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Author Topic:   Agnosticism vs. Atheism
Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 16 of 160 (56597)
09-19-2003 8:38 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by crashfrog
09-19-2003 6:42 PM


crashfrog writes:
To me, everybody is agnostic on every concievable topic, so why mention it in specific regards to god?
Well I think you are right that any rational being is agnostic on every topic, but there are states of belief about what can even be known.
theist: Evidence can be had for God and there is evidence for God (even if that evidence is wholly subjective "feelings"), therefore God exists.
atheist: While evidence can be had for a God--- if one existed--- there is no evidence for one which means there is none... default that there isn't until evidence comes in.
agnostic: Evidence can be had for a God, but the lack of current evidence means I do not know if there is a God or not. Default is I do not know, even if I have some pretty heavy doubt (or lack of faith) regarding God, because it is very possible that a God (given the nature of what they are) may not readily show evidence we can recognize.
I really think there is a difference between the last two positions. Maybe it is degree of commitment to scepticism and hardline attitude on what separates belief from knowledge... or being overly diplomatic and accepting of theist fairy-tales due to a personal weakness for scifi-fantasy as a kid (or later).
Then again, maybe Dan is right and it's all semantics.
------------------
holmes

This message is a reply to:
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hollygolightly
Inactive Member


Message 17 of 160 (56622)
09-20-2003 12:21 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by Silent H
09-19-2003 8:38 PM


I agree...
with holmes. I think there is a difference between agnostic and atheist. I'm not saying anything bad about being agnostic, I was there for quite a few years myself, but I can understand the term "watered down atheist". It does seem as though an agnostic "sits the fence", so to speak. They won't say there is a god, but they won't say there isn't a god. And that's fine. Personally I am an atheist, I absolutely believe there is no god. I guess I'm a "fundie atheist", because proof or not I do not believe there is a god of any sort. Now, if undeniable, scientific proof of god were to appear, yeh, I'd probably change my mind. But that doesn't make me agnostic, because at this moment, and until completely proven otherwise, I do not believe there is a god.
Melissa

This message is a reply to:
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Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 18 of 160 (56680)
09-20-2003 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Dan Carroll
09-19-2003 4:57 PM


Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
Dan:
Great post. This is more commonly known as the "Invisible Pink Unicorn" argument.
"invisible pink unicorn" - Google Search
Theomorphic:
In short there are an infinite number of possibilities in reality. One cannot function considering every last possibility in the world. To function in reality, humans have to entertain the most likely probabilities, and discard all unlikely probabilities. Yes, it's possible that if I don't scream the word "Potato!" at the top of my lungs that I'll drop dead at the end of this post - but the odds of that are so preposterously low, it is not even worth considering. In fact, I *cannot function* if I don't discard unrealistic possibilities. The same holds true with God. Now, the common agnostic response involves Pascal's wager, but do you really want to go there, Theomorphic?

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Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by TheoMorphic, posted 09-20-2003 7:33 PM Rei has replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5194 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 19 of 160 (56683)
09-20-2003 5:56 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by hollygolightly
09-20-2003 12:21 AM


Re: I agree...
holly,
I think there is a difference between agnostic and atheist. I'm not saying anything bad about being agnostic, I was there for quite a few years myself, but I can understand the term "watered down atheist". It does seem as though an agnostic "sits the fence", so to speak. They won't say there is a god, but they won't say there isn't a god.
But surely an atheist makes the same claims without evidence as a religious person does? A theist says God exists without evidence, an atheist the opposite. Surely the logically correct stance is to say, there is no evidence of God, but it can't be ruled out, ie what an agnostic says?
Of course, it depends how you define terms, but I'm using the standard; theist believes in God; atheist believes there is no God; agnsostic refuses to confirm or deny God without evidence. This means that agnosticism isn't watered down, it is logically correct. An atheist advocates as much as a theist.
Mark
------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by hollygolightly, posted 09-20-2003 12:21 AM hollygolightly has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by PaulK, posted 09-20-2003 6:19 PM mark24 has replied
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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 20 of 160 (56685)
09-20-2003 6:19 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by mark24
09-20-2003 5:56 PM


Re: I agree...
In my earlier post I pointed out that there were good reasons to think Gods unlikely to exist.
I would add that in general without ANY evidence - not even the circumstantial evidence that would apply in the example of the coin, nonexistence is the better assumption. There are many, many things that might exist - more things might exist than DO exist. So for existence claims nonexistence is to be preferred in the absencce of evidence that renders existence at least a plausible possibility (as in the case of the coin - knowing that coins are common objects that can be easily held in the hand raise the possibility that a coin is being held at least to the level of plausibility).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 5:56 PM mark24 has replied

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 Message 21 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 6:55 PM PaulK has replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5194 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 21 of 160 (56688)
09-20-2003 6:55 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by PaulK
09-20-2003 6:19 PM


Re: I agree...
PaulK,
In my earlier post I pointed out that there were good reasons to think Gods unlikely to exist.
I would add that in general without ANY evidence - not even the circumstantial evidence that would apply in the example of the coin, nonexistence is the better assumption.
I agree, but atheists by definition deny the existence of God, this is 100% denial, there is no tentativity involved. If there were, they would be agnostics, not atheists.
Mark
------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

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 Message 20 by PaulK, posted 09-20-2003 6:19 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by crashfrog, posted 09-20-2003 7:03 PM mark24 has replied
 Message 35 by PaulK, posted 09-21-2003 8:46 AM mark24 has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 22 of 160 (56690)
09-20-2003 7:03 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by mark24
09-20-2003 6:55 PM


I agree, but atheists by definition deny the existence of God, this is 100% denial, there is no tentativity involved. If there were, they would be agnostics, not atheists.
Perhaps you could let us atheists speak for ourselves? (We who actually take the position are in a better position to define the term, I think.)
You've precisely hit on the reason why there's no difference between atheism as practiced by rational people and agosticism. Essentially tentativity of knowledge means that rational people are agnostic on every convieable topic, so why make a big deal about agnositicism in reference to god?
There's theism, and atheism, and both positions are agnostic, because agnosticism is a fundamental limitation on what can be known. Why make a big deal about what you say you can't know? We all know what can't be known, at least on the subject of god, so stop making a big deal about it and take a position - either it doesn't matter that we can't know if god exists and you believe he does (theism), or else we can't know that god exists so there's no reason to believe he does (atheism).
Identifying as "agonostic" is just being too afraid to make a choice, it seems to me.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 6:55 PM mark24 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 7:32 PM crashfrog has replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5152 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 23 of 160 (56692)
09-20-2003 7:12 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by mark24
09-20-2003 5:56 PM


Re: I agree...
mark24 writes:
A theist says God exists without evidence, an atheist the opposite.
At the risk of making a hasty generalization. I have never (that I recall), in almost two years involved in this debate, come across an atheist that uses this definition. The only people I remeber using this definition were theists or agnostics.
Most atheist I have known tend to favour a more literal interretation of these terms, i.e:
Theist : belief in god or gods.
Agnostic : without knowledge of god or gods.
Atheist : without belief in god or gods.
Using these definitions, everyone is either a theists or an atheist. You either believe or you don't, even an agnostic would be an atheist. Belief requires knowledge, therefore without knowledge you can not believe, making you an atheist.
------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 5:56 PM mark24 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by mark24, posted 09-20-2003 7:38 PM compmage has replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5194 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 24 of 160 (56695)
09-20-2003 7:32 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by crashfrog
09-20-2003 7:03 PM


Crashfrog,
Identifying as "agonostic" is just being too afraid to make a choice, it seems to me.
The existence of something has nothing to do with your choice, it exists or it doesn't. So why are you making a choice that is logically impossible to make? Wouldn't it be correct simply not to make it & leave the issue open?
If there were a sliding scale with absolute theism at one end, & absolute atheism at the other, I would be 99.99% recurring at the atheist end. The reason I couldn't be at the 100% position is because it is unknowable, & unknowable doesn't mean wrong. It is a common misconception that agnosticism is at the 50% position.
I have defined my terms, this thread is about agnosticism & atheism, I find your position not a little bit odd when you claim everything is agnostic, yet you are an atheist? Like I said to PaulK, atheism is the assertion that there is/are no God(s), there is no recognised limitation in that statement that would make it agnostic. If you are saying there is, then you've pretty much defined atheism out of existence. Atheism = agnosticism.
You seem amenable to the concept of agnosticism, that the existence of God, or not, is unknowable, sooooo....
We all know what can't be known, at least on the subject of god, so stop making a big deal about it and take a position
How can I take up a position on something that is unknowable without it being an arbitrary decision? I may as well flip a coin. Making decisions sans evidence is not good practice, there is no evidence whereby you could even make a decision based upon probability. The assertion that God doesn't exist is an argument from ignorance, I charge creationists with making logical flaws all the time, I would be a hypocrite if I started making them myself.
The best that can be said, is that there is no evidence for or against the existence of a God or Gods, so it is a moot point. Continue your life as if there isn't a deity. You are not compelled to accept the existence of anything without evidence, so don't start now. The burden of proof is on theists to show that there is a God, not on the rest of us to disprove it.
Mark
------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by crashfrog, posted 09-20-2003 7:03 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by crashfrog, posted 09-20-2003 11:51 PM mark24 has replied

  
TheoMorphic
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 160 (56696)
09-20-2003 7:33 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Rei
09-20-2003 5:36 PM


Re: Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
Rei writes:
In short there are an infinite number of possibilities in reality. One cannot function considering every last possibility in the world. To function in reality, humans have to entertain the most likely probabilities, and discard all unlikely probabilities.
fine, we must discard unlikely possibilities, but what do you do about claims that you don't know the probabilities of? The evidence we have leans towards the absence of a christian god, however who's to say there is no higher being. Science just take a "no comment" stance on the likelihood of a higher being.
you say you can't function if you don't discard "unrealistic possibilities". how unrealistic is god?
crashfrog writes:
But in a world where all knowledge is essentially "agnostic" - "we have no absolute knowledge about anything" - then agnosticism is redundant. There's only "we tentativly believe there is" and "we tentativly believe there isn't." To me, everybody is agnostic on every concievable topic, so why mention it in specific regards to god?
i see where you're coming from when you say we can't know anything (except that "i think") and so at some level nothing is known for sure, so being agnostic is just redundant. What assumptions does science make? i think science makes 2: 1) what we observe is an indication of actual reality. and 2) fundamental natural laws have remained unchaned through out time. There's no "agnostic" camp for various theories of science because THAT would be a redundancy (the assumptions science makes already addresses percieved reality). however, to make the assertion from a scientific point that being agnostic is a redundancy doesn't hold because any higher beings fall outside the realm of science, and are not addressed in it's initial assumptions.
edit: added quote from crashfrog for clarity
[This message has been edited by TheoMorphic, 09-20-2003]

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 Message 18 by Rei, posted 09-20-2003 5:36 PM Rei has replied

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 Message 27 by Rei, posted 09-20-2003 7:56 PM TheoMorphic has replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5194 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 26 of 160 (56697)
09-20-2003 7:38 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by compmage
09-20-2003 7:12 PM


Re: I agree...
compmage,
Theist : belief in god or gods.
Agnostic : without knowledge of god or gods.
Atheist : without belief in god or gods.
Using this definition I'm an atheist, so why are there so many people telling me I'm sitting on the fence?
Mark

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Replies to this message:
 Message 31 by compmage, posted 09-20-2003 9:21 PM mark24 has replied

  
Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 27 of 160 (56698)
09-20-2003 7:56 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by TheoMorphic
09-20-2003 7:33 PM


Re: Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
quote:
but what do you do about claims that you don't know the probabilities of?
and...
quote:
How unrealistic is God?
Exact probabilities on almost everything that we deal with in life are impossible. However, comparative probability are estimated by humans all of the time; I put the probabilitiy of God about on par with the probability of a large block of gouda falling out of the sky and hitting me on the head. You probably disagree. I was once in your situation. Which is more likely - that we're in a world full of simple physical laws that "just happen to exist", or that we live in a world full of simple physical laws, created by a near infinitely more complex deity which just "happens to exist"?
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by TheoMorphic, posted 09-20-2003 7:33 PM TheoMorphic has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by TheoMorphic, posted 09-20-2003 8:20 PM Rei has replied

  
TheoMorphic
Inactive Member


Message 28 of 160 (56701)
09-20-2003 8:20 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by Rei
09-20-2003 7:56 PM


Re: Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
ok, this just came to me, but it applies to your gouda example too. We have examined gouda. Gouda has a tendency to not appear in large blocks above people's heads. And baboons have a tendency to not be purple (was that one of the requirements before?), and they have a tendency to not scratch faces unknowingly, and not smell of cinnamon buns.
So we can make assertions regarding these things. But there has been no contact with any form of higher being. no objective evidence supports his existence. but we don't have some similar structure that we can study and draw connections from. We have baboons in the wild, and in zoos... so it's not unreasonable to assess there are no baboons that are purple and smell of cinnamon buns. but we don't have some version of god that we can examine and decide "well, this 'god' is incredibly complex, so any unobserved gods that are supposedly even MORE complex probably don't exist". Why should the default position be an absence of god when we can't make any even semi ball park figures about his probability.
lets say we have a black box. we know inside the black box there could be ANYTHING. maybe a pineapple, or a mouse, or just air, or a vacuum. we've never actually looked inside the box and measured the probabilities of different things showing up. so now we have this sealed cave with a black box inside. How can we make any guesses about what the black box contains when we've never examined it in real life?
"but what about claims you don't know the probability of?"
aren't we supposed to treat all unknown probabilities as equal?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Rei, posted 09-20-2003 7:56 PM Rei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by Rei, posted 09-20-2003 8:27 PM TheoMorphic has replied

  
Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 29 of 160 (56703)
09-20-2003 8:27 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by TheoMorphic
09-20-2003 8:20 PM


Re: Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
Your argument has been that there has been no evidence of God, and thus it is more likely than unusual behaviors of objects that we have seen. How do you come to this conclusion? Even things that have not been witnessed tend to leave *tons* of evidence behind. Take a look at the Toba supervolcano, for example. The lack of any solid evidence to suggest a God of any kind means that it is based purely on conjecture, in the same manner that one could conjecture about invisible baboons or randomly plummetting gouda.
In your "black box" example, I would use my knowledge of reality to conclude that there is about as much of a chance that we'll find an invisible baboon in it as that we'll find an omnipotent deity.
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by TheoMorphic, posted 09-20-2003 8:20 PM TheoMorphic has replied

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TheoMorphic
Inactive Member


Message 30 of 160 (56707)
09-20-2003 8:46 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Rei
09-20-2003 8:27 PM


Re: Sweet-smelling Purple Baboons
non-observed events only leave evidence when they have interacted with our reality. Maybe god is just some couch potato laughing his ass off as the zany inhabitants of the TV show "earth" destroy their world in a nuclear holocaust.

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Replies to this message:
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