Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

Sadly, Huxley, says youre not allowed to believe that. Luckily, and I'm sure you'll now agree, he's wrong.

it's educational watching you - and others - totally miss the point, time after time, simply because you've been taught to think of things only rationally. Which is weird considering the time you spend here arguing with the irrational. But in life we all do both.Huxley's position is like yours - we can only know that which we have evidence for. The tool we use to decide what we know is the scientific method. This is also my position - how could it be otherwise? I do not, nor can I ever, know that god does not exist. Huxley - and you - therefore conclude that I am an agnostic. Well I'm here to tell you that I am not - I am an atheist. The black swan proves that the all swans are white hypothesis is wrong. The reason I can say that I'm an atheist is because, just like theists, I go further than knowledge to belief. Just as ringo believes in Bigfoot without knowledge.We're human which means that we routinely go beyond what we know to what we intuite or believe. I'm sure you also know people that believe they have cancer but subsequently find they do not. They have that belief, erronious or otherwise, without evidence.It really doesn't matter that Huxley tells us that we can't believe without proof because we quite plainly can and do. Not only that, without irrational belief, plus knowldge, virtually nothing that matters would have ever been achieved.So people know whether they believe in god or not. If they say they don't know because they have no proof, then they are atheist not agnostic. They are only agnostic about knowledge - as everyone is - not belief.

I'm sure you've realised your mistake by now, so I'll just pass on further discussions about god, God, gods, & Gods.

Theres's no fooling you is there?! That's why they are two different words to describe two different things. I am agnostic about knowledge of god. Tick. Said it dozens of times in this thread. I am not agnostic about belief in god. This, by the simple meaning of words, does not make me agnostic about belief in god. Just as believers in god are not agnostic about their belief but they should be about knowledge. Says who? You and Huxley? I think you'll find that people in general will laugh in your face if you call their beliefs irrelevant - or arbitrary. You're talking like Spock as though the only thing that matters for decision making is the scientific method. My disbelief in god is neither irrelevant nor arbitrary, nor non-scientific. It's a result of examining evidence, finding it lacking, accepting that a black swan may at some point turn up, but deciding that last missing piece of knowledge is not strong enough to prevent me believing that it won't. The example was to prove that atheists exist, not gods. It's that reality that you have to confront RAZD. Do you accept ringo's assertion that he lacks the evidence for Bigfoot but believes it exists anyway? That's a reality. You can't just think it away. People have beliefs that are built on both knowledge and emotion. Get over it. Curiously, it does. We have imperfect knowledge, so we routinely take actions that pedantically have to be called irrational. I don't know that there isn't an axe murderer waiting for me in my home. But you know what? I believe that there isn't so I'm going in anyway. If we wait for perfect knowledge before action, we're incapacitated. Those that believed the world wasn't flat and sailed off to prove it were irrational according to the knowledge of the day. The first type are called people. The second we call machines.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Precisely, just like there is no word (until now, when some lunatic just made it up) for a disbelief in an axe murderer waiting behind a door, there should be no word for someone who doesn't believe in the superstitious nonsense spoken about God, (Gods, god, gods - fuck, I'm bored with this pedantry).Then we pose a lessor risk of another loony coming along a couple of thousand years from now with an "I don't know" position just to hide his disbelief in axe murderers.Hence the accusation of special pleading for religious "knowledge" over knowledge of fairies. And axe murderers.

Oh, no I'm not. Have I walked into a bloody pantomine?People are agnostic about knowledge, but not about belief. You are agnostic about the existence of Bigfoot, but you are certain of your belief in Bigfoot. (Apparently) Yes, quite often, just like you and Bigfoot. (Apparently). But when they don't know whether they believe in Bigfoot or not, then they don't believe in Bigfoot.You see belief is a positive, it either exists or it doesn't. Fun this ain't it?

I'm fully aware of what people are saying - it's hardly novel or difficult. But this is my entire point, which has gone flying over your - and others - heads. Belief and knowledge are not the same thing. You can be agnostic about knowledge - in fact you MUST be, but not belief. Exactly my point. Well done. You can't be agnostic about a belief. Shazham! But be careful, that makes Huxley an atheist. (Which in my view he was.) I'm pretty sure they are - we're a few hundred posts into it. I would have noticed....

Correct.

At a guess I think I've said about 30 times that you can't be agnostic about belief, just pick a couple of my posts randomly - but you know, people here have got so used to their entrenched postions that getting them to think about something in a slightly different way seems to trigger an autonomous brain fart.

I don't suppose for a second or two, that you might wonder whether you've have missed the point of the discussion?

Read the last 30 posts, then get back to me.

It means that people can't be agnostic about belief.
'Do you believe in god? 'Yes' =yes (e.g. Faith)
'Do you believe in god? 'No' =no (e.g. Tangle)
'Do you belive in god? 'Don't know' =no (e.g. nobody)Belief is positive. If you can't say you believe, then you don't. Of course. But:'Does god exist?' 'Yes' =Deluded theist (e.g. Faith)
'Does god exist?' 'No' =Deluded atheist (e.g. never met one)
'Does god exist?' 'Don't know' =agnostic (e.g. Tangle)Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

There's not much point debating with people who refuse to read what's written. But heyho - post 241 is a summary.

Progress of sorts. You could add that one is about the scientific method and the other is about human feelings and emotions. But then you spoil it with..... Without this distinction you can not explain the vast tranches of human history and motivations that affect everyday realities in massive ways. The church(es) in your town where built with knowledge but motivated by belief. It doesn't get realer. No-one - literally no-one - acts only on knowledge. We are not machines, and we lack perfect knowledge. We act emotionally and irrationally all the time but also balance this with knowledge. I would suggest that this more rational side of us has grown over the centuries, particularly following the Enlightenment. Skeptics are not excluded from this mechanism - they fall in love, mourne the dead, pray, make rash bets, hope for improbable outcomes and try to make them happen - and so on. Spock is not real, RAZD.

Humph. I wonder why this really simple and hardly original idea is proving so difficult for otherwise sensible and thoughtful people to grasp?I have not just *now* agreed that I'm an agnostic. From the beginning of this discussion and repeated ad nausium all through it. I've disginguished between belief and knowledge. I am an atheist, because I do not believe in god. Additionally, I am an agnostic regarding knowledge, because I recognise that I can not prove the non-existence of god; I recognise that there is a probability, no matter how small, that god exists.However I claim that this agnostic position is merely a requirement of rational thought - every rational person must be agnostic about knowledge of god. This does not prevent people having beliefs in the absence of knowledge. That's why there is a word called faith (and belief) - which, is what we have when we think something is true in the absence of perfect knowledge.We know this situation to be, your words 'reality' because we have both atheists and theists who claim their beliefs regardless of their full acceptance of this principle.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.