fact that we’re experiencing something (a more guarded expression of Descartes’ Cogito.) It’s indisputable in the sense that any attempt to express a doubt of one’s own existence is contradictory. If one has any respect for logic, one’s own existence is inescapable.
After that, the only sure things we can say are phenomenological: we can only talk with assurance about our experiences (and then in a very guarded way). Of course, a lot of phenomenological philosophers took a deep dive off this springboard into complete nonsense.
Pretty much, all statements about the world require we make assumptions. I assume there is an objective reality, and that other people do actually exist. I don’t assume that there has to be a sentient creator. Frankly, that solves the creation problem with a bigger problem, so, using Occam’s razor, I make no such assumption.
But there’s an important thing to remember about Occam’s razor. It doesn’t prove anything, it just says to avoid making things more complex than they need to be given the evidence. The KISS principle.
Do you have evidence for god? a drop? a shred? a mote? a sparkle? a hint?
You are suggesting that we believe something might be true because some people think it is instead of thinking it might be true because there is evidence to support the idea.
Note this happens primarily with religion, but also includes homeopathy, the antivax movement and other forms of woo.
so until you have something that even begins to imply evidence for a god then you are dead wrong, the only valid choice is to not believe.
Under the definition of agnostic as not knowing for sure, pretty much anyone who isn’t deluded enough to think that he spoke directly to God is an agnostic, from the Pope right up to Richard Dawkins. In fact, the the theory of knowledge sense we all should be agnostic about everything except that we exist.
Not too useful a term used in that sense.
Religion is the only issue on which we bend over backwards trying to apologize and explicitly leave that tiny bit of uncertainty and reassure religious people that we’re not one of “those” people who think their beliefs are bunk. Do we have countless hours of debates on the existence of leprechauns, ghosts, or any other supernatural topics in which we have to do this ridiculous dance of reassuring everyone that knowledge is provisional and we just don’t know for sure and all of this nonsense?
That’s the social power and social privilege of religion - it’s as ridiculous as other supernatural beliefs, moreso than many, and yet even those of us who are thoughtful and well-grounded in their beliefs have to bend over backwards softballing it and giving it a false nobility and false credibility than any other similarly plausible (and less harmful) beliefs.
It’s probably the only issue in which we try to distance ourselves from people who are unwilling to give it that special privilege, who are willing to call it out as the bunk it is, and we say that they’re the bad guys. The “militant atheist” is just someone who isn’t willing to give this undue deference to an iron age belief system that still somehow persists today. We don’t try to distance ourselves and say “oh, I’m not one of them!” about the people who are willing to argue against the existence of ghosts. But even people who know that religion is just as silly as that work themselves up trying to reassure religious that somehow your beliefs are more respectable than that and all knowledge is provisional and people who say they know are arrogant, really it’s only a 99.999999% chance, blah blah. This is something that, among silly beliefs, only religion gets.
yes, I suppose so…but I always have this irritating brain scratch of existence, cant quite find the tool to resolve it. And the weird hints from the werid planet we live on dont help…(not to worry, no religion here, move on:D
Not to sidetrack, but the concept of infintiy, always breaks my two brain molecules.
Has infinity, (time/space or what have you) ever been offered as a proof, or disproof of god?
Sure, lots of times. The problem is that “infinity” doesn’t exist. It’s a limit, or, more specifically, it’s the removal of a limit. Infinity is where I say, “Name a number,” you name a number, I say, “Your number plus one,” and you get tired of it after a while. Since I can always add one to your number, infinity can never be achieved.
Thus, people who attribute an “infinite” characteristic to God…cannot be correct. And infinity is an argument against God.
Meanwhile, if the cosmos is infinite (and avoids certain other limitations having to do with self-resembling regions) then anything that can happen must happen, and thus there have to be “gods” – powerful entities, if not cosmos-creators. So infinity is an argument for Zeus, at least, if not Jehovah.
It’s a fun game, if not very productive. The odds against winning the lottery are far short of being infinite…but they’re plenty damn big enough!
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Religion is the only issue on which we bend over backwards trying to apologize and explicitly leave that tiny bit of uncertainty and reassure religious people that we’re not one of “those” people who think their beliefs are bunk.
[/QUOTE]
Really? So, you are saying that in no other endeavor is uncertainty, even a tiny bit given any creed? You obviously don’t know anything about science if you ‘believe’ this horseshit. Would you like some examples of scientists who were uncertain about things and went against the grain and the vast majority of accepted wisdom and theory to look beyond? Because there are myriad such examples…sometimes the scientists are proved wrong in the end, and sometimes their work overturns the current accepted theories and takes us in entirely new directions. And all because it’s not JUST the religious types who take the tiniest bit of uncertainty and push on.
I’m unsure why the atheist types on this board feel the need to circle the wagons on this topic or why discussions about this always seemingly turn so vicious (and so fall of stuff like this post). I’m not pandering to the religious types, despite what you assert here SB, nor do I want or need their acceptance (why would I? Reasons?). Personally, I find most really religious types nearly as obnoxious as the fervent SDMB atheists who have an obvious axe to grind. Happily, most people fall somewhere outside of the extremes and can have a civilized discussion without having to resort to thinly veiled insult and derision.
You’d think, but the thing is that a lot of folks here also assert certainty, but in the other direction.
I think it IS a useful term, since, to me anyway it differentiates between those who assert certain knowledge and, well, everyone else not so extreme. YMMV of course.
Sure, a lot of them are liars, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Already been covered in this thread. All knowledge is provisional. So a position of agnosticism, as an acknowledgement that all knowledge is provisional, is useless. People don’t say “I’m agnostic on the existence of the atom, since we’re only .99999% sure it exists” or “I’m agnostic to the existence of leprechauns, because there’s only no reason to believe they exist so far”
There’s essentially no practical use for the position of agnosticism. It’s only something we trot out on the issue of religion. Why? Because the social power religions have in our society demand special treatment. In my first post to this thred, I covered that there’s no practical difference whatsoever from the positions of agnosticism or atheism, so to draw the distinction is strictly to appeal to religious people and to avoid offending them.
Am I one of those atheists who have an axe to grind? Why?
The reason this matters is exactly your sort of attitude. When I say “militant Muslim”, what do you picture? ISIS chopping a guy’s head off, or someone strapping a bomb to their chest. If I say “militant atheist”, you picture this guy talking in a very polite, well reasoned manner about the special privilege religion has in our society. That alone should make you realize how ridiculous the idea is that “militant” atheists are equivalent to religious people.
When we live in a society tolerant enough that we don’t outright kill or exile atheists, it at least demands that they shut up and be ashamed of their non-belief. For anyone to be openly atheistic and willing to speak about it gets them shamed as militant, arrogant, and hostile.
I’m an equal opportunity skeptic. I treat all dubious magical claims with the same sort of scrutiny. And yet when I debunk alt med or conspiracy theories or ghosts, no one acts as if I’m committing some grievous sin against society. But if you apply the same logic to religion and the damage it causes, you’re militant, you’re an asshole, you’re aggressive, you’re proselytizing. You think you “know” there’s no god, just like religious people know there is, no matter how much you use language like “have no compelling evidence to believe in” or “probably does not exist” or a thousand other ways of saying that knowledge is provisional. Somehow discussions of ghosts don’t invariably devolve into disingenuous debate on what knowledge is. I never get labelled as a “militant” advocate for science based medicine or a “militant” anti-leprechaun activist, but invariably I am a militant atheist.
The self-reported position of agnosticism is an attempt to admit to your non-belief while not incurring the social consequences of declaring yourself an atheist. I’ve actually experimented with this in my life - people have asked about my religion, and I’ve said “I’m not religious” and even the more awkward “I don’t believe in the supernatural”, and neither has ever received the same automatic revulsion that “atheist” does - saying you’re an atheist to a lot of people gets about the same reaction you’d get if you said you were a child molester.
Agnosticism isn’t a useful distinction. If it were, it would only be against an infinitely subtle, non-interventionist, unnecessary to our understanding of nature god, since once believers start making specific claims about their god, these can be logically and practically tested. But the vast majority of believers do not believe in an infinitely subtle, undetectable, unnecessary God - they believe in Bill the Bearded Sky Dude who demands you wear blue hats on Tuesday. And dismissing him as having no evidence and no specific explanatory power to explain nature is as correct as dismissing leprechauns.
The idea of “I know there is no god” is a straw position ascribed to atheists. It’s used by religious people who think we’re in a world flooded by evidence for god, since they see it everywhere and it’s so obvious - the only reason atheists could fail to see it, of course, is because their eyes are closed and they’ve deliberately made up their mind not to believe. If God actually appeared to atheists in some compelling way, then atheists would start believing in God. Just as I would start believing in bigfoot if there was one standing in front of me and I could confirm it wasn’t a guy in a suit.
Religion is not special. We can use the same logic that we used to dismiss ghosts or leprechauns or even ancient religions to dismiss them. But religion has great social power, and so it demands a special status. The idea of meekly admitting “yes, I don’t believe in God, but I’m not one of those arrogant militant atheists” is buying into that special privilege, buying into that straw man, and deferring to religious people as if they had some sort of moral superiority.
Because if you believed in them, you’d be sacrificing goats and chickens, getting piercings through your cheeks, etc. The Christian interpretation of God is relatively unique in requiring a minimum of ritual. Past gods were far more kill, rape, and sacrifice-minded.
Some people’s ability to follow many beliefs are as wide as the universe…and as deep as a Baldwin Bro.
There is a difference of believing they exist and that they are worthy of worship. I can disagree with a any of them on any issue, as so is my right as child of God, that does not negate their existence and practices.
A child of which god?
That’s when words like agnostic stop making sense to me. If you say “There’s evidence there might be a God”, then by definition you’re not agnostic. The entirety of the agnostic position is that the existence of god is inherently unprovable.