My Fellow Specifically Agnostic Atheists

[Purple Rabbit]

Is there any reason why the reply to Adrian I've prepped encounters difficulties uploading while other replies give no difficulty?

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OK, I'll split my post, since I suspect the difficulties have their origin in the volume of the post.

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

Please be accurate. I did not make such a statement.

Yes you did:

See the word unknowable in there? That means knowing for absolute certain that the existence is unknowable. That is principle unknowability. If we are talking about that kind of agnosticism, maybe not in your dictionary but Wikipedia is not the only source for it, it means a claim of absoluteness: to know absolute that god's existence cannot be known. So agnosticism in this form certainly is a strong absolute truth claim. Do you acknowledge this?

Non sequitur. It does not follow from this that I have asserted that all variants of agnosticism make an absolute claim, only the kind that claims fundamental unknowability. I was commenting on this definition (why leave it out?):
"Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable." (source Wikipedia)

In which there are clearly two kinds of agnosticism. They read unknown or unknowable

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.

Firstly, there is not an ambiguous meaning of agnosticism. Agnosticism has always meant the view that the truth value of certain things are unknown or unknowable. I've never denied this, and indeed I make sure to include both "unknown" and "unknowable" whenever I talk about it to others.

The fact that you acknowledge that there are two variants with fundamental different meaning, i.e. unknown and unknowable, means that you acknowledge there is not an unambiguous interpretation of agnosticism. Unknown is not the same as unknowable. It simply is not true that you have always carefully included these different kinds. For example you do not make such a careful distinction when you say:
"As for your assertion that agnosticism is a strong absolute truth claim, I disagree."
You boldly deny any possible absolutistic content.

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next part:

I'm not redefining it at all. You say "there is no need for the lecture", but evidently you didn't even read what I'd said, since the entire "lecture" was on unknowability (that certain things cannot be known). Read it again. It's not about things being unknown, it's about how fallible beings are incapable of knowing whether what they "know" is true.

Oh, yes I've read it. Don't draw any hasty conclusions now.

Firstly there is a difference between what we could call practical unknowability (not being able to know now for practical reasons) and fundamental unknowability, i.e. being absolutly sure that such knowledge is unattainable forever. Whenever I speak of fundamental unknowability, I am speaking about the latter.

You bring up human fallibility to make your point but make no explicit claim that human infallibility is absolutely unobtainable forever. If you would do so, it would be an absolute claim and since you're a fallible being yourself that would be contradicting yourself, wouldn't it? And that is why your lecture clearly brings to light that you do not really include the kind of fundamental unknowability that I am speaking about.

Also the question is not whether I acknowledge human fallibility or not, the question is what range of interpretation to agnosticism is around. You've missed the fundamental unknowability position inside agnosticism.

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.

As I already said, no I didn't.

I think I have made clear now what the difference is between your human infallibility argumument and the stance of fundamental unknowability.

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?

Agnosticism is far from an ill defined label. It takes some understanding of philosophy to fully comprehend it, but that doesn't make it ill defined. Ask a person to define knowledge, and most will fail to define it well at all. Knowledge is a hard thing to understand, and it has confused philosophers for many many years (and still does). Since the definition of agnosticism rests on how we understand knowledge, it is not surprising that most people don't understand it.

This whole thread and certainly your neglect of the fundamental unknowabiliy position testifies of how ill defined it is.

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.

And so this all boils down to you completely misunderstanding my position. I wasn't putting you in the corner of the absolutists, I was responding to your charge that agnosticism contains an absolute statement when it clearly does not. Just because the agnostic view states that certain things are "unknowable" does not make it an absolute statement. Agnosticism is a position that you can believe in or reject, and there are many arguments that support it as a view. Indeed, the very point about agnosticism is that it applies to itself as well. How can we know that agnosticism is absolutely true? We can't! How do I know we can't? I don't! I don't claim agnosticism as an absolute position anymore than I claim atheism as an absolute position. Agnosticism relies on belief in the validity of several logical arguments (as does atheism / theism). Disprove these arguments and you cast doubt on agnosticism as a valid concept (note: I'm not asking you specifically to disprove them, it's an open challenge).

Are we in the clear now? Fundamental unknowability is not the same as practical unknowability.

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.

Such an arrogant statement, spoken by a person who has clearly not considered the possibility that the people who give me kudos aren't doing so because I'm on their side, but because my arguments are valid.

Please curb that anger Adrian. I do consider that possibility and I do value your opinion. But this reaction does not make it more plausible since neither you nor I can retrieve their motives straight from their heads. Did you miss the emoticon trying to signal a ifeeling I got from the way this thread is going? I may be deluded here but EvF stopped answering and immediatly Void takes over crediting him with kudos, Void stops answering and 'the boss' steps right in. I sincerely apologize if this has only been in the eye of me as a beholder.