An Exploration Into"Agnosticism"

But if you don't feel the need to make decisions, why have you made so many in relation to the existence of gods that cannot be conclusively disproved?Many of the gods believed in are very demanding. There are things that they require you to do, and things that they forbid you from doing. The stakes are high if you do not follow their wishes. Worse than a matter of life and death, because they can involve the difference between eternal content and eternal agony.If you have heard of any such gods, and you are not obeying their commands which can involve regular worship, then you have made atheistic decisions as to their existence, or you're a masochist with a taste for fire. Don't worry, it's normal, everyone does it.You must also have come to the conclusion, like Straggler, that these gods are figments of the human imagination.Many gods don't allow the luxury of indecision, but you can always sit on the fence, very selectively, in relation to the rest.

So why have you decided?Do you have evidence, or do you need to make a decision?Enjoy.

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Theists/deists presumably do know what it is they believe in. Otherwise how can they believe in it? Have you ever seen a theist or deist accept a definition of god that meets the criteria of ceasing to exist if there is nobody to contemplate the concept?And it isn't a "hypothetical world" is it? There was necessarily a point in the history of the universe where there were no conscious beings in the material universe. Did god exist then? Did Harry Potter?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Nothing is wrong with saying that where that is the case. Nothing where there is an absence of sufficient evidence in any direction. "Need" to decide? I no more "need" to decide than you "need" to decide. What does "need" have to do with the price of fish? I am simply saying that there is sufficient evidence favouring human invention to warrant considering this conclusion as superior. No - If I really want to understand the brand of fundamentalist agnosticism you have espoused I need to understand what compels you to insist that no amount of evidence favouring human invention will ever suffice and that we must prove that gods "do not or cannot exist" before being justifiably skeptical.Until you can explain why some "unknowable" concepts must be disproved whilst others can simply be dismissed as human inventions I will never understand your brand of agnosticism. It seems inconsistent and incoherent.

As you phrased it, it was. You began with "if". We don't actually know that. I have never actually read any of the Harry Potter books, so I don't really have a concept of that.We can consider the past, some time more than a million years ago. And we can ask "Did snow exist then?" One possible answer is that the concept "snow" had never even been formulated, so snow could not have existed.We usually reject that form of answer. We insist, instead, that the question is whether there was something at that time that corresponded to what we would today conceptualize as snow.When you ask the same question about gods, you should interpret it the same way. And to answer that, you need to know how "god" is conceptualized today. What seems obvious, is that people have very different concepts of god. So based on Straggler's conceptualization, there were no gods then just as there are no gods now. But other people's conception, presumably their version of god existed back whenever.I'll just make the same point again. The question being raised is posed as a question of truth, yet it is a question for which we have no agreed criteria to assess that truth. We might just as well be asking "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

I think Bluegenes point is that we have all decided. Including you. Many believe that if we do not submit ourselves to a particular unknowable god concept that we will burn in hell for all eternity. For this reason they submit themselves to this god.I have not. Nor has Bluegenes. Nor have you. Despite all being aware of this belief and this god conceptThus (unless you are particularly concerned about burning in hell for all eternity which I assume you are not) you are as atheitsic about this god concept as I or Bluegenes. I would say it is because we have evidence of human invention that we do not need to worry. On what basis do conclude that you will probably not burn in hell for all eternity?

Decisions on gods are easy for those of us who have no emotional attachment to any of them. Here's one way. If I hear of a god, it is from other human beings. If there is absolutely no positive evidence to support the existence of that particular god, I already have no particular reason to select it for belief, belief being active.I know that it is the norm that humans invent imaginary gods, because there are so many mutually exclusive "one true gods" believed in, and there are and have been so many different sets of gods believed in as ruling pantheons. So, in considering the god in question, that knowledge combines with the complete absence of supporting evidence to lead me to the conclusion that the existence of that god is very improbable, and that it is very probably a figment of the human imagination.So, I have no problem dismissing the "one true god who sends every one to hell for voting for Obama" as very improbable, for example, and I can ignore the concept for all practical purposes, even though I cannot conclusively know that that god doesn't exist.So, back to my question again. How do you dismiss all the gods that you are atheistic towards? I'm sure that, if you wanted to vote for Obama in the next election, you would do so without any fear of eternal damnation, so you certainly make decisions.How?Edited by bluegenes, : punctuation

Hi Straggler (and Bluegenes): A so you feel you have evidence in the "A" category: ... and yet we both know that your "evidence favouring human invention" has already been shown to be inadequate in demonstrating that no gods can exist. Surely you remember this: So do you have anything new, something to move you up to level III category conclusions? Or are you just plodding along with your old level II pseudoskepticist opinion/s based decision/s? Perhaps we should add a category to the previous diagram: Where "D" people make up their minds for no apparent reason other than it is based on their opinion of reality.This would include people that use incomplete evidence , Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance and ide fixes, as part of their worldview. Yes, this would include a lot of theists as well as atheists.Of course it is difficult to argue that this last category is a rational decision based on logical conclusions and sufficient empirical evidence.So why do you feel your opinion about the "evidence favouring human invention" is enough to make it sufficient for anything other than a decision based on opinion? Both you and Bluegenes are making the fundamental error of assuming that one has to accept these claims as true, before you can decide that they are false. In fact the claim can be part true and part false, and further information is necessary before one can rationally decide. The agnostic position is that neither the truth - nor the falsity - of this claim has been established by sufficient evidence, and therefore one does not need to make this decision at this time.Yet both you and Bluegenes have made a rush to judgment (D) based on inadequate information and personal opinion/s.Enjoy.

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But to conclude other than this is to deny the empirical evidence is it not? Which you described as a "problem". A very fair point. Where no definition of the term "god" is supplied I strongly advocate Ignosticism rather than atheism. As per Message 453But to progress this conversation I will supply you with a smattering of of RAZD's definitions to consider: Personally I find the definition above as quite funny. But that may just be me. Alternatively we have RAZD's insistence that we all know what "god" means anyway. As per Message 530So - You see - I am not the one insisting on or imposing a concept of god here. I am taking the definitions of others and taking issue with those.So where do you stand on the "gods" defined above?

An agnostic fundamentalist is one who insists on agnosticism on the assumption (or baseless assertion) that the concept in question is so inherently and absolutely unknowable as to make any evidence favouring any alternative conclusion (e.g. human invention) irrelevant and unworthy of consideration. Also characterised by an over-enthusiasm (bordering on desperation) to elicit the phrase I don’t know from others in the misguided belief that the mere utterance of this phrase is indicative of agreement. Because it is an objectively evidenced conclusion. But if your only issue is with the quantity and/or quality of evidence favouring the concept of god as a product of human invention then that is fair enough. We disagree only on evidential details. Not on principles. No big deal. If however your position is that scepticism towards the existence of gods can never be legitimately justified on the basis of evidence indicating the concept of god as a human invention then your position is fraught with problems. You are in effect taking a position of agnostic fundamentalism on the entirely baseless and contradictory assertion that you know that gods are so unknowable as to be immune from any such evidence at all. This is incoherent and unjustifiable. But to add insult to injury you are not even applying this ill conceived idea consistently. As Bluegenes has demonstrated you are entirely defacto-atheist towards all of the equally irrefutable unknowable god concepts that demand your belief in order to avoid the horrific consequences claimed by their followers. You are also wholly atheistic towards concepts such as Santa and the Easter Bunny no matter how irrefutable these are envisaged or claimed to be. In these cases you do not demand evidence that such concepts "do not or cannot exist". Instead you accept evidence favouring human invention. This is utterly inconsistent. How can you claim not to have made a decision? You are a deist are you not?Had you forgotten?

There is no evidence on conscious beings anywhere other than earth. Since there is no empirical evidence, none is being denied. One uses "ignostic" at the risk of confusing people, for that word is not in common use.I am reminded of an incident from my past. The link editor on an IBM mainframe, when you were creating a load module named "XXXX" would print a message "XXXX does not exist, but has been added to the dataset". So a friend decided to assign his program the name "GOD". And, as expected, the computer printout contained "GOD does not exist but has been added to the dataset." Thus, contrary to that wiktionary definition of "ignosticism", there actually was something which the word "GOD" could reference.When that bible thumper rings your doorbell, he is not trying to convince you of the truth of a proposition. Rather, he is a salesman trying to persuade you to buy into his particular concept of God. Until there is a suitable concept, there is no proposition. Identifying oneself as an atheist or agnostic is mainly a ploy to try to avoid that sales pitch for the bible thumper's concept. I disagree with your arguments (that atheism is more rational than agnosticism), because you argue as if this were a question on the truth of a proposition or on the evidence for the truth of a proposition. It cannot be that, if there is no actual proposition. I am not particularly interested in arguing RAZD's beliefs or concepts. As I have indicated in earlier posts, I am not interested in having my religious view become part of the debate.

The empirical evidence regarding the evolution of the universe does not imply that complex material beings capable of consciousness were unlikely to be able to exist at some point in time prior to now? Minutes after the Big Bang for example? Hence my link to the definition. If you are interested in neither those concepts which have been defined by others or those which you are willing to define yourself one has to ask oneself on what basis you are even bothering to participate in this thread?

We don't know that, either.For all we know, there might be conscious beings in the core of the sun, feeding off the nuclear reactions. They would not be based on the same carbon chemistry as us, but we don't know it to be impossible.This is a side issue anyway, so let's drop it.

Catholic Scientist has stated that it is rationally unjustifiable to treat with scepticism the idea that I was placed here by the magically unkowable Easter bunny to annoy you in an omphamistic universe created 2 months ago with the intention that you would find that claim ridiculous. He also says that the idea that ethereal telepathic flying pilchards are responsible for aeroplanes flying is no more or less likely to be correct than the empirical laws of aerodynamics.Choose you allies wisely is my advice....