Atheist or Agnostic?

[Ravenshire]

So, lets suppose atheists are wrong and a god does exist.

But the god that exists is one that values intellectual honesty and critical thinking. This god is responsible for creating all religions and holy books, but as a test to weed out the credulous and gullible.

Since intellectual honesty and critical thinking are virtues, and the Christian God desires that we be virtuous, He most likely does value these things. I know I do.

The Pascal's wager may have some import for those who are already leaning heavily toward Christianity but who still have a few doubts in their hearts.

Think of it as the absolutely last resort for coming to true beliefs about God.

Pascal's Wager's only usefulness is as a tool for keeping the believers in line. It makes no sense whatsoever to an unbeliever.

After all, there is no evidence for the nonexistence of this god, right, datc?

I am a "gnostic theist" regarding a rather particular version of the Christian God. I can prove that He exists, and in proving it, unfold God's attributes one by one, or so I hope. By the end of these proofs a concept of God would have been built up, and it would be shown that this concept refers to something real. (I do not claim of course that my proofs are the only ones available; at any rate, metaphysics and theology are queens of the sciences, and as is well-known, to become queen, a pawn has to traverse the entire "field" of knowledge, and I certainly have not done that.)

So, yes, I'd be a (speculative) agnostic and (practical) atheist regarding all other types of gods; I don't know anything about them, nor do I care. My (mostly Catholic) God suffices for me.

Since you are claiming to be a "gnostic theist" (meaning that you have certain knowledge that god(s) exist), I'm going to restate a previous request from earlier in this thread that has gone ignored by you:

So, perhaps you'd like to define your concept of god(s) and provide some evidence to support the existence thereof...

You're claiming to know that god(s) exist. I'd like to see the evidence that led you to such knowledge.

[Mister Agenda]

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.

A Catholic, let's call him datc, will sometimes present someone else's motivation for an argument, in an attempt to poison the well and under the assumption that if someone says their motivation is other than what he supposes, they're lying....

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I love it when theists start off a thread telling us what we must think and then re-labeling us into his more convenient strawman categories.

It never gets old, which works out really well considering how often it happens.

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I see, I did not realize that atheists do not claim that God does not exist.

That sounded suspiciously like being able to acknowledge a point. I hope you're not just getting my hopes up only to dash them. I would love to have more reasonable theists here.

Most atheists don't claim God doesn't exist, though there are a significant minority who do. Some of them say agnostic/negative/weak atheists are too namby-pamby to come out and say there is no God, but we tend to be that group that is cautious about making claims beyond our ability to support them. To complicate matters, the same person can be a strong atheist in regards to some particular version of God regarded to have contradictory attributes and a weak atheist regarding other versions that are at least self-consistent (the God of deism usually falls in the latter category). That said, agnostic atheists regard the odds of any God actually being real as low, at least under 50%. If they put the odds at 55%, they'd be an agnostic theist instead, inclined (though not strongly) to think some sort of gods or God is real.

But it's basically much simpler than that: Believe at least one god or God is real=theist; don't believe at least one god or God is real=atheist.

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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.

I don't think you've completely thought this through. As it turns out, your supposition is true, unicorn horns do contain such a chemical. This chemical also provides immunity to cancer and cause cancer that is already present to go into permanent remission. Access to this chemical is why I appear to be only half my chronological age and am cancer-free. I have enough to share some for the right price. What are you willing to offer to obtain some? I am willing to take your circumstances into account.

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

Welcome to my nightmare.

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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?

Most atheist arguments just point out the flaws in apologetic arguments. I've never seen one that isn't fatally flawed, either in its premises or in employing fallacious reasoning to get to the conclusion. That there is no good reason to believe God is real is the quintessential atheist argument, easily shot down by providing at least one exception to that rule. I would not trust an argument that purported to disprove God, unless it was a specific version of God vulnerable to proof that it has contradictory attributes or supposed to have an effect on reality that would leave detectable evidence which it did not.

Which brings us, since the topic seems to be how the other side argues, why do Christians routinely set out to argue for the existence of their God but wind up only actually arguing from some vague Creator deity or 'intelligent designer'?

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There are two ways to assemble the three parts of the word "atheist."

1)  (a + theos) + ist: you have an "ism" about the lack of God, i.e. you believe that God does not exist.  (called "hard atheism")
2)  a + (theist): you are not a theist, i.e. do not subsribe to theistic beliefs.  (called "weak atheism")

So, for example, if you have to fill out a form in which you choose from a denomination, you'd check "atheist," i.e. that you are not a theist of any type; this is "weak" atheism.  If, on the other hand, you were asked "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" and you thought the Bible was a collection of fairy tales and dark-age superstitions, you'd say, "Heck, no!  The Biblical God is a logical impossibility!" and would be a "strong" atheist.

I may take some heat for this, and I'm not picking on you personally, lots of people say that. I used to say that, until I realized that the actual construction of atheist is 'athe-ist'. We don't get to pick 2), because it happens not to be correct. 1) is correct, but it doesn't mean 'hard atheist' just atheist. Literally 'without God'-'person concerned with'. If I were making up a new word, like 'abicyclist', I could have contructed it 'a-bicylist', anything that is not a bicylist, which would include rocks and the like. Or, I could construct it as 'abicyl-ist', a person involved with not bicycling. The latter could only be people not into bicycling, not rocks or babies or people who would bike if they could but are physically unable to do so or can't get ahold of a bike. But since I'm not the coiner of 'atheist', I'm obliged to stick with the orginal construction, which most reasonably can be interpreted as 'a person who could hold a belief in God but does not'.

I propose 'nontheist' in place of 2), anything that's not a theist is a nontheist: rocks, babies, dogs, atheists, and so on.

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Simon, in your view, what is the natural orientation of an agnostic, theism or atheism?

Should he lean toward atheism out of some psychological peculiarity, such as, as whateverist wrote on this thread,

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.

Or because, as you write,

the default position on the claim that unicorns do exist, is to disbelieve the claim...?

I know you addressed this to Simon, but although an atheist is likely to say the default should be disbelief, that's an intellectual position. I would suppose a 'believing agnostic' would believe for emotional reasons while acknowledging that rationality alone does not support such belief, or perhaps not having adopted strict criteria for belief. I could be described as being such a person for awhile somewhere between being a Pentecostal and being an atheist. People are what they are. I'm much more wary of a 'gnostic theist', because they tend to be equally sure that they know what the God they are certain exists wants, but there are many exceptions to even that.

[Mister Agenda]

It's not to evade the burden of proof, it is the standard skeptic position on existential claims.

What is the skeptic position on non-existential claims?

Suppose I say: "There is no spoon." Or: "There is no Barack Obama." Are you going to believe me or disbelieve me by default?

This is a point that requires a lot of implicit reasoning to be made explicit. One of the things that makes an ordinary claim ordinary is all the prior knowledge we bring to evaluating it, or rather, how much prior knowledge is available to evaluate it. 'Default' doesn't really apply when we are aware of sufficient evidence to justify a particular conclusion. If you say there is no spoon, are you talking about a particular spoon in a particular place? If so, we are reasonably justified in taking your word for it. It's perfectly plausible that there are no spoons in some particular spot, even if there might ordinarily be a spoon there; and it costs us nothing to believe you, it is inconsequential to us whether or not there is a spoon in the location you're talking about, we might as well be charitable and assume you are being truthful lacking evidence otherwise. If you're saying there is no such thing as spoons or that there is no spoon where we can plainly see one, you're going to need considerably more than our charity to get us to agree that our prior knowledge no longer holds or that our senses are deceiving us. If there is, for instance, some kind of magic trick that makes us see a spoon where there isn't one, you need to present the evidence to convince us of that. Maybe invite us to pick up the spoon only to find it is just a clever image that appears to be three-dimensional but is actually just a clever drawing of a spoon. The 'no Barack Obama' claim again runs afoul of a great deal of prior knowledge to the contrary, as he has already been reasonably demonstrated to exist.

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It seems obvious to me that the gnostic / agnostic distinction you are proposing regards speculative life, wherein proofs or God's existence or non-existence are entertained for the edification of all concerned.

The theist / atheist distinction concerns the active life.

Here's the key difference: when speculating, one can assume anything and see where the assumptions lead him. One need not actually believe anything, and the assumption may be false, as long as it is useful or reasonable to assume it.

When acting, one must base his plans on true beliefs, regardless of evidence for or against them. If one is building a bridge, then one is ipso facto extending assent or beliefs to a vast number of (hopefully) true propositions in math, physics, etc. It may be that the builder is using a controversial theory in his project. Despite the fact that many scientists hold this theory in contempt, all is forgiven as long as the bridge works.

Thus, if you live your life without relying on God in any way, then you are a (practical) atheist. If, in building a life for yourself (and not just a bridge), you do not depend on anything God-related, regardless of any speculative disputes regarding any proofs of God's existence, you're an atheist. If things of God "have no use to me and so I make all my plans without regard to them," then one is a confirmed atheist.

You seem to want to reach the conclusion that one can believe in God and be an atheist if they don't act as if God exists. I know that's utterly convenient for someone who wants to define anyone who acts the way they think one ought to into their camp and anyone who does not so act in the camp of the 'other', but someone who values honesty over convenience will not take positions defined by presence or absence of a particular belief and attempt to re-make them into positions based on external behavior.

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Also, I find the distinction between agnostic theists and agnostic atheists to be uninteresting.

I strongly doubt that you find the distinction as uninteresting as I find your prattling about how uninteresting it is to be.

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The discussion proceeds between 1) those who think there is a proof of God's existence; 2) those who think there is a proof of God's non-existence; and 3) those who are unsure but are capable of contributing to the debate by taking, in a purely speculative way, at one point one side, and at another the other side, as matters appear to them.

Whether the agnostic is in addition a theist or atheist is his own personal life, and that's his own business and no one else's.

They're as much or as little his or her own business as being an agnostic is. What business is it of yours what people choose to make their own business and what they choose to share?

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All these gods are basically superheroes or supervillains from a cheap comic book.

Then your concept of God, i.e., the meaning you attribute to the term "God," is defective.

In what way is it defective, beyond being different from your concept, which you can't possibly verify?

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I'm an agnostic atheist. I have no faith, and I see no reason to lend credence to bullshit bereft of evidence, but I know better than to claim knowledge I don't have.

Is the proposition "God does not exist" also "bullshit bereft of evidence"?

Good thing you asked that question instead of taking five seconds to think it over yourself.

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You could ask, "Is the proposition 'Seven headed dragons do not exist' also 'bullshit bereft of evidence'"?

There's no evidence that seven headed dragons have ever lived, and there's no evidence that excludes the possibility that seven headed dragons have ever lived. The default position is simply, "I have no reason to believe that seven headed dragons have ever lived."

You have to give a yes or no answer to this rather simple question.

Just because a question is simple does not mean it is not stupid or deceptive. How do you propose to enforce your edict that Nestor only answer with a 'yes' or a 'no'? And do you still beat your wife? Yes or no only, since it is an exceedingly simple question.

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In other words, you do not know either that the amount is odd (God exists) or that the amount is even (God does not exist).

And this is the agnostic position.

It's almost like you've heard a word we've said, but not really, since you're saying it like it's some kind of 'gotcha'. We are, for the most part, agnostic atheists. We do not know if God exists, and we do not believe that this thing (God) which we don't know exists, actually does exist.

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Atheism / theism is a confession of what you claim to believe

Agnosticism / gnosticism is a confession of what you claim to know.

I do not understand why you partition "belief" and "knowledge" this way. "Belief" is not "blind faith without evidence"; it's a very normal and everyday intellectual phenomenon: an assent to a proposition.

I do not understand why this simple concept is so hard for you to grasp. We are not saying that 'belief' is 'blind faith without evidence'. We are saying that we don't know whether this propostion is true or not, and that we don't believe it actually is true. We do not assent to the proposition that God is real, we do assent to the proposition that we can't know that (or the converse).

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Further, knowledge is often defined (not entirely correctly, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion) as justified true belief. Knowledge and belief are not independent of each other. One cannot know P without giving mental assent to, i.e., without extending belief to, P.

Which does not apply at all to the statement that I do not know whether or not some version of gods or God is real, but I don't believe any of them are. The part which I know is that I cannot (under current circumstances) know, that is the 'P' to which I am giving mental assent.

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A belief in the lack of gods is a far more realistic claim than the belief in gods, in my opinion. The total absence of any evidence of gods, combined with the knowledge of all the previous man made gods, make it a claim in tune with reality. To believe in God when there is no evidence seems irrational to me.

But if there is no evidence whatsoever for God, and there is no evidence whatsoever against God, how can you claim that lack of belief is more "in tune with reality"?

You've got evidence for God? Please make history and share it.

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As I suggested, if you live your life without worrying about God (or gods, or unicorns), then you are demonstrating your atheism to all concerned. But that's a practical lifestyle choice of your own personal active life. It has no value for the speculative question of whether God exists.

Atheism is the internal state of not holding a belief in any God or god. It has no value for the speculative question of whether God exists. Neither does being a theist. So what? If you want to have a conversation over whether God exists, have that conversation, we're not stopping you. You're the one who decided to make your thread about atheists instead of about whether or not God exists.

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Atheism isn't a choice.

It is if you are an agnostic, just as theism is a choice in this case.

It is not a choice in either case. I can no more choose to believe God is real with the evidence and reason currently at my disposal than I can believe the moon is really made of green cheese. Just because I acknowledge that I can't know something isn't true doesn't mean I can flip an mental switch and start believing it. I don't believe in ghosts either, and don't claim that I can know they're not real. That does not mean I can just decide to start believing in them going forward from now because I'm offered a bribe or just feel like it. People believe what they're convinced is true, they don't arbitrarily believe whatever they want on a whim. Now a person CAN choose to make an effort to convince themselves of something different over a period of time and eventually succeed. That's every salesman's dream: to get their mark to agree to try to convince themselves to buy what they're selling.

[Mister Agenda]

Only if you are a "gnostic" are you ineluctably moved toward belief by evidence either for or against God's existence.

That's not what 'gnostic' is about. It's about believing you can know something with certainty that an agnostic on the topic would say is impossible to know with certainty. It's no more difficult to change a gnostic atheist's or theist's position than to change an agnostic's, maybe easier. What's hard is also often brittle. This is just a personal observation without statistics to back it up, but I sure run into a lot of atheists who used to be hardcore fundamentalists who were definitely gnostic theists who were utterly certain of God's reality. And it seems more often than not that when I hear of an atheist who converted back to a religion (almost always the one they were raised in), they were the type to be certain about the nonexistence of God. My 'evidence' is the weakest of anecdotal weak sauce, but there's definitely no indication that gnostic certainty results from being evidence-oriented in either direction.

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It most certainly does have such value, because if God exists, then it makes sense to pay heed to Him in your own personal life. If God does not exist, then it makes sense to ignore everything that claims divinity.

I mean, are you as though autistic toward God? Even if God existed, you'd consider Him irrelevant? If the speculative question of whether God exists has been settled, say, in favor of God, would you still refuse to interact with God? That seems crazy, at least like not paying attention to other human beings.

You're skirting around the argument from Pascal's Wager. The consequences of not believing in God are so frought, one ought to believe just in case. If I said the consequences of not sending me a thousand dollars would be for all your family and close friends to be brutally murdered, you would still not send me the money, despite the claimed consequences and despite knowing that such a thing is actually possible. Why? Because you need more evidence to believe it's a credible threat. And the degree of the threat is pretty much irrelevant. You're no more likely to send me a thousand dollars if threaten to blow up a city if you don't than you would based on the previous (both for example only, of course) threat. It doesn't matter to someone what the consequences of something are supposed to be unless they already believe those consequences to be something they will actually face.

If God's existence were confirmed, there would still be the matters of God's nature, desires, plan, etc. If God's existence were confirmed, but rather than a singular God it tuned out to be the Greek pantheon, would you automatically start worshipping the Greek gods instead of Jesus and Yahweh or would you have to seriously reevaluate everything you believe in light of the new information before choosing your new course or electing to stick with the old one?

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I mean, are you as though autistic toward God? Even if God existed, you'd consider Him irrelevant? If the speculative question of whether God exists has been settled, say, in favor of God, would you still refuse to interact with God? That seems crazy, at least like not paying attention to other human beings.

You are a catholic, aren't you? I grew up as a catholic too and one of my first steps towards atheism - still as a child - was to think, I don't like that guy they're talking about in church and in the bible. For me god was petty, a schoolyard bully, shoving people around and killing them. And to top it off, he shoves you into the eternal oven if you don't play nice.

So I didn't want to worship a being like that and thought, well, if there's an almighty god, he's certainly nothing like in the bible. I didn't give a shit anymore and lived my life trying to be a decent person, but not because of god. For a pretty long time I have been a deist, thinking maybe there's something out there making things tick. But certainly not something looking into everyone's bedroom and counting the times you masturbate. Being a deist also didn't conflict with my education in the same way theism does, since I didn't have to believe in that preposterous claim of the earth only being a few thousand years old and mankind poofing into existence.

Yeah, I know, the Catholic church is moving away from that too, but that doesn't change the contradictions between science and dogma. So, to repeat myself, I'm agnostic because I can't rule out with absolute certainty that some force is moving the universe. But that doesn't have to be any kind of god. A few thousand years ago, people looked up at the sun and the moon and since they couldn't explain them, they called them gods. The classical god of the gaps reaction. Who knows, what we will know about the universe in another ten thousand years? If we still exist as a species, that is.

My path was similar, though from Pentecostalsim rather than Catholicism, and after more than a decade of holding space in my head for some kind of God, I realized one day that I no longer believed in God at all, partly because I no longer believed it was close-minded not to believe something of which you're not convinced.

[Bad Wolf]

Those aren't my quotes

[Mister Agenda]

Because the belief in the existence of a god requires a lot more unsupported factual  and illogical assumptions.

Not if there is no evidence whatsoever against God.

Alright, suppose you are a definite agnostic. Why then wouldn't you lean toward agnostic theism simply out of overabundance of caution, as per the Pascal's wager?

There's no evidence whatsoever against Leprechauns, either. Do you think that makes it more reasonable to believe they're real than to not so do?

Abundant caution of consequences which the person conveying them cannot possibly have knowledge of is irrational. You can show your good faith in your own reasoning by agreeing to send me that thousand dollars, just in case.

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If datc had his way, the church would start burning heretics again out of its love and concern for humanity.

Now now, I strongly doubt that. I've been short with datc, but I don't think he's some kind of fanatic. I think there are some things he hasn't thought through completely, but how many people can say they've thought every opinion they have completely through?

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So, be good for goodness' sake.

That, I can agree with, Goodness is it's own reward.

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That's what I admire most about Christianity.  It elevates what is best in human beings to the point where he may consider all his actions in the light of getting a carrot or a whip.  So enlightening and uplifting.  [/sarcasm]

I see, you'd rather your life, achievements, and experiences be crowned with becoming nothing more than a rotting corpse. So enlightening and uplifting. [/sarcasm]

Both instances of sarcasm weren't particularly called for. But to be clear, there is a difference between acknowledging the inevitability and very likely permanency of death and advocating that it's a good thing, however there is something to be said, arguably enlightening and uplifting, for living one's life as though it's not a dress rehearsal for some imagined next life.

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Those aren't my quotes

Sorry, the new format gives my clunky old system fits. Fortunately I saw your remark in time to fix.

[Pizza]

Don't want to be that guy, but I'm going to post this video about the wager's flaws. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZpJ7yUPwdU