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Author | Topic: Atheists can't hold office in the USA? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I remove the agnostic position because it does not follow from the argument. If you ask a differenet question to the one posed, you may have a point. You are trying very hard to convince yourself, but you are not convincing anyone else. Can I ask what you find objectionable in saying "I don't know" when in fact you don't know?
The answer to the question 'do you believe in god" returns only three responses, 'yes', 'no', 'don't know'. Because belief is binary, a 'don't know' response is 'no'. The 'i don't know reply' is a lack of belief. Wrong. It is a lack of knowledge about the answer. I don't disbelieve, but I don't know what I believe. If I flip a coin and I ask you what is it going to land on -- you have three choices ... "heads," "tails" and "don't" know. If you answer "don't know" and I say that means "tails" because you didn't pick "heads" ... am I correct? The result is a binary choice ... you can believe it will land on "heads" and you can believe it will land on "tails" and you can know that there is equal probability of either, objective knowledge that does not convince you that either "heads" or "tails" is a correct response to believe, ... and so the only logical answer based on the degree of knowledge you have is "don't know" ... and there is nothing ambivalent about that answer, it is based on objective empirical analysis of facts. The "don't know" response means "don't know" and nothing more ... and if the reason you "don't know" is because of a lack of convincing evidence pro or con, then "don't know" is a valid answer based on the degree of evidence: it is a statement of the degree of knowledge. That is how knowledge is applied to the question/s ... and lumping that into either "yes" or "no" is equally fallacious because you are applying your belief rather than taking a proper look at the response data. If you answer "yes" and there is still a lack of evidence pro or con then you are stating a belief unfounded on evidence, not a statement of knowledge. If you answer "no" and there is still a lack of evidence pro or con then you are stating a belief unfounded on evidence, not a statement of knowledge.
The answer to the question 'do you believe in god" returns only three responses, 'yes', 'no', 'don't know'. Because belief is binary, a 'don't know' response is 'no'. The 'i don't know reply' is a lack of belief. Another answer could be "sometimes" ... Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : No reason given. Edited by RAZD, : .by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Not for me. I don't want people tweaking the constitution. Even editorial changes require interpretation as to intent. We could fight about what the 2nd amendment is supposed to mean till the cows came home even if our intent was to just be clear. And if this was done within 50 years of the initial amendment the people would have had a good understanding of the intent.
And I simply don't trust any group of folks to muck around with the federal constitution on a regular basis. A super majority of North Carolinians decided that there we should not even have civil unions for gay people; a decision I consider remarkably cruel. So you don't trust the Founding Fathers and Mothers to write the constitution in the first place. At some point you need to hold your nose and jump if you hope to improve things. Curiously I trust the public more than I trust the politicians ... especially those corrupted by campaign contributions and who cater to special interests. We see an overwhelming tide of decisions state by state authorizing marriage of LGTB people, and it is now going to the Supreme Court to review 4 states in addition to 32 that already allow it, with the understanding that they may rule for the whole US to allow marriage of LGTB people. If this happens then that would become one of the provisions that could then be incorporated, along with voting rights for women and people of color and similar changes that have occurred, that have been passed by amendment and that have been reviewed by the courts. Roosevelt (FDR) wanted to pass a second bill of rights that included healthcare and minimum wage provisions, things being discussed these days:
quote: And there are a number of amendments pending that I would not mind seeing voted on by the public. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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ringo Member (Idle past 432 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
There are British subjects and there are people who are not British subjects - British and aBritish. There are people who understrand binary and people who don't understand binary - binarists and abinarists. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in god. A theist is someone who does believe in god. There is no room in the middle for 'I don't know'. The two concepts are not directly related. Your claim that there is nobody who doesn't understand binary is absurd.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
RAZD writes: Can I ask what you find objectionable in saying "I don't know" when in fact you don't know? I have no objection at all to saying that I don't know, when I don't. However, when the question is "do you believe in god?" I know the answer. What is your fear of owning to a belief or lack of belief?
It is a lack of knowledge about the answer. I don't disbelieve, but I don't know what I believe. Then you can not believe and are therefore an atheist. Obviously.
The "don't know" response means "don't know" and nothing more ... Really? How surprising! You're really overcomplicating this - and obviously not reading the other posts I've made. Agnosticism can't exist when applied to belief - people either believe or they do not. It has nothing to do with information.
Another answer could be "sometimes" ... Correct and when you sometimes believe you are a theist and when you sometimes don't believe you are an atheist. In neither situation is someone an agnostic.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9140 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
In neither situation is someone an agnostic.
Yes they are because the feel that they do not know. Faith is a gnostic Theist. Faith knows there is a god. Faith is delusional but Faith self defines as a gnostic theist.Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Ringo writes:
There are British subjects and there are people who are not British subjects - British and aBritish. There are people who understrand binary and people who don't understand binary - binarists and abinarists.The two concepts are not directly related. Your claim that there is nobody who doesn't understand binary is absurd. That was pretty random.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5946 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
Tangle writes: DWise1 writes: I just checked with my mirror and I too exist. I don't know whether god exists or not but believe that it/he/she/they doesn't/don't. Tangle writes: Demonstrably wrong. I shaved this morning, so I looked at myself in the mirror. In doing so, I verified that I do still exist. Sorry, you cannot redefine me out of existence. I'm saying that agnostics don't exist. I am therefore an atheist. I do not believe in any god(s). Non sequitur. You tried to define me out of existence, hence the empirical evidence that I gathered while shaving that confirmed my continued existence disproves your spurious claims that I do not exist. As far as I know, nobody has tried to claim that you do not exist, therefore the fact of your continued existence is moot and does not pertain in any manner to this discussion. I am an atheist. I am also an agnostic. I am also many other things (eg, software engineer, US citizen, California resident, male, Irish, Scottish, German, veteran and retiree, chief, Trekker (by definition, a Trekkie owns two pairs of Vulcan ears while a Trekker only owns one pair; I own none), Whovian, polyglot, Unitarian Universalist, dancer), none of which contradicts any of the other many things that I am. Being an atheist may be slightly related to being agnostic, but they are still two different things pertain to two distinctly different questions. You are making the mistake of conflating them to both be answers to only one single question. That is incorrect.
Agnostics do not exist - they seem desperately to want to avoid admitting it, but by definition they can not. atheist'e????st noun a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods. IOW, you do not understand what agnosticism is and so you persist in conflating it with atheism. But if you want to play the silly game of "Argumentum ad dizionario" (usually the last desperate act of a failed argument), then you need to administer full disclosure. What is the definition of "agnostic" in your dictionary? Is it defined as being synonymous with "atheist"? Or does it reveal that your argument is incorrect? Here is what my dictionary, The Merriam Webster Dictionary, says:
quote:They are not the same thing! As I have already said, agnosticism deals with the question, "Is it possible for us to know about the existence of the gods?", whereas atheism deals with the entirely different question of "Do I believe in any of the gods?" Those are two different questions! Do not conflate them! As I already said in Message 71:
DWise1 writes:
I am agnostic because I do not believe that humans could acquire actual knowledge of the supernatural, but rather have had to make stuff up about it over several millennia. The gods are all of human invention, attempts by fallible humans to describe and account for things that they could not understand or that they have imagined. Since I cannot trust or believe any such groundless and wild speculation, I cannot bring myself to believe in any of the gods nor in any of their accompanying theologies, all of which are man-made. If the supernatural were to actually exist, I am extremely doubtful that it would resemble what human imagination has produced. And if supernatural entities were to actually exist, I am extremely doubtful that they would resemble the gods that human imagination has created. I am strongly agnostic in that I cannot see how humans could possibly have such extensively detailed and elaborated knowledge about the supernatural, something that we cannot observe or sense in any manner, nor even determine whether it even exists. I believe the agnostic position to be the only honest one from which we have to rely on assumptions in either the theist or atheist directions, but to keep ourselves honest we must constantly remember that we are relying on assumptions. I am also an atheist in that I do not believe in the gods; even though I cannot completely eliminate the possibility of some kind of supernatural entity of great enough power to be considered a god, I cannot assign more than near-zero probability that it would be anything like the elaborate gods that the theists have constructed. I am both an atheist and an agnostic. No, those are not the same thing. BTW, remember that in Message 89, to which you replied, I also said:
DWise1 writes:
And what did we find in my Merriam Webster Dictionary? Precisely that definition (the only definition it offers):
However, the common Christian definition of "atheist" is "someone who doesn't believe in God." That refers to belief in one very specific god. Hence Hindus who are theists are redefined to be "atheists". I have encountered on several occasions Christians who use "atheist" in precisely that manner, meant to include all believers in any of the other gods. Even Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR described the "atheistic" "evolution model" as including "most of the world's religions, ancient and modern."quote:So you see, I'm not making any of this up!
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Theo writes: Yes they are because the feel that they do not know. If they don't know, they don't believe. It's not terrbly complicated.
Faith is a gnostic Theist. Faith knows there is a god. Faith is delusional but Faith self defines as a gnostic theist. Yes, I've often heard her say that. Not. Look I totally understand the argument, I just say that it's total semantic baloney. People either believe in a God or they don't. If they say they're not sure, they can't, by definition and the simple meaning of words, believe in god. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5946 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
If they have a belief then they are theists, if they do not, they are atheists. How conviced they are of their choices is a seperate issue - neither are agnostic.
But what about the third group, a large one, that simply couldn't care less? Imagine some kind of over-blown sports event that inexplicably excites much of the national or regional or world population, possibly because it gets hyped-up all out of all proportion. Two opposing teams. Applying your argument, everybody must support either one team or the other; there can be no third position. But there is a third position, the only sane one: "I couldn't possibly care less!" A very large number of people just do not care about religion and many of them even try to avoid the subject as much as possible. They're not believers, but they're also not non-believers; they just do not take any kind of position. They couldn't possibly care less. But then none of that has anything to do with agnosticism, which is an entirely different question from atheism. They are not the same thing!
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
DW writes: But what about the third group, a large one, that simply couldn't care less? Those that couldn't care less, obviously do not believe.
Imagine some kind of over-blown sports event that inexplicably excites much of the national or regional or world population, possibly because it gets hyped-up all out of all proportion. Two opposing teams. Applying your argument, everybody must support either one team or the other; there can be no third position. But there is a third position, the only sane one: "I couldn't possibly care less!" If they couldn't care less, then they do not believe and are therefore atheistic.
But then none of that has anything to do with agnosticism, which is an entirely different question from atheism. They are not the same thing! Of course they're not the same thing! In matters of belief, agnosticism is irrelevant. It concerns itself with knowledge not belief.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5946 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
Those that couldn't care less, obviously do not believe.
Really? Are you sure about that? . . . If they couldn't care less, then they do not believe and are therefore atheistic. To begin with, by my sports analogy you are expecting everybody to choose between Team A and Team B. No other choice is allow, like "neither". So, by your logic, if anyone who couldn't care less is obviously cheering from Team B. How much sense would that make? Absolutely none. But we don't need an analogy, because we have real-world people who do not fit your model. People who are not interested in religion, couldn't care less, and yet identify as belonging to a religious group. A common scenario would be one who grew up in a church, had put in his pew-time, and is not inclined to continue to participate while still self-identifying. Couldn't care less, but still not an atheist. For example, my cabin mate on one cruise was completely uninterested in religion. He grew up in an extreme sect, something like Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists, but was no longer active and was very disinclined to have anything to do with religion. In case you are tempted to think that he had deconverted, his position was that what they had taught him was true, period. Before you try to tell him that he's an atheist, you should know that he traveled over half the Caribbean looking for a chain necklace with links large and heavy enough for that necklace to serve as an emergency set of brass knuckles. In most situations where you cast a vote, you have three choices: yea, nay, or abstain. In the situation under discussion, those who are interested in religion will deliberate and decide yea or nay or possibly abstain. Those who are not interested will abstain, most commonly by default since they are not interested and won't even consider that they should make a choice. In the case of those who are not interested, they will simply gravitate to their own default setting, which would be just as likely to be theistic than atheistic. Tangle, your extreme either-or position makes you sound like a creationist. In their infamous "Two Model Approach" (TMA), they claim that there are two and only two mutually exclusive "models" for origins: the "creation model" and the "atheistic" "evolution model". They never devote much effort in presenting their "creation model", which they hand-wave as being some generic "some unidentified Creator done it" and that it includes all such creation accounts, whereas in reality it only includes the fundamentalist Christian beliefs that we know all to well as YEC. They devote all their effort in attacking and "disproving" their "evolution model", which is everything that is not in the "creation model". Their "evolution model" includes all scientific and quasi-scientific and worse ideas about "origins", almost all of which contradict each other and have been rejected by science. Their "evolution model" also includes all religions, both ancient and modern, with mythologies that differ from those of fundamentalist Christianity. So you're starting from a definitely defined theistic position and positing that everything that differs from it is atheism. That is simply not true.
DWise1 writes: Of course they're not the same thing! In matters of belief, agnosticism is irrelevant. It concerns itself with knowledge not belief. But then none of that has anything to do with agnosticism, which is an entirely different question from atheism. They are not the same thing! And, no, agnosticism is not irrelevant in matters of belief. Those who do attempt to make a choice need to have something to base that choice on. The question of whether it is possible for you to actually know about the supernatural or of how reliable you can consider other sources of information to be could very well play a role. And remember that an agnostic could choose to become or remain a theist.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7
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dwise1 writes: But we don't need an analogy, because we have real-world people who do not fit your model. People who are not interested in religion, couldn't care less, and yet identify as belonging to a religious group. A common scenario would be one who grew up in a church, had put in his pew-time, and is not inclined to continue to participate while still self-identifying. Couldn't care less, but still not an atheist. How do you know what he actually believes? He could be believe or not. The answer to the question 'do you believe in god?' Is 'yes' or or 'no'.The answer to the question 'does god exist?' Can rationally only be 'I don't know'. Though of course you'll get the irrational others too. Bored now......Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0
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To begin with, by my sports analogy you are expecting everybody to choose between Team A and Team B. No other choice is allow, like "neither". So, by your logic, if anyone who couldn't care less is obviously cheering from Team B. How much sense would that make? Absolutely none. I think the better analogy would be "Do you like (aka - "believe in") Team A - Yes or No. and "Do you like (aka - "believe in") Team B - Yes or No. If you answer "Yes" to one but not both (which is your "choose between Team A and Team B"), you are "monotheist". If you answer "Yes" to both, you are a "polytheist". If you answer "No" to both (which is your "couldn't care less") , you are an "atheist". I think this might be the only clunker message you've ever done (and I've given you a lot of POTM's). MooseProfessor, geology, Whatsamatta U Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment. "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith "Yesterday on Fox News, commentator Glenn Beck said that he believes President Obama is a racist. To be fair, every time you watch Glenn Beck, it does get a little easier to hate white people." - Conan O'Brien "I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Correct - the sports analogy is 'do you support the Jets?' The 'I couldn't care less' response is a defacto 'no'.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5946 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5
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How do you know what he actually believes? He could be believe or not.
How do you know what he actually believes? I went with the actual evidence, his own testimony that he believes that what he was taught as a child is true and that settles that. You are pushing your own idea in spite of the actual evidence. Like the Two Model Approach which is the principal tool of "creation science", you are creating a false dichotomy by artificially insisting that there are two and only two mutually exclusive positions, thus excluding the other positions that do exist. Such as abstaining. Such as not caring. Not knowing is not a reliable predictor for atheism. Nor is abstaining from deciding. Nor is not having any interest. And agnostics do indeed exist! Also, you are thinking like a "true Christian". You pose the question as "Do you believe in God?", which only asks about YHWH. To a "true Christian", not believing in YHWH would make one an atheist, but that would include those who believe in a different god. Remember, the gods are many. But if one believes in any of the other gods, then he would in fact not be an atheist regardless of how much others misunderstand atheism.
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