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What's wrong with saying "we don't know"?

The quote tool is not operating properly so I will do this manually!

Finer points for Radrook,

I don't think that you truly understand atheism. Atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods. Agnosticism is a subset of atheism that leaves more of a possibility for a god or gods. That being said I would like to address a few of your ideas.

Radrook said in post #159: "Actually, I find the atheistic position far more illogical since a PURELY atheistic position claims a knowledge of regions never detected, To me that comes across as far more illogical because Christians are basing their claims on things observed as applying it to things observed in our observable universe-cause and effect-for example."

TeslaPRG: Where do you get this from? Christians base their claims on faith (an emotion) in an ancient and completely flawed text handed down over nearly two millennia miscopied, translated, interpreted and originally written from hearsay with no eye witness testimony. Christians do not make their claims on cause and effect observation. I think you must be confused about Christianity.

Radrook said in post #159 "What makes a claim wild is its total disregard for evidence to support it. "

TeslaPRG: Disregard for the evidence? What evidence? What actually makes a claim wild is in it's appeal to the supernatural with no evidence to support it! The case for a god has not one shred of evidence. None. Thus it is a very, very, very wild claim.

Radrook said in post#159 "If you aren't sure and admit you don't know-then according to the strict definition and in my eyes, at least, you are an agnostic. Not that you have to agree-of course."

TeslaPRG: Once again this is a question of the depth of your understanding in this issue. Atheism makes no claims about god other than;

No proof.
No need.
No God.

Good enough for me!

Paul

This is not a claim of knowledge it is a position based on the lack of any evidence. The time to believe (faith) or even entertain an idea is when evidence is provided and not a nanosecond sooner.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
In a word?

FEAR.

People (in general) need to "know"... they need to have a firm ground so they can act. Give them a few unknowns and they go nuts.
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Speak for yourself. I'd imagine most of the people posting here would rather be correct in accepting there are things we don't know for certain yet, than be incorrect in belief in a fiction.

Those are the options.
 
Beth said:
Yea verily brother, my ears see the truth of your words. I am converted to your religion. I believe in your god. I am no longer agnostic!!!!!!
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Beth, what made you think you were agnostic. You're so theistic it makes baby Jesus cry. And by the very definition, you so desperately want to believe in something.
 
bokonon said:
.. My god is so vast and so powerful that the petty concerns and accomplishments of all the humans who ever lived are only a tiny insignificant fragment of a fraction of a piece of a sliver of nothing compared to the immenseness of my god's indifference.
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So your god acts and behaves just exactly like the insensate universe we all know and love, except he is sensate, and could do something, but never does and never demonstrates any of this.

So perhaps you can explain why you jumped to this .. interesting.. conclusion.

Long after Yahweh and Allah have passed away, my god will still be moving and grooving.
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Except that he never actually does either..

In fact, YOUR agnosticism is proof that you've admitted, in your heart of hearts, that my god is real. Your whole life has been devoted to discovering the truth about my god, even before you realized what you were doing. My god transcends and subsumes all categories and beliefs, all truths and all lies, all good and all evil, all creation and all destruction.
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So we can conclude that it's a very good thing your god never does anything because it's amoral, at best.

Fortunately for both of us, I have better things to do than preach about the reality of my god. My god speaks to everyone directly, in a billion trillion voices. Open your eyes, and listen.
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All I hear are the sad sounds of self delusion being strained past it's limit. You're likely here because you have a tropism to logic and wanted a rational explanation for certain things. There are answers but not what you hoped. You are beginning to see, and it's frightens you and hence angers you. Now you have to face the fact you can embrace delusion/insanity or embrace reality/sanity. The choice of sanity is a difficult one since it entails admitting you've duped yourself all these years as well as the fact there's little existential comfort in reality.
 
Faithkills said:
So your god acts and behaves just exactly like the insensate universe we all know and love, except he is sensate, and could do something, but never does and never demonstrates any of this.
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I never claimed my god was sensate, you blasphemer. I claim that my god is real, is responsible for all that is, and has created those of us who ARE sensate.

Faithkills said:
So perhaps you can explain why you jumped to this .. interesting.. conclusion.
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I didn't jump, I was pushed. Until last week, I was a happy, ignorant agnostic, until Moby7's watertight definitions demonstrated that one can only have doubt in relation to a belief. Casting about desperately for what that belief might be, I discovered my god was ubiquitous.

I'm sure it's my god that's inspiring Moby7's doubt too, though he has yet to admit it. He prefers to call my god "the universe," and frankly, my god doesn't give a damn. My god doesn't come when you call anyway. Being ubiquitous, there's no need to, really; my god's always there. Besides, my god is above catering to the trivial entreaties of puny humans, being constantly occupied with grander projects, like keeping the galaxies wheeling about meaningfully.

Faithkills said:
So we can conclude that it's a very good thing your god never does anything because it's amoral, at best.
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My god does everything. And morality is in the mind of the beholder.

Faithkills said:
All I hear are the sad sounds of self delusion being strained past it's limit.
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Good for you! That's thinking outside the grammatical box!

Faithkills said:
You're likely here because you have a tropism to logic and wanted a rational explanation for certain things. There are answers but not what you hoped. You are beginning to see, and it's frightens you and hence angers you. Now you have to face the fact you can embrace delusion/insanity or embrace reality/sanity. The choice of sanity is a difficult one since it entails admitting you've duped yourself all these years as well as the fact there's little existential comfort in reality.
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My god doesn't give a damn about existential comfort, or grammatical boxes, or the whooshing sound my post made as it sailed overhead. If it's existential comfort you're seeking, maybe you could invest in a pair of warm socks.
 
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I suspected you were being sarcastic but three things swayed me to think otherwise.

One, it's about as coherent as the normal such posts. I'm sure this was intentional, but this makes it hard to pick out.

Two, Moby, who I generally find to be anything but credulous seemed to believe it.

Three, it wasn't that funny, except in the way genuine woo posts are funny.
 
OK, I don't think this pointless bickering is really necessary.

I should have mentioned this earlier. The reason I wanted for there to be a continuum between atheist and theist is not because I see it as degrees of certainty, which is what we have the agnostic-gnostic scale for. The reason is because there are many different ways one can define God. It's perfectly sensible in some respects to say that an atheist is one who rejects the theistic definitions of God.

We need a place for deists, pantheists, and others who would not identify themselves 100% as either atheists or theists. This is why I thought the x-scale would be appropriate. If it's inaccurate to categorize agnostics as atheists based on the definitions of the terms, then it should also be inaccurate to categorize those other groups as atheists as well.

What if we use Richard Dawkins' scale, the one that was posted in another topic, but remove the term agnostic from each of the points on the scale? That way, the atheist-theist axis could refer to the magnitude of one's belief in gods, while the agnostic-gnostic axis refers to certainty.
 
Ok, Rad, since you insist that your definition of atheist is the only one that matters...

What would you call a person that simply doesn't believe in any gods?
 
Faithkills said:
Two, Moby, who I generally find to be anything but credulous seemed to believe it.
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No, I can spot the sarcasm from a mile away. I just don't really care.

Who am I to define what god is? There are indeed so many varying definitions and descriptions of god, from Zeus to Allah and back to the god of Spinoza, that it would be very, very arrogant of me to presume to know what a believer means when they say they believe in 'god'.

Hence my comments that I would accept, if sincere, a person who claims that a block of cheese is god. And I'll accept Bokonon if he wants to genuinely claim that the universe is god.

I'd argue that labelling such things as 'god' is rather useless, as we already have perfectly good labels for them. I'd point out that merely labelling something 'god' does not give it any extra attributes, so that if one wishes to assign consciousness or anything else to their definition of 'god' it will no longer be the object they initially assigned the label to. And I'd disagree with their equivocating a previously known object as 'god', and refuse to call it that myself, and still identify as an atheist.

In the case of the cheese I could point out how delicious 'god' is on crackers, and simultaneously transform the cheese believer into an atheist (the risk of believing in edible gods, I'm afraid).

If Bokonon wants to be a silly ass, he is welcome. But his silliness is not an argument against my position - indeed, I have yet to see a person actually address my argument! I would welcome criticism, if only it would take a form other than the logical fallacies appeal to popularity and appeal to authority. Alas, so far this has not been the case.
 
Mobyseven said:
I'll accept Bokonon if he wants to genuinely claim that the universe is god.
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There is none greater.

Mobyseven said:
I'd argue that labelling such things as 'god' is rather useless, as we already have perfectly good labels for them.
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What kind of argument is that? The French already have a perfectly good label for fromage, and if you have a more useful god, I'd like to see it.

Mobyseven said:
I'd point out that merely labelling something 'god' does not give it any extra attributes, so that if one wishes to assign consciousness or anything else to their definition of 'god' it will no longer be the object they initially assigned the label to.
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Is it your contention that labelling Yahweh "god" is giving it extra attributes, or that it is possible to add something to all that is, or was, or ever will be? I don't know if the universe is conscious or not, or is that logically impossible too?

Mobyseven said:
And I'd disagree with their equivocating a previously known object as 'god', and refuse to call it that myself, and still identify as an atheist.
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Not a problem, but you still claim to be an agnostic, and that sliver of doubt must be in relation to something.

Mobyseven said:
In the case of the cheese I could point out how delicious 'god' is on crackers, and simultaneously transform the cheese believer into an atheist (the risk of believing in edible gods, I'm afraid).
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The transubstantiation of the cheese god takes many forms, but cheese he is, and to cheese he returneth, in this world as in the next, forever and ever. Even after you have gorged yourself to overflowing, there is still cheesy goodness in the world, to comfort the Cheestians in their hour of need.

But my god is still greater, encompassing all that is cheese and all that is chocolate, and much that is neither cheese nor chocolate.

Mobyseven said:
If Bokonon wants to be a silly ass, he is welcome.
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Better silly than pompous, sez I.

Mobyseven said:
But his silliness is not an argument against my position - indeed, I have yet to see a person actually address my argument! I would welcome criticism, if only it would take a form other than the logical fallacies appeal to popularity and appeal to authority. Alas, so far this has not been the case.
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If you know better than the guy who coined the word what the word means, and know better than the vast majority of people who use the word what the word means, I'm sure there's no argument you'll accept.

It's obvious to me that there is an area of doubt between the two polar positions of firm belief in no gods and firm belief in one or a number of an infinite number of definitions of god. I'm quite comfortable to continue to use "agnostic" as a label for that area of uncertainty, whether you deem it meaningful or not. I won't insist that a man who says "I believe there may be a god, but I have no idea what attributes that god might have" is by definition an atheist, because I don't think he is, any more than a man who says "I believe in the universe, but I don't call it god" is by definition a theist.

You insist that everyone must be either an atheist or a theist, and I don't.
To me, that's like saying everyone must be either Asian or non-Asian, bald or not-bald, serious or not-serious. In terms of this topic, I'm very comfortable with the "I don't know" position, and don't have a compulsion to shoehorn "I don't know"-ists into "Is"-ists or "Isn't"-ists.

In short, I'll continue to use the word "agnostic" as I've always used it, as it's been used since the moment it was invented, and if you want to tire yourself following behind yapping that the logic police have found me in violation, do feel free.
 
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thaiboxerken said:
You are wrong. Either a person believes or they don't.
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Yeah, and either a person is bald or they aren't.

And, believes in what? I gave the example of a person who believes in the possibility of a god, but refuses to speculate about what the attributes of that god might be. Is that person a theist or an atheist? It seems to me that Moby7 is such a person, since he describes himself as agnostic, so maybe he's an atheist. On the other hand, is it logical to call someone who believes in the possibility of a god an atheist?
 
bokonon said:
Yeah, and either a person is bald or they aren't.
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Exactly. One hair and a person is not bald.

And, believes in what? I gave the example of a person who believes in the possibility of a god, but refuses to speculate about what the attributes of that god might be.
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Possibility of a god does not answer the question "do you believe a god exists?"
 
thaiboxerken said:
You are wrong. Either a person believes or they don't.
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Don't even bother trying, Thai. He's not addressing the argument I put forward, instead he's blathering on again with arguments from popularity and authority. It's exactly the same reaction I always get - ignore the argument and throw out those two fallacies.

If fallacies are what he wants to throw out, then ridicule is all he'll get in return. I can't be bothered dealing with someone so dogmatic they've decided that argument from popularity is a legit line of reasoning.
 
bokonon said:
Yeah, and either a person is bald or they aren't.

And, believes in what? I gave the example of a person who believes in the possibility of a god, but refuses to speculate about what the attributes of that god might be. Is that person a theist or an atheist? It seems to me that Moby7 is such a person, since he describes himself as agnostic, so maybe he's an atheist. On the other hand, is it logical to call someone who believes in the possibility of a god an atheist?
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Yes. Believing in the possibility of god is different to believing in the existence of god.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Exactly. One hair and a person is not bald.
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So anyone who describes Homer Simpson as a fat, bald guy is simply mistaken.

This kind of philosophical pedantry from people who insist they're trying to siphon the nonsense out of the conversation really makes me laugh.

thaiboxerken said:
Possibility of a god does not answer the question "do you believe a god exists?"
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"I don't know" and "I don't know, and I don't care" both answer the question, but you won't accept the answers. The first comes from an agnostic. The second comes from an apatheist. Neither of these people are an atheist or a theist from where I sit.

"It's possible" is also an answer. Moby7 says that makes one an atheist. I disagree. Ridicule away.
 
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