Your view on agnosticism.

[jordi]

I believe a specific god may exist, but I am an agnostic, because I don't believe any of the religions I have come to know, know anything about a real god, if there is one. If there is a god, he or she, can't posibly be as horrible as the bible or the koran make him out to be.

[BethK]

(6th June 2011 01:25)SpatiumTempusque Wrote:  I don't claim to know anything but I believe there are no Gods. Atheism is an assumption taken
as fact, that's why I'm not an atheist.

IMnsHO, everyone is an agnostic. There is no evidence, so it is impossible to KNOW whether god(s)
exist or do not exist.

That's kind of irrelevant. By the same idea, I could say that it is impossible to KNOW whether
leprechauns, unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, vampires, ghosts, or zombies exist. There's no absolute
PROOF that they don't exist, but until such time that there is proof that they do exist, I fail to believe
in them. I don't say that I'm agnostic about fairies, or that I'm agnostic about ghosts, or agnostic
about Santa. I do not believe in them.

If you're an agnostic, you just don't know whether God exists or not. So, the question goes back to
whether you BELIEVE that God exists or not, without evidence, and with whatever tales, books,
or stories are around about God.
If you believe that God exists, you are a theist.
If you do not believe that God exists, you are an atheist.

If you have not (yet) heard of God (babies), are atheists before they hear of a god.

[Anymouse]

Agnosticism is a "null set." Ain't no such thing, no matter how many people try to say there is.

Consider: an agnostic defines himself as a person who "does not know," as there is insufficient evidence for any deity or lack.

Theism is defined as a belief in a deity, or deities.

Atheism is defined as no belief in deities.

As a self-described agnostic "does not believe" as there is "insufficient proof" or he "does not know," agnostic becomes merely a subset of atheist. He still does not believe.

There are no agnostics about the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy, or Zeus. There are no agnostics about Newton's Laws, or Pythagorus's Theorem. There is no quality to a lack of belief. It is a lack of belief. There need not be a "why." Even with a "why" (insufficient evidence, no knowledge, &c) it is still a lack of belief.

Presumably, if independently-verifiable evidence which could be repeatedly tested with the same result were to somehow surface, both the atheist and the agnostic would become some sort of theist. (That is, unless they are like Issac Asimov and took his position on UFO's: "I wouldn't believe in UFO's if I saw one land on the White House lawn.")

The "agnostic" is an atheist who will not admit it, for the only requirement to be an atheist is that one does not believe.

[Rhizomorph13]

Most theists are agnostic as well.

If they were gnostic, they would know and therefore have no need for faith. This goes directly against Christian doctrine.

[Violet Lilly Blossom]

(6th June 2011 15:23)Rhizomorph13 Wrote:  Most theists are agnostic as well.

If they were gnostic, they would know and therefore have no need for faith. This goes directly against Christian doctrine.

It is knowledge that requires faith, not knowing does not require the slightest faith.

[Rhizomorph13]

(6th June 2011 18:38)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote:  

(6th June 2011 15:23)Rhizomorph13 Wrote:  Most theists are agnostic as well.

If they were gnostic, they would know and therefore have no need for faith. This goes directly against Christian doctrine.

It is knowledge that requires faith, not knowing does not require the slightest faith.

Hmm, yeah my wording is a bit unclear. I should have said that being gnostic would be knowing, through proof, of a knowable proposition and if there is proof and the proposition IS knowable then there is no place for faith. Not all knowledge requires faith by my definition of faith. Faith is belief without evidence. If you have evidence then you have knowledge and the proposition would be believed based on that knowledge. Yes, one could get noodly and go the solipsist route, but I am a more pragmatic thinker than that and find no value in maintaining agnosticism regarding basic beliefs such as, "reality is objectively real." That is an epistemic matter, not germane to the conversation at hand as it was couched by the OP.

[Violet Lilly Blossom]

You cannot have belief without evidence... I think you mean belief without intersubjectively verified evidence attained via the scientific method?

It's all about the specification of what we mean

[Rhizomorph13]

You use too many hearts. Yes, it does depend largely on what you deem as evidence.

For example, if someone tells me they ate tacos on Friday, I would believe them without evidence. I would take it on faith that they wouldn't lie to me.

[Violet Lilly Blossom]

On the evidence of who you think they are, past interaction with them, that people wouldn't have a reason to lie about that, etc...

[BethK]

(6th June 2011 22:33)Rhizomorph13 Wrote:  You use too many hearts. Yes, it does depend largely on what you deem as evidence.

For example, if someone tells me they ate tacos on Friday, I would believe them without evidence. I would take it on faith that they wouldn't lie to me.

The amount of supporting evidence for something required depends upon how important it is to you. There
are several reasons that something could be important to various degrees. For instance, in your case where
a friend tells me they ate tacos on Friday, I'll just believe the claim. There is nothing for me to do because
they ate tacos, their eating tacos doesn't effect anything I'm going to do now or in the future. There's nothing
for me to gain or lose from this information. There is probably nothing in it for them - no reason - for them to
lie about it.

OTOH, if someone makes a claim that the "too good to be true" investment instrument they are trying to sell
me or my company will make us many times the going interest rate and is "risk free", I'm going to look
at that closely before I invest - if something is too good to be true, it usually is. Bankers and investment
brokers taking these claims on faith is a major thing behind the banking crisis.

If I'm working for the health department investigating a rash of digestive illnesses, I'm going to be interested
in what people had and where and when they ate it. If one person says they ate tacos at a particular
restaurant, it's a coincidence. If a dozen people say they ate tacos Friday night at a particular restaurant when
they come into a hospital with food poisoning, that will be closely looked at. If it's shown that those tacos
were tainted, someone may have a reason to lie about eating there in order to join into a class-action
lawsuit. I'd look at them more warily.

On religious claims, where "being right" has a great positive or negative effect on you for eternity, it would
seem to me that would be much higher stakes than either the financial or public health examples I gave
above. Certainly more than what my friend had for dinner on Friday! So, since this would have an
extreme impact on a theist for eternity, it would seem that they would require a great deal of hard
evidence that the claims of a religion are true. For, if there is a true religion, and the deity in that religion
will punish one for all eternity for picking a false religion, one would have to be ABSOLUTELY SURE
of the truth of the religious claims. Much higher than the investor would! So, why do they take it with
the same evidence that they do when your friend says off-the-cuff that they had tacos last Friday?

I have almost no choice to assume, since theists accept claims of others on almost no evidence, that the
whole thing about "requirements" - everything from tithing to fasting to adhering to the morality in
the religious teaching - is all make-believe, and they know it.