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"Agnostics are Nowhere Men"

What always stuns the hell out of me about these debates is how apparently intelligent, rational, logical people can fail to understand the difference between knowledge and belief.


I have a simple challenge to anyone who thinks that agnosticism is "wishy-washy" or "fence-sitting", or in any way an untenable position to hold.

Prove either that god exists, or that god does not exist. I don't care which.

If you can provide a water-tight logical proof, one way or the other, I will cease to describe myself as agnostic. However, if you cannot provide such a proof then you must admit that you are actually agnostic.

By agnostic I mean "lacking definite knowledge of whether or not a god exists", and by god I mean "an intelligent entity which caused the Universe to come into being".
 
Checkmite said:
There is a statement, "God exists". Theists are those who believe it is true. Atheists are those who believe it is false. Agnostics are those who will not address the statement for whatever reason.
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Utter bollocks.
 
Sceptic Tank said:
In fact, in the majority of discussions on this board, I'll describe myself as an atheist. It's only when agnosticism comes up, often more specifically agnosticism vs. atheism, that I'll get in to it. Were such a discussion to kick off in the real world, I'd say the same things out there, even if it did mean that I had to define my terms.
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Thanks for that. It's nice to know a bit more about where you're coming from.

It would also be nice if religion was not a subset of philosophy...

Tumblehome said:
There seems to be some emotional baggage with this topic that we don't bring to other areas of skepticism. If we're discussing the merits of creationism, we don't say "There's absolutely no evidence for creationism, but we don't know everything so I'm 'agnostic' about it." We accept that it's hooey and move on. Not so with "God", though.
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^This. :thumbsup: Well said.

AlBell said:
Define them and I'll let you know.
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Define any you believe in.
 
Tumblehome said:
There seems to be some emotional baggage with this topic that we don't bring to other areas of skepticism. If we're discussing the merits of creationism, we don't say "There's absolutely no evidence for creationism, but we don't know everything so I'm 'agnostic' about it." We accept that it's hooey and move on. Not so with "God", though.
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Orphia Nay said:
^This. :thumbsup: Well said.
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Except that we can prove (in as far as anything is provable) that Young Earth Creationism is a load of hooey.

It isn't a question of faith, but of provable knowledge, there is therefore no need to be agnostic about YEC.

This is what I meant in my post about people not knowing the difference between faith and knowledge.
 
wollery said:
Except that we can prove (in as far as anything is provable) that Young Earth Creationism is a load of hooey.

It isn't a question of faith, but of provable knowledge, there is therefore no need to be agnostic about YEC.

This is what I meant in my post about people not knowing the difference between faith and knowledge.
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Why give God the benefit of the doubt but not YEC?
 
wollery said:
There is no benefit of the doubt given.

YEC is provably false.

God isn't.

What part of that is hard to understand?
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Assuming the existence of an all-powerful deity, the argument that evidence indicating the Earth's old age was merely planted by said deity can never be refuted. YEC is ultimately a belief, it's unfalsifiable.

I'll go one step further.
The belief, without evidence, that an all-powerful deity exists is a huge leap of the imagination. But once you accept it, the belief that he would also use this power (by, for example, making the world seem much older than it is) comes from a logical point of view almost naturally.

Ultimately nothing outside of logic and mathematics can be proven false.
That doesn't stop us from discarding astrology as nonsense, there's no rational reason to treat religion any different.
 
wollery said:
What always stuns the hell out of me about these debates is how apparently intelligent, rational, logical people can fail to understand the difference between knowledge and belief.


I have a simple challenge to anyone who thinks that agnosticism is "wishy-washy" or "fence-sitting", or in any way an untenable position to hold.

Prove either that god exists, or that god does not exist. I don't care which.

If you can provide a water-tight logical proof, one way or the other, I will cease to describe myself as agnostic. However, if you cannot provide such a proof then you must admit that you are actually agnostic.

By agnostic I mean "lacking definite knowledge of whether or not a god exists", and by god I mean "an intelligent entity which caused the Universe to come into being".
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Is identifying as an agnostic atheist a problem?
 
Mister Agenda said:
With creationism we would have to deny the physical evidence for evolution. With a hidden God, there's no reason to believe it's not made up, but no way to confirm it.
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But the gods that most people in the world profess a belief in e.g. the Christian and Muslim god are not hidden gods. It seems to be only in places like this that these weird and wonderful definitions of gods are brought up. We can hypothesise about a lot of things but why not just deal with what people actually say they believe in?
 
wollery said:
What always stuns the hell out of me about these debates is how apparently intelligent, rational, logical people can fail to understand the difference between knowledge and belief.


I have a simple challenge to anyone who thinks that agnosticism is "wishy-washy" or "fence-sitting", or in any way an untenable position to hold.

Prove either that god exists, or that god does not exist. I don't care which.

If you can provide a water-tight logical proof, one way or the other, I will cease to describe myself as agnostic. However, if you cannot provide such a proof then you must admit that you are actually agnostic.

By agnostic I mean "lacking definite knowledge of whether or not a god exists", and by god I mean "an intelligent entity which caused the Universe to come into being".
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The problem is that we (meaning folks in general) cannot agree on what the words atheist and agnostic means.

For example I don't agree with your definition of agnostic so your challenge isn't relevant to how I define agnostic.

My definitions are:

theist - someone who has a belief in a god
atheist - someone who does not have a belief in a god
agnostic - someone who believes that we cannot know if a god exists or not

This is why these threads go on and on - we just don't accept other people's definition for the words we are discussing.
 
wollery said:
Except that we can prove (in as far as anything is provable) that Young Earth Creationism is a load of hooey.
It isn't a question of faith, but of provable knowledge, there is therefore no need to be agnostic about YEC.

This is what I meant in my post about people not knowing the difference between faith and knowledge.
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Which means that you have proved (in the same sense that you are using it) that the god that someone who is a young earth creationist believes in doesn't exist.
 
Alan said:
Is identifying as an agnostic atheist a problem?
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Do you think you could convince a Catholic that they're really Catholic-Protestant? I wonder .... if one were to use cleverly worded false logic to write a compelling essay on how, scientifically, atheists are really agnostics .... I wonder how aggressively that would be defended...

I just don't see the point of setting labels for other people. Especially when it really only serves to ruffle feathers. Reminds me of the "Checkmate Atheists!" guy from youtube. :D
 
wollery said:
There is no benefit of the doubt given.

YEC is provably false. God isn't.
What part of that is hard to understand?
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But it is and you've just stated that above! Part of the definition of the god that someone who believes in YEC is that their god created the earth a few thousand years ago. If you think we can prove that YEC is not true than you have shown that their god does not exist.
 
Darat said:
theist - someone who has a belief in a god
atheist - someone who does not have a belief in a god
agnostic - someone who believes that we cannot know if a god exists or not
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In the strictest sense that makes me an agnostic atheist.

But define "know". Strictly speaking I cannot know if there's a teleportable pink unicorn in my closet either. However, I work on the assumption that I know there isn't one.

So that makes me an agnostic atheist in philosophy, and an atheist in practice. I never cared much for this kind of philosophy.
 
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