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Are Agnostics Welcome Here?

Professor Yaffle said:
I can be 100% sure I exist, because if there is no me, then *I* can't be sure about anything.
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Therein lies the problem, you tell me that you're 100% sure that you exist but deny that it's 100% impossible for god not to exist. Why do you get the 100% for your existence but I don't get the 100% on god's non existence?

Special pleading?
 
Professor Yaffle said:
I can be 100% sure I exist, because if there is no me, then *I* can't be sure about anything.
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Professor Yaffle said:
Its yer basic Descartes, innit?!
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Missed this yesterday but you may be a figment in the mind of the solipsist who is imagining you as being someone who believes that they exist...

"I think, therefore I am" - crappy circular reasoning!

:)
 
tsig said:
Therein lies the problem, you tell me that you're 100% sure that you exist but deny that it's 100% impossible for god not to exist. Why do you get the 100% for your existence but I don't get the 100% on god's non existence?

Special pleading?
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Descartes.
 
laca said:
No.

I'm not a strong atheist because I cannot reasonably draw that conclusion. I am a strong atheist toward the Abrahamic God for example, but I realize that there are endless definitions of gods that are unfalsifiable. I also think that all of the unfalsifiable gods are totally irrelevant for us. Unfortunately, the definition of atheism does not include the "gods relevant for humans" qualifier, so I cannot arrive at "I believe there are no gods".
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So produce one of them.
 
laca said:
You're confusing. I'm talking about "gods" or "a god" and you're talking about "God". For me, God with a capital G means the Abrahamic God. I don't use capital G to make it clear I'm talking about a non-specific god.

So what do you mean by "the definition of God"?

What if I believe in the Holy Universe-farting Monkey that farted the Big Bang but annihilated itself in the process? How could you falsify that, for example?


Well, there's your problem.



Why does it have to be meaningful?



No. Furthermore, could you clarify what you mean by something to "meaningfully exist"?



It doesn't need to have, it just does, because the definition does not include "relevant for humans" at any point.
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The universe doesn't smell like monkey farts.
 
Darat said:
Missed this yesterday but you may be a figment in the mind of the solipsist who is imagining you as being someone who believes that they exist...
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Yes, but I would have existence nonetheless.

The solipsist might imagine me as a kind of p-zombie: An entity that exhibits all the behaviors of someone who seemingly believes that they exist. But in that case, I would not experience the believe that I exist.

I do, though.

So it is possible, that I am really just a - complex - figment of the solipsist's imagination. But that figment is real and complex enough to have self-awareness. It exists.

I might cease to exist as soon as the solipsist stops thinking about me, but right now, as I sit here and think I necessaries exist. (Even if I am only the equivalent of a subroutine in someone else's thoughts.)
 
tsig said:
So produce one of them.
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Not that I'm grinding this particular axe, but how is this for a non-falsifiable 'god'?

- entity created the universe
- entity merely observes the universe
- entity does not respond to prayer
- entity does not intervene in any way with the universe post-creation

I don't think I can disprove this (unless of course I have a finite definition of how the universe was created, exclusive of other explanations).

It is simply a construct that if someone feels more 'comfortable' knowing that 'something' is watching over them, its their personal security blanket, nothing more.

Its contrived, yes. And it isn't something that I would agree with. However it also isn't 'wrong', and nor does such a belief system interfere with how one lives their life (ie - such an entity makes no comment about abortion, martyrdom, circumcision, gay marriage etc...) So - perfectly compatible with my atheistic worldview.

Doesn't prove much except a philosophical point.
 
tsig said:
The fact that he uses his brain to think proves that he uses his brain to think.

As Darat said "circularity".
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It only proves it to him, and it in no way proves that there is a brain that does the thinking, or that it is his brain.

Are we seriously discussing this or am i missing a joke?
 
Cogito ergo sum ergo NON Deus sum

I don't know about everyone else… But on the Dawkins scale I would categorize myself as 6.99999999999999999999.

I am ABSOLUTELY sure there is no god(s) and I will outline my reasoning later but it's along the lines in this post and this one.

The only reason I did not classify myself as 7 is because I am not so ARROGANT as to not account for the possibility of me being wrong.

So out of the possibility that I may be wrong....which is a very rare occasion :D ..... I am allowing a .00000000000000000001 on the scale for that possibility.

But as per the reasoning I will outline (and did a while back) even that miniscule fraction is 99.99999999999999% likely to be way too much.

So the only reason I don't say 7 is actually out of LACK OF FAITH in my own INFALLIBILITY and not out of faith in anything.


But...just like everyone pointed out.....I would not say that I am a 7 on the scale of disbelief in Leprechauns either…. Nothing to do with doubt about leprechauns’ none-existence but because of doubt about MYSELF as an infallible thinker.

I am going to outline later (as I did here) why God(s) is/are Paradoxes.

Cogito ergo sum ergo NON Deus sum
 
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Antiquehunter said:
Not that I'm grinding this particular axe, but how is this for a non-falsifiable 'god'?

- entity created the universe
- entity merely observes the universe
- entity does not respond to prayer
- entity does not intervene in any way with the universe post-creation

I don't think I can disprove this (unless of course I have a finite definition of how the universe was created, exclusive of other explanations).

It is simply a construct that if someone feels more 'comfortable' knowing that 'something' is watching over them, its their personal security blanket, nothing more.

Its contrived, yes. And it isn't something that I would agree with. However it also isn't 'wrong', and nor does such a belief system interfere with how one lives their life (ie - such an entity makes no comment about abortion, martyrdom, circumcision, gay marriage etc...) So - perfectly compatible with my atheistic worldview.

Doesn't prove much except a philosophical point.
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Your entity sounds a lot like big bang theory so all you've done is apply another name to the forces of the universe.
 
Darat said:
The only problem I see with that is by that argument we would have to say we are "agnostic" about everything as we can't say we know anything with "100% certainty". And to me that means it is pretty redundant.
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Yes, it is redundant to everyone who accepts that we can't say we know anything with 100% certainty. It seems that not everyone agrees...

Darat said:
I prefer and find it much more useful to think of agnosticism as being a belief akin to theism, so agnosticism becomes a statement of belief i.e. that it is not possible even in principle for a human to know whether a god exists or not.
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Well, at least not all gods...

Why do you find that more useful? Also, why is agnostic atheism a belief? We can define gods that are unfalsifiable. That makes the statement "we cannot know whether all gods exist or not" trivially true.
 
wollery said:
Exactly. You don't believe, but you don't know. You are an atheist and an agnostic.
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I think you are answering a different question but no, I'm not agnostic.

laca said:
You're confusing. I'm talking about "gods" or "a god" and you're talking about "God". For me, God with a capital G means the Abrahamic God. I don't use capital G to make it clear I'm talking about a non-specific god.
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That's my fault for being inconsistent. I am referring to small g gods.

So what do you mean by "the definition of God"?
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The things that you say exist but cannot be falsified. Presumably things like...

What if I believe in the Holy Universe-farting Monkey that farted the Big Bang but annihilated itself in the process? How could you falsify that, for example?
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Well if something is annihilated I wouldn't say it exists. So that one should be easy enough.

Well, there's your problem.
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Oh, absolutely. If you allow god to mean 'some vague idea of something somewhere which is just well you know...yeah...cool' then you're going to have problems disproving them. The ignostics are on to something after all.

Why does it have to be meaningful?
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Because if it's meaningless, how can it be 'god'?

No. Furthermore, could you clarify what you mean by something to "meaningfully exist"?
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I just mean that a lot of these concepts are defined to exist in such a way that their existence and non-existence are not different. A 'god' that exists only in a parallel universe and doesn't interact in any way with this universe at any time for example, doesn't exist in any meaningful way.

It doesn't need to have, it just does, because the definition does not include "relevant for humans" at any point.
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I'm not sure where this is going, I disagree that relevant for humans needs to be explicitly stated.

laca said:
Is there a difference between "not running to the store" and "running not to the store"?
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Sometimes. It depends what is meant. In practical terms not running to the store can mean walking to the store or running to somewhere that isn't the store. In practical terms not believing X can only really mean believing not X.
 
Rasmus said:
I don't quite understand you here.

I am agnostic atheist - I do not believe that there is a god, but I acknowledge that I cannot be 100% certain about whether there is a god - just like i cannot be 100% certain about anything, really.

Since I am convinced that there is no god, why would my stance imply its existence?
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I dislike the 100% thing. I'm certain, for all practical and theoretical intents and purposes, that there are no supernatural entities. I am willing to reexamine this conclusion if and when new evidence for these entities is presented, but not until then.

I believe this makes me a "hard" atheist.
 
I note that I've had only a couple of flippant responses to this request;
wollery said:
Please explain how you know that there is absolutely, definitely, no god of any description.
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Seriously? That's the best any of you can do?
 
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