Atheists, what are your thoughts on us Agnostics?

[Whateverist]

Agnostic lives matter too.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do they, how can we be sure?  

[OverGod]

It's not that complicated.

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TO be honest, I get religious people more than I do agnostics.

yet I know that can't be right...

[Whateverist]

It's not that complicated.

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TO be honest, I get religious people more than I do agnostics.

yet I know that can't be right...

I am so surprised.

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Do they, how can we be sure?  

Pop a few and see what happens?  Seems like a good idea but then my mind has been cold and all lately.

[Astonished]

Is there...a god concept...that isn't easily contradicted by everything we know and yet still remains justifiably 'goddy' enough not to be just someone grasping at straws? Because I don't think there is and that seems to be sufficient knowledge to make being agnostic a bit dubious.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Okay, all you agnostics here, if you want my two cents...tell me, what is it you're still unsure about that you are willing to say you haven't got enough information or knowledge to make a probabilistic determination about whatever it is you are suspending judgment about?

It's the difference between judgement and knowledge. In my judgement, there are no gods. To my knowledge, I've seen no evidence.

Don't get me wrong, I can write off many of them by virtue of their claimed characteristics. I do that with the Abrahamic god, based on claimed qualities. Indeed, I write off most all of them because I think magic is horseshit, and they all seem to rely upon magic to work.

But do I know? No, I don't. What might seem to me to be magic might be another way of the Universe operating, and some religion somewhere might have something I don't know about.

In short, agnostic atheist is not my claim about the Universe, but my claim about myself.

[Astonished]

Okay, all you agnostics here, if you want my two cents...tell me, what is it you're still unsure about that you are willing to say you haven't got enough information or knowledge to make a probabilistic determination about whatever it is you are suspending judgment about?

It's the difference between judgement and knowledge. In my judgement, there are no gods. To my knowledge, I've seen no evidence.

Don't get me wrong, I can write off many of them by virtue of their claimed characteristics. I do that with the Abrahamic god, based on claimed qualities. Indeed, I write off most all of them because I think magic is horseshit, and they all seem to rely upon magic to work.

But do I know? No, I don't. What might seem to me to be magic might be another way of the Universe operating, and some religion somewhere might have something I don't know about.

In short, agnostic atheist is not my claim about the Universe, but my claim about myself.

That seems like a claim that I couldn't make without damaging my own self-esteem so while I know none of us possesses certain knowledge, and the ideas proposed are being sufficiently disproved every second by our growing scientific understanding, if gnosticism accounts for the majority of a subject matter, it feels wrong to adopt a label that favors the corollary more.

[The Grand Nudger]

If things were different things might be different and then things would be different.  That's never not going to be true.  There is -no- knowledge that is immune to what you may not know.

That's sort of how the whole thing got framed though.  The standards for knowledge in the case of a god become an issue of scouring the entire universe, meanwhile the standards for knowledge in knowing that the sun will rise tommorrow are much lower.  

If you applied the god standard™ to the sun rising you wouldn't know that either.  

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's the difference between judgement and knowledge. In my judgement, there are no gods. To my knowledge, I've seen no evidence.

Don't get me wrong, I can write off many of them by virtue of their claimed characteristics. I do that with the Abrahamic god, based on claimed qualities. Indeed, I write off most all of them because I think magic is horseshit, and they all seem to rely upon magic to work.

But do I know? No, I don't. What might seem to me to be magic might be another way of the Universe operating, and some religion somewhere might have something I don't know about.

In short, agnostic atheist is not my claim about the Universe, but my claim about myself.

That seems like a claim that I couldn't make without damaging my own self-esteem so while I know none of us possesses certain knowledge, and the ideas proposed are being sufficiently disproved every second by our growing scientific understanding, if gnosticism accounts for the majority of a subject matter, it feels wrong to adopt a label that favors the corollary more.

If that's what works for you, have a field day.

Me, I don't like to claim knowledge I don't have. I think that oftentimes (though not in this case of godlings and their ilk) certitude is an obstruction to learning. It doesn't hurt me to admit I don't know something. What it does is open me up to learning about that something. That doesn't mean I resign skepticism, it only means that I am skeptical about my own "knowledge" too. It doesn't hurt my self-esteem either, because I base that on who I am and not what I know.

I don't know that gnosticism accounts for the majority of the subject matter in this particular topic anyway. If there is a god or gods, I personally think there ain't a person walking who knows diddley-squat about 'em anyway. Rather than project my own feelings of self-esteem either way, I'm comfortable saying "I don't know, and I don't believe".

If you're not comfortable with that, don't do it.

[Astonished]

Given what we know about evolution, biological and cultural, it's pretty much possible to conclude that all god concepts stem from the same sort of evolutionary model, so based on the evidence we have as far as that's concerned, even the most nebulous god concepts are no longer 'complete' unknowns, and at least from what I've studied, the proportioned evidence is significantly greater than a 50/50 coin flip as to whether it's likely, so at some point you have to admit where knowledge exists. If you haven't done the research or reading, I get it. But it's interesting stuff to look up and I highly recommend it. It certainly can't hurt one's self-esteem to learn more.