Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

Frankly, the second part is very close to what I feel should be the proper attitude of believers. As Dr. William F. Schulz, the head of our church in 1985 during the Boy Scouts' scandalous mistreatment of Unitarian Scout Paul Trout, quoted Augustine of Hippo:

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God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. For if you understand, you have failed.

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Learning about God is humanly unattainable, so saying that you have completed that learning is a sure sign that you have missed the mark. It should be more of a life journey, something that you continue to strive for. Will you ever actually complete that journey and arrive at a final conclusion? No. Will you have learned and grown during that journey? Hopefully so.

But to decide if one believes in God or not doesn't require thinking you understand God, and most of us who believe in God figure we'll be learning about Him for all eternity. But isn't it reasonable to suppose one could be in the process of learning enough to decide if you simply believe?

Yeah, well ... .Part of the problem is that so many "true Believers" behave as if they do already understand God and have no more to learn. They believe that their doctrine is so correct that if reality begs to differ from it, then reality is wrong. Yes, Faith, I am looking directly at you.Another part of the problem is that deciding to believe in God is of no importance to you. Rather, what is of utter importance to you is that one decides to believe in the right theology. If someone were to decide to believe in God, you'd be happy for them, right? But if he were to choose the Roman Catholic theology, then you'd have a fit. Theology matters; belief in God doesn't.And is it necessary to believe in God in order to start understanding God? Can't one simply listen to what believers say and observe what believers actually do? "By their fruits you will know them." And we do indeed know "true Believers" all too well.I once saw a bumper sticker:

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Militant Agnostic:
"I don't know ... and neither do you!"

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You think that you know, but do you really?Again:

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God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. For if you understand, you have failed.
(Augustine of Hippo)

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Also:

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)

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Edited by dwise1, : Augustine of Hippo

Including Hindus? Or pagans? They most certainly do believe in gods, just not in God, which is to say YHWH, one very specific god.But to Christians, believing in another god is the same thing as believing in none?We've been approaching this in terms of how atheists define themselves, whereas the elephant in the room is how the theists define atheism. After all, it is their definition that is used to exclude atheists from politics.

I agree with you fully. That really should be the situation. Each of us believes in certain things and there is an immense multitude of things that each of us does not believe in. So why not simply list what each of us believes in? It would be like answering the question of "what are you?" with a short list of what you actually are, rather than an impossibly long list of what you aren't.But because of the dominant role in society of certain religious views, that is sadly not possible. For example, I am divorced, but have not started dating. There is a monthly Christian singles dance event that I will attend for the company and the practice, but not to look for a partner -- that is because I am familiar with the Bible; in II Corinthians Ch 6, as I recall, believers are warned against getting involved with non-believers; that's the "double-yoke" issue. When a female co-worker, Christian, suggested that I look for dates there, I pointed out that that would be inappropriate since I am not a Christian. Shocked, she shrieked (not quite, but also not quite not) "Why not?". To which I replied, "Why should I be?" Which she immediately rejected, but that was a very serious question. Most people (in the USA, at least) simply assume that everybody else is a Christian? That you need some special reason for not being a Christian? Well if being a Christian is supposed to be the default setting, then that means that they are nothing special at all. And yet you kept (and keep, as far as I can tell -- you're starting to waffle almost as much as Faith does) insisting that agnostics do not exist. That is what I protest! And yet that is your stated position? WTFO?However, being the agnostic and atheist that I am, I must disagree with your assertion that God does not exist.First, just exactly what are you saying by "that god does not exist"? Grammatically, that phrase is ambiguous. Lower-case "god" would refer to any god, but the lack of any kind of indefinite article refers us back to a capitalized "God". Just what the hell are you talking about? As it stands, I must interpret that as referring to YHWH, who is one rather specific god out of so many.Remember, I am an agnostic and I've been an atheist for half a century. I do not deny the existence of the gods. YHWH does exist. So does Odin, Wotan, Thor, Zeus, Mars, Osiris, Vishnu, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc .... . All the gods do exist, just as Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, Long John Silver, Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc exist, only more so. They are all human inventions.All believers in "God" believe in a human-created god. Even if some supernatural entity identifiable as "God" were to exist, what believers believe in is a human-created god. By definition, fallible limited blind-to-the-supernatural humans could not possible deal with the "real thing" (were it to actually exist). Instead, they only deal with their human-created surrogates, the only things that they can possibly have to deal with. Err? You say that you are, then you say that you're not. Make up your mind!

We (the collective debaters) are using "agnostic" in (at least) two different senses.1) You don't know if you believe or don't believe in god/God (the faith thing).2) You believe that you don't and can't know god/God (the know thing).Your position is that you know you don't believe (faith thing), which means your an atheist and you're a type 2 agnostic.Others believe that there are three possibilities - Theist OR atheist OR type 1 agnostic.I think Tangle and my position is that everyone is a type 2 agnostic, and that to be a gnostic (God is known or at least can be known) is not currently an option. Thus we have the possibilities of type 2 agnostic theist or type 2 agnostic atheist. That makes the type 2 agnostic to be irrelevant/redundant - It's theist or atheist.Tangle and I also think that type 1 agnostic is either non-existent or at least irrelevant to anyone who has any understanding of a concept of god/God. Either you have at least a tiny amount of god belief (theist), or you are an atheist. You can flip-flop between theist and atheist, but you will essentially always be one or the other. You will never be in limbo between for any significant amount of time.The only way to be a type 1 agnostic is to be totally oblivious to any concept of god/God. You can't believe or disbelieve in something you have no concept of.MooseAdded by edit - Even Faith seems to be showing signs of coming around to being a type 2 agnostic.Edited by Minnemooseus, : Added by edit.

And You're confused because you've swallowed this invented agnostic nonsense. Agnostic as a word and concept that didn't exist at all until 150 years ago. Humanity existed without it perfectly well through the the great philosophical eras of the Greeks and even the Enlightenment.People quite clearly understood that belief had nothing to do with knowledge. The along comes Huxley who is an obvious non-believer (because he says so) and decides that he can't think his way into belief because god is unknowable. Then he makes this huge logical error and simply invents a non-position. The agnostic. The agnostic is someone who doesn't know whether god exists or not.But knowledge is NOT belief. So I'll try yet again.When I say god, I mean god, gods, God, Gods - any and every god we've named and those we'll invent in the future.When I say I don't believe in any of them - that's it, nothing else. In exactly the same way as you don't believe in fairies and Santa Clause. (And, what's more you have no name for it.)Where you're confused is when I also say that I'm an agnostic. Well of course I am. I don't actually KNOW god doesn't exist. No-one posibly can. Atheism is just a lack of belief. Belief is a positve step beyond knowledge which you have or don't have. That's why agnosticism is a nonsense, we are ALL agnostic whether we like it or not. Belief is not knowledge it's an emotional state.We only know whether we believe or not. That's why I say I'm an atheist - it is a matter of belief or not. Huxley was an atheist, he didn't believe. His not knowing is irrelevant, because none of us know.You are an atheist and you are an agnostic - big deal, the agnostic part is redundant. The agnostic tag is simply a bit of philosophical snobbery to denote that you've thought about it.(i'm using 'you' in a general sense, not you personally, but I expect it applies to both of us.)Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

No, everybody is not a "type 2 agnostic", even though that is the only honest position to take. We do still have those who claim to have contradictory knowledge, however untrue that may be.Tangle is tangled and confused.

No. Between the ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment lay Christianity. Ever hear or it? During a couple millennia there was not such thing as not being a believing Christian. Or do you actually believe that there were about 2000 years atheist thought surviving all that time? Would you care to attempt to document it? Then use the English language in a manner that communicates that!Because what you have been saying is not the same thing that you have just now expressed! So why the hell do you claim that agnosticism, which is different from atheism does not exist?And, no we are not all agnostic. Because many theists insist that they do indeed know that what they claim is true. If everybody were honest then everybody would be agnostic, but not everybody is honest. No, that is not true. The agnostic part is indeed significant and cannot be defined away.

OK, you can be an agnostic and you can be an atheist. But Tangle and I think that "agnostic" is an unneeded prefix in "agnostic atheist". All atheists are agnostic. Or are you going to find me a gnostic atheist? I don't think even Richard Dawkins claims that. Wouldn't that be be a 7 on his scale.Moose

Sorry, but I have not read any of Dawkins' writings about atheism. I've seen others talk about "strong atheism" and "weak atheism", but I have no idea what they are talking about.Are there atheists who speak absolutely about the impossibility of gods existing? I do not doubt that. Would they be correct in such assertions? No, but that still will not keep them from making their absolute assertions.Does "agnostic" mean the same as "Duh, I dunno"? No, it does not.Are all atheists agnostic? Not necessarily. Just because you cannot imagine a gnostic atheist does not mean that they do not exist.

For me, there lies the rub. There is, in my experience, a spectrum of atheism, ranging from "I don't believe in any god, but there could be something - it's impossible to know" to "not only do I not believe in any god, I believe that there are none".It's common to atheists, as you say, that there is no belief in a god. But the degree of certainty that there are no gods varies.I think that that variety is relevant. I have far more respect for someone else's religious faith than I believe Hitchens did, from his writings. It's relevant to me, to distinguish myself from the sort of atheist that he was (and others still are).Given that atheist is a label in widespread use (we know that from the stories on this thread), I want to ensure that I don't acquire the trappings of that label, which the more militant atheists (for want of a better term) have brought to it.Given that their type of atheism includes a lack of significant doubt that there are no gods, then gnostic and agnostic atheists are not bad distinguishing terms to use. Semantically, they're not ideal, because I agree that even Hitchens would have acknowledged (he probably did somewhere) that he doesn't know absolutely that there are no gods. But the degree of his lack of doubt on the issue, makes the distinction almost irrelevant - at some stage, a towering lack of doubt becomes indistinguishable from knowledge.I term myself an agnostic, not because I am looking for the most precise word to use to describe myself, but because it has become a reasonably well accepted label with which I am happy enough to identify myself.

No. No and thrice No. Between the ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment we had hundreds of different gods and no gods - from Allah to Brahma to Izanagi. And more before that and more will come.For some reason you're stuck on Christianity as though it was the only iteration of a god.You're also stuck misunderstanding the terms belief and knowledge. There MUST have been atheists and those who weren't sure for the entirety of time - humanity is not uniform and some people think for themselves. Homosexuality was not invented in the 20th century, before that people had the sense not to mention it.That was your own assumption. I'd like you to test that assumption of yours by finding a post of mine where I refer to atheism only applying to Christianity or any other god or gods.Atheism is not a disbelief in A god, it's a disbelief in all gods. How could anyone claim to be an atheist but believe in Suijin? It makes no sense. I claim it because it doesn't exist as a REAL thing. An agnostic doesn't believe in God. The End. Do you love your wife? Do you support the Jets. Do you believe in god? Of course they *claim* to be. Huxley claimed to be, but claiming it does not make it real. All agnostics claim to be agnostics - so what? They still don't believe in god, it just makes them atheists that are confused. Like you.

Don't forget our old friend ignosticism.ignostic (plural ignostics)1. one who holds to ignosticism.
2. one who requires a definition of the term God or Gods as without sensible definition they find theism incoherent and thus non-cognitive.ignostic - WiktionaryBut even as an ignostic the answer to the question "Do you believe in God?" is still strictly "No". As it is for anyone who isn't actually a believer.But - again - In the context of people being allowed to hold office all this is largely irrelevant. These stipulations weren't devised so that a bunch of navel gazing online debaters could wrangle over the nuances of atheism in it's different forms. They were simply put in place to ensure that godless heathens weren't allowed to hold positions of influence over the good God-fearing people of the blessed US of A.

If you ask the question verbally it won't be possible for people to read too much into, and get hung up on, any capitalisation or the lack thereof.....Hindus could answer "Yes. Lots of them". Thus obviously not qualifying as atheists. No. It obviously isn't atheism.Although I suspect people of other non-Christian faiths would in many cases face similar challenges to achieving the sort of public office under discussion as those of no faith.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.