An Exploration Into"Agnosticism"

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I am not saying that money is a good analogy with God. But I am saying that the reasoning that Straggler uses does not distinguish between money and God.

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If you presume that God is essentially a fictional entity with no real existence, then you might have a point. However, that is not the concept of God that Straggler refers to.

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Many theists and deists presume that God is a real entity with no empirical existence. And Straggler has been arguing about what is empirical.

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Straggler is arguing that "God" is more likely the product of human imagination than a real entity. Which is why your comparison with money only works if you insist that God isn't a real entity.

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People certainly talk about money being real.

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The physical coins and notes certainly are. The value we assign it is a convention.

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But it seems quite strange to say that what Straggler believes about God should have any relation to whether the agnosticism of person X is rational.

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So what is your view ? Is God simply a convention or a physical object manufactured by humans ?

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When I joined this site, I decided to keep my own religious views off the table. I see no need to change that now.

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Then you must be talking about someone else's view of God. Whose is it and is it that God is a physical object created by humans or God is a human convention ?

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No, I am talking about Straggler's apparent view of agnosticism.

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And in doing so you claimed that money was analogous to some view of God in a way that refuted Straggler's argument. So what is that view of God ? It should be a simple question to answer if your argument had any merit - because it is implicitly part of that argument.

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No, there was no analogy intended or implied.

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I was responding to Straggler's argument in Message 79, and pointing out that his argument, if correct, would prove too much. For, as worded by Straggler, that argument would also apply to money and to mathematical entities.

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So basically you were just making a minor nit-pick that the wording was not absolutely airtight - and that's your only problem with the argument. OK. But if that is what you are doing, you really should make it clear that that is all that it is.

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I was pointing out a problem with the argument presented, not merely with the choice of words

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However, if you understand the argument it is quite clear that it does NOT apply to money or mathematics in any sense that would be problematic. Which is why for there to be a problem you would have to show an analogy. So again, all you are doing is arguing that the argument could be misunderstood, which would be primarily an issue of the wording.

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Analogies never prove anything. They can be useful as illustrations, but do not constitute proof.

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In this case showing a valid analogy would indicate that the argument had a genuine problem.
And since you have changed the subject, I take it that you concede that all you did was point out a minor problem in the wording of Straggler's argument.

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You do, of course, have the right to jump to unwarranted conclusions.

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In this case the conclusion is warranted by your evasiveness and complete failure to offer any reasonable defense of your argument. In fact I would say that it is the most charitable conclusion I could come to.