Atheists, what are your thoughts on us Agnostics?

[Whateverist]

Well if the "do you believe" question specifies a literal god, yes I would be.

[DLJ]

I don't think I believe that I feel that agnostics really exist.

But I'm kinda agnostic about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well if the "do you believe" question specifies a literal god, yes I would be.

That is exactly and explicitly the question of atheism. It is not "do you believe in psychological phenomena". That's our factual correction, but the subject of the question is a vanishingly small subset of believers' mistake.

[Whateverist]

Well if the "do you believe" question specifies a literal god, yes I would be.

That is exactly and explicitly the question of atheism.

Well .. then its just a silly question.  I'm only interested in the sort of gods that actually gave rise to and sustained the phenomenon of god belief.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, it's always been silly...but that never stopped anyone from taking it seriously.  You took it seriously enough to respond as an agnostic to something you knew you weren't agnostic about.  Parse that.  



Plenty of those types of gods, by the by, aren't likely to have been psychological phenomena at all. Just stories. You find me a believer who thinks he's experienced god and I'll show you someone playing pious theater with churchspeak.

You can spot the pretenders in the larger set...they;re the people who -haven't- been committed. Even believers don;t believe the people who say god told them to boil their children....and it's because they know better.

[Whateverist]

I have the luxury of not having any regular exposure to practicing believers practicing. I just talk to those who are verbal enough to post online.

[The Grand Nudger]

Those would be the prime suspects for pious theater.  Ignore the many times we've heard someone concede that some comment was exactly that, on these boards.  Take only the subset who make no such concessions.  Do you think that they actually experience something akin to their description...or do you think it might be more likely that they are using ritual expression to describe a mundane belief?  If it;s the former, why are believers commonly resistant to others claims of divine experience, even within their own faiths subset?  If it;s the latter...is there a there, there...at all?  

You don't take gods at face value, but do you take "I like..felt god, man!" at face value? What ratio of those claims do you accept as accurately purporting to report a fact? How many of that subset would you expect to be reporting on the same fact between cases?