Read the article. For the sake of everyone involved.

Would have been nice to have read it first, yeah. It took me hours to press ctrl+v

(January 31, 2015 at 11:53 am)YGninja Wrote: So what are you? An agnostic or an atheist? You cannot be both, its incoherent. You cannot simultaneously assume any belief while denying there is enough evidence to form an opinion.

"I know there is no god and I believe that I am right." A lot of atheists feel the same, however, they do not generally state it as such, especially in a forum, as that presents a claim that they must now defend. IMHO, that is what an atheist is.

Lack of evidence is proof of nothing, but how long do you search the gymnasium for the missing basketball before you accept that it is not there? After some 15000 years, evidence of a god has yet to be found.

(January 31, 2015 at 12:17 pm)robvalue Wrote: If you don't like how the terms are used that's fine, but you will find yourself at odds with everyone who uses them. Of course knowledge is a word that can be defined in many different ways. Depending on your definition, you'll get different answers. In this case, yes, knowledge is generally considered to be synonymous with absolute certainty. So I advise using that definition in regard to these terms. But there is always room for debate about that. I am absolutely certain no omnipotent god exists, because it's logically possible. I'm not absolutely certain a floating teapot doesn't exist though.

As we've already discussed though, the meaning of agnosticism isn't defined by its etymology, like most words aren't. The meaning of agnosticism is not "without certainty". but a round-about way of saying "i don't know enough to form an opinion either way", or "its impossible to know enough to form an opinion".

Right. Gnostic atheists make their own claim, agnostics do not. That's a very important difference I overlooked, thank you

I assume the non-existence of things I have no evidence for but there is no certainty. I'll agree that for all practical purposes, the lack of certainty is awfully small for the teapot. The only time there is certainty of non-existence is for things that cannot possibly exist - such as a God who is both omnipotent and omniscient.

Note that all Gods are not equal. While I am certain Yaweh does not exist, I am not certain about a deistic God.

You are not using the words "atheist" and "agnostic" as I would use them. I refuse to argue about the meaning of those words though. It's a pointless exercise, IMO. As I said, I don't care what you call me. I think you'll find though that none of your labels will fit. It's why I got out of the labeling game altogether. I suspect your problem is that you are so preoccupied with the labels, you try to force people into artificial pigeon holes that don't really exist.

Still didn't read the article huh. Well that's cool, I'll leave you to however you want to use the words Just trying to help you out, you'll be arguing against absolutely everyone.

(January 31, 2015 at 12:21 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(January 31, 2015 at 11:53 am)YGninja Wrote: So what are you? An agnostic or an atheist? You cannot be both, its incoherent. You cannot simultaneously assume any belief while denying there is enough evidence to form an opinion.

"I know there is no god and I believe that I am right." A lot of atheists feel the same, however, they do not generally state it as such, especially in a forum, as that presents a claim that they must now defend. IMHO, that is what an atheist is.

Lack of evidence is proof of nothing, but how long do you search the gymnasium for the missing basketball before you accept that it is not there? After some 15000 years, evidence of a god has yet to be found.

Your first statement is very honest and i completely agree. The second one however is just wrong, as again i have already pointed out, evidence is anything which can be used to support a position, and there is plenty of that in the case of God.

(January 31, 2015 at 11:53 am)YGninja Wrote: So do you have no belief in a hypothetical teapot orbiting Jupiter, or do you assume a belief, to any degree of certainty, that there isn't a teapot orbiting Jupiter because of evidence, namely, the idea is completely arbitrary and ad-hoc in nature?

The teapot is orbiting saturn. That is why we have yet to find it. The Aliens put it there to fuck with us.

(January 31, 2015 at 12:11 pm)robvalue Wrote: Did you read the article? You can believe a statement without having to claim that you know it is true. Knowledge is a subset of belief. I believe a ball will fall when I drop it, but I don't know it.

I would make exactly the same arguments against that article as i am here. Again they are trying to define the meaning of a word directly from its etymology, rather than how it was originally and always has been used. Its not a scholarly article, its just a weak apologetic. No reasonable person calls themselves a gnostic atheist or theist because all we have are beliefs to varying degrees of certainty. The idea of a gnostic atheist or theist only came about by these sorts of apologetics, trying to protect atheists from any BOP, so on one hand they can wear t-shirts with various religious symbols spelling "fiction", and on the other they can get away with producing absolutely no argument against Gods existence.