(July 9, 2009 at 9:43 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: My bolding of course...I liked your choice of language there LOL.

I did second think posting it, but then I thought "meh, it's a common phrase, fuck it"

OK, fine ... since you want me to debate (I still don't want to) please post it again.

Kyu

(July 9, 2009 at 12:24 pm)Tiberius Wrote:

(July 9, 2009 at 9:43 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: My bolding of course...I liked your choice of language there LOL.

I did second think posting it, but then I thought "meh, it's a common phrase, fuck it"

Hehe. I liked when Kyu's response to using the word "God" was that it was 'just a convenient swearword' for him, or something like that.

And I like how when Dawkins made a similar comment once on RDF forums he asked if they had to be "so literal minded about it" lol - typical Dawkins response lol....

.....

But what I really liked is when I saw on RDF forums when Dawkins swore by saying "Zeus!" LOL.

EvF

(July 9, 2009 at 7:22 am)Tiberius Wrote: The words "your apparent inability" were meant as a jab, nothing else.

So you didn't mean it literally. Fair enough. I responded to that only because more often than not, in my experience, people mean it literally. And for some incomprehensible reason, they will not acknowledge what a horrifically faulty conclusion it is.

(July 9, 2009 at 7:22 am)Tiberius Wrote: Twice he has now refused to say why my points are "wrong," citing that he just doesn't want to respond. That might absolve him in some people's minds, but not in mine.

Well, come on, let's be clear. If you state that someone is wrong but refuse to make the case—i.e., "You're wrong because I said so"—that will never absolve you of anything to an intelligent mind. Any intelligent mind, period.

(July 9, 2009 at 7:40 am)LEDO Wrote: Personally, when I stop responding it's because I am getting bored with the topic, or the person I am dealing with is an asshole and it is just not worth my effort anymore. So not getting a response may be a reflection upon yourself. But, like you, I like to think that "I won."

Fair point. And I, too, can and do stop responding when the whole thing seems pointless or I'm bored with it. Except Kyuuketsuki was responding. The issue is over the substance of what he was responding with: ipse dixit brusquely asserted.

(July 9, 2009 at 8:47 pm)Arcanus Wrote: Well, come on, let's be clear. If you state that someone is wrong but refuse to make the case—i.e., "You're wrong because I said so"—that will never absolve you of anything to an intelligent mind. Any intelligent mind, period.

I did make the case. He refused to comment on it.

(July 10, 2009 at 1:27 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I did make the case. He refused to comment on it.

It was him that I was referring to there.

Oh ok My mistake.

(July 10, 2009 at 1:27 pm)Tiberius Wrote:

(July 9, 2009 at 8:47 pm)Arcanus Wrote: Well, come on, let's be clear. If you state that someone is wrong but refuse to make the case—i.e., "You're wrong because I said so"—that will never absolve you of anything to an intelligent mind. Any intelligent mind, period.

I did make the case. He refused to comment on it.

I repeat, OK, fine ... since you want me to debate (I still don't want to) please post it again.

Kyu

(July 11, 2009 at 4:40 pm)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: I repeat, OK, fine ... since you want me to debate (I still don't want to) please post it again.

Kyu

Ok:

Adrian Wrote:Well firstly I think you showed that piece to me before, and I corrected the origin of the word "atheist". The 'a' doesn't come from English grammar, but from Greek. ('a-theos' literally means "without god" in ancient greek).

Secondly, your argument that atheism and agnosticism are one and the same is invalid. As you quite rightly say, to be an agnostic is to say that the existence of a deity is unknown or unknowable, but this only covers knowledge. An person could claim that God is unknown or unknowable but still believe it exists. Indeed I find that most rational theists will admit this. A supernatural force that has no explanation is by definition unknown, and so people who claim their God is supernatural are agnostics and theists. Now the gnostic theists will claim that "supernatural" is simply a mocking word used by atheists, and that God is perfectly natural and has been proven through some argument or through nature.

In philosophy, knowledge is often described as a subset of belief, or as "true, justified belief". You can believe something and have no knowledge of it, but you cannot know something and have no belief of it, because this is a contradiction. Just to clarify, knowledge here is describing "absolute knowledge" rather than relative. You could argue that some people (like some creationists) "know" that fossils support evolution but simply do not believe it, but this is not the type of knowledge we are talking about. Knowledge in the agnosticism argument is all about the actual truth value of claims, not what people claim to know.

plus my further point:

Kyu Wrote:Like "theism" & "atheism", "gnostic" mean knowledge (in this context "of god") in other words the gnostic "knows of god" or "has knowledge of god" and the agnostic "knows not of god" or "has no knowledge of god" and today that has changed slightly to mean that the agnostic "does not know if there is a god" or holds that "the existence of god is unknown or unknowable".

This is a gross misunderstanding of the origins of the word. Yes, theism is the opposite of atheism, but the word "agnosticism" was not originally meant as an opposite of gnosticism. Huxley coined the word to fit his definition of "the existence of god is unknown or unknowable". He used the word "agnosticism" because of the word "gnostic" meaning one who has spiritual knowledge. Huxley could have called his new definition anything, but he chose the word "agnostic" since the word "gnostic" commented on spiritual knowledge, and his word on knowledge being unknowable (chiefly in relation to god / spirituality).

It is in fact the word "gnostic" that has a rather modern meaning, stemming from the popularity of "agnostic", it has come to mean the polar opposite (which is why we used it in our scale). If the word agnostic meant "has no knowledge of god" then I would agree, atheists are inherently agnostic. However the word does not mean that, it never has. It has always meant "the existence of god is unknown or unknowable" (or derived versions of that), or the more modern (and in my opinion useless) definition of "I don't know what I believe".

Wasn't agnostic coined to describe Darwin?