The existence of "an intelligent creator" is a very different question to characters from storybooks being real. These two are at opposite sides of an insurmountable gulf, but theists often conflate the two in an effort to gain credibility under the guise of the first then hoping no one notices when they switch in their cartoon character.

To me, believing that the characters in the books are not real is perfectly reasonable. It's a simple application of scepticism. I have videos about scepticism too, if you are interested. I'm a strong atheist regarding these laughable ideas.

Believing that there was not, at some point, some intelligence somehow involved in the creation/manifestation of this reality, is not something I can so easily dismiss. But it's also incredibly irrelevant. We're a computer simulation? Who cares. We're a manifestation of the thoughts of a creature in another reality? Who cares. Reality got fragmented in some sort of weird experiment being conducted? Who cares. I don't believe it is the case, but neither do I confidently believe it is not the case. I'm a weak atheist regarding such a potential "God".

I made a thread here to try and drive this point home to theists and got no responses. Theists don't know what "God" means because they apply the term so liberally. It's an elastic word.

Agnosticism makes this false claim to knowledge.

Oh, we're agnostic, we have knowledge.

Knowledge of what, exactly? How to be knowledgeable in pretending to have any claim to knowledge?

Agnosticism, at best, is just fence sitting. Fuck that, since it involves no knowledge whatsoever.

It can be a statement that something is unknowable, too.

It can be an admission of the limits of knowledge; I agree that it's a little redundant in this case. Any sensible person already notes the limits of knowledge.

I prefer ignostic, since the theist never gets as far as defining what a god is in any coherent fashion. I don't understand the question, so I can't answer. I can be reasonably confident they are flailing around trying to make something in their imagination sound plausible, though.

(May 19, 2016 at 6:38 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(May 19, 2016 at 6:20 pm)Alex K Wrote: How could you possibly know that with any degreeof cdrtainty?

Is that what cdesign proponentsists do?

Yes. It's sometimes called "other ways of knoking shit upwing"

You're losing it, Rob.

(May 20, 2016 at 2:45 am)robvalue Wrote: It can be a statement that something is unknowable, too.

Which is a -hefty- claim to knowledge regarding the subject.  How would you go about establishing that any given "x" were unknowable...rather than simply unknown to you, for example?

LOL< Not looking for debate, just something to chew on.

I'm not saying that a specific agnostic has demonstrated it is unknowable, just that they may think that it is. I'm just stating what the term can refer to.

Like I said, I don't even know what it is I'm assessing, personally. I'm still waiting for something coherent, and it doesn't arrive.

I understand, just trying to highlight a bind an agnostic might easily box themselves into.  "I don't know, but I know it's unknowable".

It's perfectly knowable, silly.

There's a similar bind for what we might call an ignostic atheist.  "I don't know what we're talking about, but I don't believe in it"