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Define “Agnostic”

Thermal said:
If someone asks 'do you believe in love at first sight?', and you answer 'I'm not sure', does that mean you are anti-love at first sight?
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No. It means you didn't answer the question. Read again what I posted. It makes no difference if you exchange "God" for "Love" or for whatever other word you choose.
 
Thermal said:
I hear you, but is taking that particular default necessary? Is there anything wrong with saying, for instance, 1/0 is undefined, rather than defaulting to zero or infinity?
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Nothing wrong as such, obviously (nor is it wrong to be a full-blown theist either), but that sense wouldn't comport with Huxley's intention, far as I can see. So to that extent, linguistically speaking, I suppose it would be wrong, yes. (Unless the meaning of that word has evolved away from Huxley's sense. I don't think it has.)
 
Chanakya said:
No, not necessarily. Check out Apathia's mother.

Being uninterested in something is so very different from having any view, even a negative view, about it.

Might life have been brought to earth via meteors? That may be a very important question for many, it may be a not-very-important-but-nevertheless-not-wholly-unimportant question for many others, and a wholly and entirely unimportant and uninteresting question for a great many others.

So why not with the God question as well? (Sorry about the somewhat garbled response. I have no set view on this. I'm feeling my way forward, thinking aloud, in trying to respond to your post.)

Yes, if life is actually proved to have originated on meteors, then it is conceivable that many who are apathetic about that question will begin to take an interest. I suppose that can be said about the God question too?



In ages past, when God was such an important part of one's day-to-day life, perhaps you are right, perhaps one could not really have been uninterested unless one were an atheist. But today? Today I think that is perfectly plausible.
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Because the existence of god, whatever that might be, would be a paradigm-altering revelation, not historical minutia. Not caring = assigning no importance to...a god. Not a tenable position, I would think.
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
No. It means you didn't answer the question. Read again what I posted. It makes no difference if you exchange "God" for "Love" or for whatever other word you choose.
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I think it does answer it. If asked about love at first sight, you can reasonably think that you have no experience in the subject, or it may be a misunderstood phenomena, or a host of other responses beyond the simple yes or no. I think it is perfectly valid to answer that you cannot to commit to a yes or no on the question of what you believe, given that you do not have enough information to put yourself on one side of the line or the other. What side of the line is 1/0 on?
 
Thermal said:
Because the existence of god, whatever that might be, would be a paradigm-altering revelation, not historical minutia. Not caring = assigning no importance to...a god. Not a tenable position, I would think.
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It wouldn't be a tenable position for me, that much is certain. Nor you, it seems. But that is probably because we are (that is, that is probably another way of saying that both you and I are) not apatheists.

You know, I haven't personally interacted, IRL, with someone who's an apetheist. But apparently there are such people. (Although a good skeptic would ask for evidence, if only anecdotal experience, for the existence of such people. Well, we have Apathia talking about her mother in this thread itself.)
 
Thermal said:
I think it does answer it. If asked about love at first sight, you can reasonably think that you have no experience in the subject, or it may be a misunderstood phenomena, or a host of other responses beyond the simple yes or no. I think it is perfectly valid to answer that you cannot to commit to a yes or no on the question of what you believe, given that you do not have enough information to put yourself on one side of the line or the other. What side of the line is 1/0 on?
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You don't need to have information about something in order to believe in it.
 
Chanakya said:
It wouldn't be a tenable position for me, that much is certain. Nor you, it seems. But that is probably because we are (that is, that is probably another way of saying that both you and I are) not apatheists.

You know, I haven't personally interacted, IRL, with someone who's an apetheist. But apparently there are such people. (Although a good skeptic would ask for evidence, if only anecdotal experience, for the existence of such people. Well, we have Apathia talking about her mother in this thread itself.)
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Reading the tale of Apathia's mother, it sounds like she was uninterested in the discussion, at least at that time. I wouldn't take that as an apatheist stance, any more than I would take lack of interest in meteors as an apameteor position; it's just not giving a rat's petootie.
 
All I know is, if asked I now always say non-religious or agnostic. I've literally had people get upset when I said atheist. They seem to think that means I "hate god" and want to destroy their religion.

To sum: I believe the odds of a deity existing are extremely low, however it cannot be proven definitively that there isn't one. Whatever the term is for that, I don't really care.
 
Thermal said:
Reading the tale of Apathia's mother, it sounds like she was uninterested in the discussion, at least at that time. I wouldn't take that as an apatheist stance, any more than I would take lack of interest in meteors as an apameteor position; it's just not giving a rat's petootie.
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Yes. She was uninterested in religion.
There was also an element of no one has the place to be telling me I ought to be religious. My father was after her about "being saved." After he passed away she was free. So part of her disinterest was an expression of her freedom to be disinterested.

I hear her calling from the grave:
"What is Atheism? What is Agnosticism? I don't give a rat's ass! Just believe whatever you want and don't shove it on me."
 
Thermal said:
That was not intended as a gotcha. You seem to be a thoughtful poster and I am interested in how you would view that analogy, which I am sure you have considered before.
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Of course I've considered it before, because "God is love" is the kind of hackney cliche that gets brought out over and over.

An MRI would show certain physiological responses, to be sure. You would consider them to be the whole of 'love', then?
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It would be the whole of love. It's not a matter of what I consider.

You're invoking a spirit or soul into the neurological process.

Or "Qualia" which is the same thing.

But this particular recursive rabbit hole has already been thoroughly dug out in other threads and has nothing to do with the question be asked so I will not be continuing this further.

Agnosticism is not valid practically because it assumes "God exists" is a magically different kind of question from everything else and therefore "Magically unknowable" has a kind of validity that it doesn't have in other cases. That is not accurate and is special pleading.
 
This level of silly linguistic hair splitting over what kind and level of "statement" something is isn't necessary when discussing anything else, so to invoke it with

Is the chair blue? Yes or no. Whether or I am of the opinion that the chair is blue or believe the chair is blue doesn't change anything. The chair is or isn't blue.

There's no invisible dragon living in my garage. Notice I didn't say "Well I'm pretty sure there's no invisible dragon in my garage but I don't know for certain."

But whenever God gets brought into the discussion I'm expected to do that, frame everything in weak, passive, apologetic near groveling.

There is no God. I can make that statement and just... stop talking. I can make that statement and just stop talking even if you disagree with me.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This level of silly linguistic hair splitting over what kind and level of "statement" something is isn't necessary when discussing anything else, so to invoke it with

Is the chair blue? Yes or no. Whether or I am of the opinion that the chair is blue or believe the chair is blue doesn't change anything. The chair is or isn't blue.

There's no invisible dragon living in my garage. Notice I didn't say "Well I'm pretty sure there's no invisible dragon in my garage but I don't know for certain."

But whenever God gets brought into the discussion I'm expected to do that, frame everything in weak, passive, apologetic near groveling.

There is no God. I can make that statement and just... stop talking. I can make that statement and just stop talking even if you disagree with me.
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I note you only deny you have an invisible dragon in your garage, but you avoid denying that you have an invisible *pink* dragon in your garage!
 
Thermal said:
Reading the tale of Apathia's mother, it sounds like she was uninterested in the discussion, at least at that time.
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You’re right, going just by that post, it might well have been that she was uninterested in that particular discussion, nothing more. But Apathia does clarify, later on, that it was religion itself (and therefore God, I suppose?) that her mother was apathetic about.

Like you, I have difficulty conceiving of someone being so wholly uninterested in what appears to me to be a very important question. But it seems this attitude is really a thing -- else we wouldn’t have a whole separate term for it, right? (Yes, that’s circular reasoning, I know!) I suppose I, like you, have difficulty empathizing with apatheism, simply because I myself am not apatheistic, and because I haven’t encountered any apatheist IRL. (And that last is probably because I almost never discuss God and religion at all IRL. In theistic company it would be seen as bad manners, given my own lack of faith ; and in most other places it would be seen as plain weird. I love being able to so freely -- all the more freely because I’m anonymous here -- discuss all of these things here in this forum, with people who share my interest in this subject.)


I wouldn't take that as an apatheist stance, any more than I would take lack of interest in meteors as an apameteor position; it's just not giving a rat's petootie.
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But isn’t that what is the literal meaning of being apathetic (in general)? And because God is such a thing, such a powerful focus of interest [unlike life via meteors], I suppose that is why we have a separate word for ‘being apathetic about the God question’, which is “apatheism”. “Not giving a rat’s petootie”, as you put it, about the God question -- isn’t that exactly and literally what apatheism is?
 
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Apathia said:
Yes. She was uninterested in religion.
There was also an element of no one has the place to be telling me I ought to be religious. My father was after her about "being saved." After he passed away she was free. So part of her disinterest was an expression of her freedom to be disinterested.

I hear her calling from the grave:
"What is Atheism? What is Agnosticism? I don't give a rat's ass! Just believe whatever you want and don't shove it on me."
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And was she wholly unconcerned about the God question as well? (If you wouldn’t mind my probing just a bit further about what is after all a personal matter?)

It is one thing being uninterested in religion per se, it is one thing feeling that one’s religion (or lack of it) is no one’s business but one’s own, but a whole different thing to be wholly fully and entirely indifferent about God (and everything that the God question represents). For instance, can one really be wholly indifferent about one’s mortality? And if one were to ever think seriously about one’s mortality (that is, about the fact of one’s mortality itself, as opposed to the practical pragmatic issues surrounding it, like estate planning etc), then how could one not think about the God question at all?

In fact not just thoughts about mortality : given that religion seems to have been thrust on to your mother (albeit she seems to have pushed back herself, repelled that thrust), wouldn’t that kind of pressure necessarily set one wondering in some way or form about the God question?

The reason I ask this is because (like I said in my previous post, addressed to Thermal) I haven’t really encountered a real bona fide apatheist myself (probably because I almost never discuss religion and God IRL) : and I have difficulty properly comprehending, difficulty empathizing with, the idea of apatheism -- I mean apatheism as an actual attitude that one spontaneously holds, as opposed to an idea or as a philosophy that one has thought one’s way to.

Because if you’ve had to consciously think your way to apatheism, after having properly considered the God question, then as Thermal says, that is probably because you’re probably (implicitly) an atheist underneath your apatheism, someone who has decided that the probability of God is too small to bother with (which is exactly the atheist’s position). But of course, if you spontaneously and right from the get go happen to indifferent to this issue, then I suppose you can really be described as a bona fide apatheist.
 
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