My Fellow Specifically Agnostic Atheists

[Purple Rabbit]

That's the thing about "absolute truth", it is a very confusing thing indeed. The argument that humans cannot know they know absolute truth is one based on logic.

By simple definitions, a being that is capable of knowing whether something is absolute truth or not is an omniscient being. An omniscient being can be seen as one who knows everything, or one who knows which statements are absolute truths and which are not. Thus an omniscient being does not necessarily need to have any prior "knowledge" to be omniscient, but when given a question in the form "Is X true?", they will always know whether it is or not. To elaborate, an omniscient being does not need to know that my name is Adrian, but when someone asks this being "This man is named Adrian, is that true?", the being will know that it is so.

The argument continues that as humans are not such beings, and are fallible, we cannot ever say that something we "know" is true. It might be true, but there is no way of knowing with 100% certainty that our justified belief is absolute truth. This is because we are subjective, and there is no objective way of viewing reality (as of yet) that doesn't succumb to some kind of subjectivity.

I'm in agreement with this as you surely must have noted by reading my postings. So there is no need for lecture.

As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree.

Please be accurate. I did not make such a statement. I stated that there is ambiguous meaning of agnosticism and that one particular meaning (the one involving 'unknowable') has a variant ('fundamental unknowability') that makes an absolute claim. Since I do not want to make any absolute claim, I prefer to stay away from the gnostic/agnostic attributes. Both 'gnostic' and 'agnostic' have ambiguous meaning. And when you use such labels, you should be aware of the fact that you are merely adding your own interpretation to an already confused issue. You are implicitly claiming to have resolved these matters on behalve of all atheists if you do so. In doing so, you are trying to establish a central doctrine of your own, with its own list of approved definitions. You are essentially redefining agnosticism to mean only the 'unknown' variant. For me such a quest is totally irrelevant to the atheist position. In my experience most atheists are capable of defining exactly what their partuicular stance is without ever using the words gnostic or agnostic.

So with this remark of you, you brush aside the ambiguity about agnosticism that is pretty well everywhere to find, mostly on the first page of a google search:

1) The Wikipedia defintion I gave in the former posting. And I fully acknowledge that Wikipedia is not conclusive evidence since anyone can put it on the web.

2) The Free Dictionary (by FARLEX):

Agnostic
a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

Note that (a) leaves open fundamental impossibility to know

3) My dutch dictionary (Kramers 1981)

4) And look at this source (about.com) that gives a pretty good explanation on the issue of fundamental unknowability and even makes a distinction between strong and weak agnosticism:

"If someone is a weak agnostic, they state only that they do not know if any gods exist or not. The possibility of some theoretical god or some specific god existing is not excluded. The possibility of someone else knowing for sure if some god exists or not is also not excluded. If someone is a strong agnostic, they don’t merely claim that they don’t know if any gods exist; instead, they also claim that no one can or does know if any gods exist."

Well, please don't sweep fundamental unknowability under the carpet any more, will you?

Agnosticism is a belief, a way of thinking, nothing more. It is the same kind of system as skepticism, a way of thinking about truth claims, rather than a truth claim itself. I believe (because of the logical arguments I've presented) that humans are incapable of knowing whether the knowledge they posses is absolute, but I do not claim that as an absolute truth. Indeed, as you pointed out, this would invariably lead to a contradiction.

Agnosticism is also an ill defined label. Why use it?

And when you've read Huxley on this, be aware that agnosticism involves two separate principles.
a) The epistemological one (that knowledge about the world relies on empirical and logical means).
b) The moral one that there is an ethical duty not to assert claims for ideas which we cannot adequately support.

As I am open to the existence of Gods, I am open to humans having such an ability as to know the truth value of certain claims (or all claims for that matter). Show me a method for doing so that doesn't involve subjectivism, and nulls the arguments presented, and I will gladly throw agnosticism out the window.

There is no need for that, since I agree that we must leave this possibility (existence of humans with absolute knowledge) open and at the same time are fallible beings ourselves. We as fallible beings lack the faculty of abolute knowledge and we cannot ever establish absolute truth about someone who makes that claim. Do not put me in the corner of absolutists. I do not claim absolute knowledge, only tentative. So it is not for me to show how to assess absolute truth of absolute claims.

As for the others guys assembled here. Please keep on giving kudos to the guy that is on your side no matter what his argument is, cause debate is like battle, not the argument counts, but only who wins it.