(January 27, 2015 at 12:10 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: Yes, different people have different definitions of god(s). That doesn't mean that the concept is undefined, it just means that it has multiple definitions.

Sure. This makes the straightforward question, "Do you believe in god" a nonsensical one because it could refer to anything from a trash can lid to omni super hero man. That's what makes atheism so hilarious. Even though the question is nonsensical, I can be extremely confident that my answer is going to be "no", regardless of the description given when I ask for it. (Unless they say it is a trash can lid etc)

I am better than agnostics and Gnostics now, I have risen to the next level and have no use for either term I have a few seats available in Arrogant Land if anyone wants to join me. Lesser seats, but still. I am a true atheist. Agnostics and Gnostics are just beginner atheists now. Cos I said so. I am the atheist God.

(January 27, 2015 at 4:25 am)robvalue Wrote:

(January 27, 2015 at 12:10 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: Yes, different people have different definitions of god(s). That doesn't mean that the concept is undefined, it just means that it has multiple definitions.

Sure. This makes the straightforward question, "Do you believe in god" a nonsensical one because it could refer to anything from a trash can lid to omni super hero man. That's what makes atheism so hilarious. Even though the question is nonsensical, I can be extremely confident that my answer is going to be "no", regardless of the description given when I ask for it. (Unless they say it is a trash can lid etc)

Absolutely, and that's why when someone asks me if I believe in god, my answer is "which one?". I've not seen one definition of god which I find very meaningful, and not one that I lend any credence. But I don't think it's accurate to say that it's undefined -- indeed, one of the key arguments of atheism is that the very plethora of deities (and definitions) undermines the truth claims of all of them.

Having said that, I can't say that I know for a fact that there is no sort of god. My own sense of integrity demands of me the admission that I could be wrong.

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(January 27, 2015 at 12:23 am)Blackout Wrote: My biggest problem with the topic of emotions is when people confuse feelings with emotions. There is a difference. By chance I know it due to highschool psychology classes (nothing to detailed, but still useful)

Other than that, I don't know what we could do in such a thread other than giving personal testimony of our everyday emotions as "believable" (assuming everyone's telling the truth) proof of emotions existing

I'm using emotions and feelings interchangeably, as the colloquial allows; I'm not using psychological jargon, because I'm not a psychologist.

No matter what you wish to call them, the fact is that they can be both undefined and still present, which was my point.

I'm kind of disappointed that afaict (having just browsed the thread) not one person has raised the actual philosophical position of Agnosticism.

There are three major types of agnostic:

"I don't know if there is a god." This is the position most people think of.
"I don't know and I don't care." This is the cop-out position of those who don't want to be bothered to think.

But neither one is the type of agnostic for whom the term was originally coined. That position is:

"I do not know, nobody knows, because the answer to this question is, by its nature, unknowable."

This is the Russell's Teapot position. It's the answer to theists who claim that there is a God, but that God cannot be measured, tested, confirmed or denied. A God who does not interact with the Universe in any meaningful or predictable way is unknowable. It cannot be known that such a god exists or does not exist, and if it does exist, it is irrelevant to us because it is unknowable. It may as well not exist.

So remember, whenever you answer some silly "gotcha" question (like Kalaam) with "I don't know and neither do you," you are flirting with the "hard agnostic" approach - you do not know if there is a god, and you cannot know if there is a god.

Indeed. I made a thread a little while ago challenging people to make a testable God claim. No one did.

(January 27, 2015 at 12:54 pm)robvalue Wrote: Indeed. I made a thread a little while ago challenging people to make a testable God claim. No one did.

Because he's invisible and omnipotent and he works in mysterious ways and you just don't understand him, cause he's so metaphorical and stuff. You know.

(January 27, 2015 at 11:35 am)Davka Wrote: I'm kind of disappointed that afaict (having just browsed the thread) not one person has raised the actual philosophical position of Agnosticism.

There are three major types of agnostic:

"I don't know if there is a god." This is the position most people think of.
"I don't know and I don't care." This is the cop-out position of those who don't want to be bothered to think.

But neither one is the type of agnostic for whom the term was originally coined. That position is:

"I do not know, nobody knows, because the answer to this question is, by its nature, unknowable."

This is the Russell's Teapot position. It's the answer to theists who claim that there is a God, but that God cannot be measured, tested, confirmed or denied. A God who does not interact with the Universe in any meaningful or predictable way is unknowable. It cannot be known that such a god exists or does not exist, and if it does exist, it is irrelevant to us because it is unknowable. It may as well not exist.

So remember, whenever you answer some silly "gotcha" question (like Kalaam) with "I don't know and neither do you," you are flirting with the "hard agnostic" approach - you do not know if there is a god, and you cannot know if there is a god.

Good points, but I think there are a couple more ways in which one might at a position of not-knowing about God that is distinct from atheism.

-the person is honestly evaluating a claim, and has not arrived at a conclusion yet. In other words, the person is taking a long time to "access" the reality of their view on the God claim, and have not yet resolved the question to an answer. They have not yet discovered whether they are theist or atheist.

-the person is divided, because people are not in fact single agents, and answers do not always resolve to single answers. Take out the cat from Schrodinger's box, and put in one of your kids, and I think you'll find it's possible both to believe the child is dead, and that it is alive.

-The answerer considers the question ambiguous, and "I don't know" is the only answer to an ambiguous question. For example, if A defines God as "whatever created the universe" and B defines God as "Sky Dadding clucking in disapproval when you masturbate," I'd say A necessarily exists (though is not a very good definition), and B necessarily does not exist. By those two definitions, I am both a theist and an atheist, but my ANSWER, which must be singular, is therefore that I don't know.

-There's also the possible that "something" is out there (or hiding behind QM or whatever) that would be variously interpreted: theists saying "There's God, we've found it," and atheists saying "That's physics, we've disproven God." If I believed in the reality of this "something," would I then be claiming a theist or atheist position?

In all these cases, I dislike the atheist semantic of saying "You lack an active belief, therefore you are an atheist." This makes philosophical and pragmatic assumptions about WHY someone takes the agnostic position.

My own agnostic (not agnostic atheist) position is a combination of many of these: I think the God idea is ambiguous depending on who's asking, I think I've seen too little evidence to fully resolve the question and suspect I'll never have enough, parts of "me" still have residual active beliefs in God (apparently, based on some of my dream content), and I suspect that an actual God would be intangible to humans.

So my position is this: I'm a hard atheist or anti-theist about every mainstream definition of God. But I'm an agnostic about the general possibility of some entity, dimension or philosophical property which one might call God.

Quote:"I don't know and I don't care." This is the cop-out position of those who don't want to be bothered to think.

I think the concept of apatheism fits this better.

Quote:"I do not know, nobody knows, because the answer to this question is, by its nature, unknowable."

This is the Russell's Teapot position. It's the answer to theists who claim that there is a God, but that God cannot be measured, tested, confirmed or denied. A God who does not interact with the Universe in any meaningful or predictable way is unknowable. It cannot be known that such a god exists or does not exist, and if it does exist, it is irrelevant to us because it is unknowable. It may as well not exist.

You are correct, however this type of agnosticism is rarely argued for in the atheist community.

I do disagree that god's existence is, on principle, unknowable...

(December 8, 2014 at 3:42 am)robvalue Wrote: If I say I know something, say for example that when I drop an object it will fall, I'm saying it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. But it's not impossible that I am wrong. The degree of confidence your give is up to you to decide.

I know that the apple will follow the gravitation field. I know that it is possible that something may interfere with the fall. I know that the apple is still being affected by the gravitational field even though it did not fall or complete it's fall.

I know that whatever attributes of existence that can be applied to a god can just as easily be applied to the universe. Therefore a god is not necessary. I know this.

(December 8, 2014 at 3:42 am)robvalue Wrote: Apologies if this has been done to death before.

I think a lot about definitions and uses of words. And I've come to think that the agnostic/gnostic distinction isn't worth the confusion it causes. I've lost count of the number of people who think agnosticism is mutually exclusive to atheism.

The first problem is the definitions. If you're gnostic, you know your belief is true. If you're agnostic, you're not certain your belief is true. So the next thing is to look at what "know" means.

It's useless to say that you can know something if and only if it is actually true. By that definition, we have no idea what we actually know out of the things we know. I believe that in general usage, to know something is to have a justified belief that it is true.

So, how much justification do you need before you say you know something? I would put forward two standards.

The first is that you are claiming it is impossible that your conclusion is wrong. You may still be actually wrong, but you are definitely correct given all the available information, and considering what other information you do not know that might affect your decision. That is a bit long winded and convoluted, so you can pretty much equate it with saying you are definitely right, what you actually know is fact.

The second definition is that you are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that you are correct, (given the information you have or do not have).

In my opinion, the first definition is almost worthless. The only cases in which I think it applies is in abstract cases, where you correctly use the laws of logic to draw a conclusion from a premise, or demonstrate the premise is impossible. But in reality, most claims that are worth debating are not going to be so clear cut. So you are giving a confidence value. If I say I know something, say for example that when I drop an object it will fall, I'm saying it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. But it's not impossible that I am wrong. The degree of confidence your give is up to you to decide. In this way, saying you know something is a claim. To demonstrate that your claim is true, you need to show how you arrived at that conclusion. Another person may then evaluate the claim, and then either agree or disagree based on their own degree of confidence.

So if we agree that for the most part a claim of knowledge is a claim of a justified belief beyond reasonable doubt, then I think the terms gnostic and agnostic are redundant. By this definition, I know there is no God, in the same way I know an object will fall when I drop it. Absolute certainty is an almost useless concept, so to insist on it at any point is to render all discussions meaningless or to hide behind solipsism.

Weirdly though, you don't really need either term when dismissing some of the most common God claims. Any claim of omnipotent, omniscient and/or omni benevolent can be defeated simply by pointing out that such a think is a logical impossibility. It contradicts both itself and reality, and to accept it could be possible would be to accept that actual contradictions can exist in reality. If you go down this route, you can again hide behind solipsism and other mental defences, but you're really just admitting you're not interested in what is possible in reality.

But towards any general God claim that isn't going the omni route, i would say that agnosticism and Gnosticism are essentially the same thing to most atheists. Saying there is an extremely tiny minute possibility that a book written 2000 years ago might in fact be all true and that the characterises in it actually exist, is just the same as saying there is a tiny minute possibility an object will float away rather than fall when I drop it.

Thanks for reading! (Sane) feedback welcome.

No-one calls themselves gnostic, apart from the Gnostics, ie the religion of Gnosticism.

The word isn't very old, it was first used by Thomas Huxley in 1869 colloquially to describe his position on God - that there was for him inadequate data to form an opinion. This is the real meaning of agnosticism and you shouldn't get caught up relying on etymology to translate meaning.

Agnosticism is mutually exclusive to atheism, because atheism has always been a belief, and a belief cannot come from a position of no or inadequate knowledge. The 'lack of belief' = atheism idea is nonsense, lack of belief has never been the definition of atheism, and there are no historical grounds for it. Whats more, it would make atheism and agnosticism indistinguishable - a lack of belief can only exist in the absence of knowledge, which is agnosticism.

They're not mutually exclusive, one can fairly day "I don't know if X exists, but I don't believe it does".