Then why bother even thinking about it, let alone creating a special word about it?
Well, here’s Huxley’s answer to why he created the word:
Atheism is sufficiently valid. Agnosticism is fine for people indifferent or disinterested in the topic. Theism is - to the best of my knowledge - empty and invalid in part because it can’t come up with any reason one should choose from among its infinite and arbitrary premises.
I mostly agree with you, but would note that the same “footnote” also applies in discussions of our knowledge of reality itself. When we’re being completely accurate, we have to toss in the acknowledgement that we might be living in a sim, a dream, a delusion, etc. Science is “agnostic” on the very basic concepts.
For instance, there is no way for science to prove that “cause and effect” are real. Everything might be one huge system of pure coincidences. I close the circuit and the light-bulb goes on…but the two events have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Now, sure, the notion is absurd…but it cannot be disproven. So even in science, we have to write a note in the margins of the text, “Some very basic notions must be assumed as postulates.”
You’re right, though, in that only organized religion chooses to build the foundations of their belief-systems on those marginal presumptions.
Really? So, any time a scientist ever makes a claim, they have to add “But I’m not completely 100% certain.”? And if a scientist forgets to mention that, other scientists will complain they’re being unreasonable since they can’t be completely 100% reasonable?
No, scientist realize that all beliefs are contingent, and subject to change with new evidence. They don’t feel the need the distinguish between “I’m think this is true, but I’d change my mind with new evidence”, and “I’m absolutely certain this is true”, because so few of them mean the latter.
I don’t know with 100% certainty that the sun doesn’t circle the Earth, but I don’t say I’m agnostic about it. I don’t know with 100% certainty that my car can’t fly, but I don’t say I’m agnostic about it. I don’t know with 100% certainty that god doesn’t exist, but I don’t say I’m agnostic about it.
[QUOTE=Strinka]
Really? So, any time a scientist ever makes a claim, they have to add “But I’m not completely 100% certain.”? And if a scientist forgets to mention that, other scientists will complain they’re being unreasonable since they can’t be completely 100% reasonable?
[/QUOTE]
They don’t ‘have to’…they do it automatically because it’s the most accurate thing for them to do. A lot of folks who don’t understand science actually use this against them (see climate denier types for examples) in fact, but they still do it because it’s how they think and they won’t go against that.
Found the cite!
CAMPBELL: There is the plane of consciousness where you can identify yourself with that which transcends pairs of opposites.
MOYERS: Which is?
CAMPBELL: Unnameable. Unnameable. It is transcendent of all names.
MOYERS: God?
CAMPBELL: "God" is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known. But the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything like the name "God." God is beyond names and forms. Meister Eckhart said that the ultimate and higher leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions.
[Campbell's The Power of Myth, p. 56]
The pea-brain (mine included) grapples with this loss, what our rationality has pushed back more and more out of reach. We have to "know", have proof, have evidence (evidence! evidence!, post after post), as the OP suggests...but it forces an important question (more props to Campbell)--what then is the purpose of faith?
Remarkably, no one has offered a definition of god for a basis (well, one partial exception at least; to which one poster who seemed threatened called it ineloquently bullshit, to which I reply that just because a defnition is inconvenient for a debate doesn't make it wrong, and by that same logic would justify debates about angels and pinheads for example), and you see this thread go where it was likely to go, posters yanking the definition of god around to suit their purposes: for the atheist, a fomenter and source of beheaders; for the agnostic, an indifferent and uncaring figure who refuses to show themselves; for the faithful, benevolent and working in mysterious ways. The discussion is so fundamental to it, it *becomes* the definition.None. Faith is the voluntary and deliberate abdication of reason in favor of something that fits what someone wants. It is an inherently negative thing, choosing to eschew the greatest feats of which the human mind is capable. The idea that faith is somehow noble or desirable is something pushed by people who have chosen faith over reason. There is no rational basis on which to believe faith has an inherent value.
The assertion that there is an intrinsic limit to what is knowable through empirical science is hardly the same as some vapid statement like “we can’t really know anything about anything”. Think of it as being to the physical world what the Godel incompleteness theorems are to math and logic. It can be trivially misapplied by religionists to try to “prove” the existence of God, but in itself the idea of the limits of knowledge is one of the most profound concepts in the philosophy of science.
I never said any such thing. What is beyond the event horizon of a collapsed star appears to be well within the realm of physical description until you get to the singularity, and that is probably a mathematical artifact that arises from an inadequate model, a problem that we will no doubt eventually solve through better understanding of the physics involved. Please stop trying to claim that I think the center of black holes is some kind of miracle, and God lives there.
What I’m suggesting by invoking the inherent limits of science is more like the idea that we will never be able to answer questions about ultimate causality. This is not “proof” of the existence of God. It does, however, suggest that strong atheism – the kind that states that God must not exist because there is “an absence of evidence”, is just as misguided as theism. Theism sees evidence for God everywhere it looks, while atheism demands a ridiculously human-scale, anthropomorphized kind of evidence. Both are wrong.
Yup.
We are told that the christian god is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent (not anthopomorphic at all). And that he constantly interferes with earthly life at every level imaginable. He supposedly cures diseases on some random basis, brings earthquakes and hurricanes upon the ungodly, guides world leaders, chooses sides in wars, chooses who makes a touchdown in the Superbowl and who doesn’t, creates every baby and every item of beauty in the natural world, talks directly to people (almost entirely American preachers, for some reason), and created a world perfect for us to live in.
You can’t have a god that does all that and leaves no trace either. That position is self-contradictory.
More than none.
You’re right. Scientists frequently quantify and explicitly state their uncertainty.
But I still think the way you’re using the word “agnostic” is not useful. Simply using it to mean “not 100% certain” means that I’m agnostic about literally everything (even whether I’m agnostic about literally everything). A word that applies to everything is not a very useful word. Notice that scientists don’t simply say they’re uncertain, they say they’re 95% certain, or whatever, because simply saying that they’re uncertain doesn’t convey any useful information.
And I agree with SenorBeef when he says “Religion is the only issue on which we bend over backwards trying to apologize and explicitly leave that tiny bit of uncertainty”. When a scientist says “The Earth revolves around the sun”, no one gets upset with them if they don’t follow that with, “I’m 99.999999% certain”.
Why should the issue of god be different?
I am not “threatened” and a definition of God as “unknowable and unknown” is bullshit. And it’s not ineloquence, it’s a technical term for a statement that is ‘“filler” or nonsense that, by virtue of its style or wording, gives the impression that it actually means something’. And worse than useless. And irrational. And misses the “logically consistent” test. Campbell
Like I said - are black holes all God, then? Beyond the event horizon fits the definition of “unknowable and unknown” to a T. Hey, what about 0^0, is that God ?
I never said *you * said anything.
Sorry, cut this off:
…got good use out of his Comparative Mythology studies, it seems - apparently, God is the Tao :rolleyes: At least the Chinese were never *gauche *enough to deify the Tao. Leave that to the Western autodidact.
Not a lot of respect for Campbell, in case you haven’t noticed. Wonderful mythologist, shitty philosopher.
Eff the ineffable, is what I say to such bullshit.
I’m sorry, but I am no more secretly an atheist in disguise than you are secretly a Christian that is mad at God. It is beyond offensive to tell people they don’t actually hold the religious beliefs they just told you that they hold.
I am not religious. Nobody in my family is particularly religious. I was not raised religious-- I grew up without even the basic concepts of religion . I don’t know even anyone who goes to church. I have never felt even the slightest pressure to be religious. I’ve lived my entire life in a leftist bubble where religion honestly, truly isn’t a thing.
I am agnostic, or rather a theological noncognitivist, because I believe the concept of “God” is not defined in a way that is meaningful enough to have a belief about.
It’s like asking me if I believe in Xdjsidu. Maybe. It depends on what Xdjsidu is. If you can’t define it, how am I supposed to have an answer? More importantly, why are you asking me such a stupid question?
In my thinking, it’s an important distinction. I think it’s actually atheism that privileges theism by assuming the question is worth talking about and having a stance on. I’m of the opinion that the entire discussion is meaningless and a waste of time.
Then you’re an atheist. You’re non-theist. You’re a-theist. Like “typical” and “atypical”. Atheism isn’t a belief system, it’s the absence of theistic belief. You’re probably a-ghostism and a-leprechaunism and whatever else we haven’t need to invent terms for too.
The two are not equivalent - if you are a theological noncognitivist - as it seems you are by that statement of belief - then you are not an agnostic as far as I understand the term. I get that you said “rather”, but your spirited defence of agnosticism as a valid definition in the rest of the post seems to belie that.
An agnostic would say it’s not possible to know the truth of (a) particular definition/s of God. This requires meaningful definitions first, IMO.
This is not necessarily the case - at least, the way I see it, there’s a qualitative difference between answering a question in the negative and saying the question is itself incoherent.
I believe the push to conflate atheism with all non-theism is a mistake. Atheism is more loaded a term than that.
I don’t deny a god. I say that there’s no compelling evidence that there is one. That we can form a provisional knowledge of the natural world in which God is not a necessary component in that understanding. I know that people are motivated to create a God entity, and it explains the development of all the religious beliefs and experiences humanity has ever had. And that even if there were some sort of creator god, I have no information about what it is, how it works, or what he would want me to do with my life, if anything. I feel the same way about just about any other supernatural belief you can come up with.
Which is not to say that a subtle God is impossible. If suddenly God appeared in the sky and said “Hey, I’m God, as proof, watch this” and then he turned the night sky on and then off again", I’d start believing in him. I wouldn’t say “nu uh, I decided that there’s no God, I’m just going to stick my head in the sand!”
When an atheist says “there is no God”, it almost always actually means “Your god that wants you to wear funny hats and hates gay people almost certainly doesn’t exist. We can explain in sociohistorical terms why your religion came to be, and psychological terms why this religion serves you, but your claim has no more evidence than any other supernatural belief” - the idea that an atheist is saying “I am 100% sure of everything that exists and there is nothing that can be construed as God” is a straw man. Because religious people know they can’t win an intellectually honest argument, so they get up their asses about the nature of knowledge and ontological proofs and an entire philosophical position of nonsense to distract from the core issue. If “atheism” is a loaded term, it’s only because the religious have constructed a field of straw men around it.
Again, there is no practical difference between presuming there is no God until you see evidence for it and that if there was, you don’t know anything about him because he’s infinitely subtle, and deciding he’s unknowable because he’s infinitely subtle. Your world view would be identical either way.
Only if you choose to load it. Personally I’m an atheist. It carries no other information about me at all. If you want to know more about my worldview we have to go far, far beyond that but “atheist” is the correct starting point and should be reclaimed as the properly neutral term that it is.
Turn it around. If someone were to say they were a “theist” or “deist” would that also be a loaded term? loaded with what? what does it actually tell you about a person?