Atheist or Agnostic?

[FatAndFaithless]

Well gee, maybe you shouldn't make pronouncements about what we believe then, huh?


SOME atheists might claim "a god does not exist", and that is a positive claim that requires evidence. 'Atheism' as a definition, though, is just the lack of a belief in god. Literally non-theism.

A/theism addresses one's beliefs.

A/gnosticism addresses what one claims as knowledge or truth (or what can be known).

[datc]

Am I expected to search the whole universe for God to prove he doesn't exist before I can make a fucking sandwich?

I don't know, maybe. Maybe God is extremely valuable, yet hard to find.

For example, perhaps the unicorns' horns have a chemical that will double the human lifespan. Surely, it might be worth searching for them, despite all failures up until now.

[robvalue]

Sure! Well..

Got any good space rockets?

That's what makes me so annoyingly smug about being an atheist, making no claims, I have no burden of proof and I can't actually be wrong. It's like betting on red, black, zero and double zero and all the numbers at once.

Triple zero? Why is there a triple zero?

Anyway. I can't be wrong, but if I'm wrong, I'll only get a slap from an angry magical unicorn. Probably. So I should go to bed now.

Good night everyone! Take care

[Ravenshire]

Maybe these will help you sort out the atheist/agnostic thing. They are not mutually exclusive.

[FatAndFaithless]

I like those charts, they're helpful and simple to understand.

[Ravenshire]

I don't know, maybe. Maybe God is extremely valuable, yet hard to find.

For example, perhaps the unicorns' horns have a chemical that will double the human lifespan. Surely, it might be worth searching for them, despite all failures up until now.

It is never worth the time to chase a fantasy for a real world solution.

[Whateverist]

An atheist, call him Smith, will sometimes argue, in at attempt to evade any burden of proof, that he simply lacks the belief that God exists.

In reply to that, Smith can be asked whether he also lacks the belief that God does not exist. If the answer is yes, then Smith is not an atheist at all but an agnostic: insofar as knowledge is justified true belief or something close to that, lack of a determinate belief as to whether God does or does not exist causes him to fail to know whether or not God exists which is precisely the dictionary definition of an agnostic.

If, however, he says that he does have the belief that God does not exist, then he needs reasons for this belief, just as a theist needs reasons for his beliefs.

I agree that it's pretty unlikely that unicorns exist. But I wouldn't be so bold as to assert with 100% certainty that unicorns definitely do not exist. New species are discovered all the time, and perhaps unicorns do thrive in some remote and still unexplored part of the world.

Thus, even if an atheist thinks that none of the theistic arguments for the existence of God are convincing, he would be foolish to deny that God may still exist despite that.

In other words, this is a situation in which absence of evidence is not evidence for absence. If Smith wants to make a positive case for God's non-existence, then he needs to present precisely the evidence for absence of God.

And many atheists do just that, when they bring up the only real argument for God's non-existence which is the problem of evil. The second argument, namely that God is nowhere to be found in the causal structure of the world, that the mode of First Cause cannot be viewed either as physical or teleological causation, also tends toward agnosticism, not atheism.

We can see that the starting positions of the atheist and theist are identical, and it is only true agnostics who can remain staunchly neutral.

Oh hell, I don't know how to chop a quote up with this new formatting.  Any way ..

I quite agree with you datc, that anyone who makes the claim that gods don't exist is as much encumbered by the burden of proof as any theist.  Regarding that about which we know nothing at all, the less said the better.  So I prefer to say I have no beliefs at all regarding gods.  I place them in the same category with unicorns as fanciful creations of the imagination which refer to nothing at all that one can detect for himself.  Do I believe in them?  Of course not.  Do I know for a fact that there is no where in the vast universe where there is something to which they do refer?  Nope.  

At this point it becomes less a matter of do I believe than it is a matter of do I care.  The answer is no.  Whatever the existential status of fanciful things may be, they have no use to me and so I make all my plans without regard to them.  Doesn't mean I can't enjoy some fiction regarding fanciful beings or their movie equivalents.  It can be fun, but it is of no daily relevance.  

Better to ask, is the notion of 'gods' of any consequence to you?  I mean, sure, if the gods of the George Martin books were real, I might have to deal with some pretty bad asses.  But, you know, mustn't let our imaginations run away with us.  Same goes for the lore of the bible.

[Ravenshire]

I think I'm going to use this one from now on:


Simpler, cleaner and more directly to the point.

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Oh hell, I don't know how to chop a quote up with this new formatting.  Any way ..

Click in the edit box and press Ctrl-Shift-S. That brings back the old style tags.

All thanks to SteelCurtain for that tip.

[robvalue]

Venn were you going to tell me about that beauty?

Ok I'm really off to bed now!

[datc]

That's what makes me so annoyingly smug about being an atheist, making no claims, I have no burden of proof and I can't actually be wrong.

I see, so you make neither the claim that God (such as, say, the God of classical theism) exists, nor that God does not exist.

Would you then try to show the flaws in the arguments of other people both attempting to show that God exists and to show that God on the contrary does not exist?

Are you fair in your choice of targets to shoot down?