(November 19, 2010 at 7:02 am)Arcanus Wrote: Precisely. It tells you about their knowledge; specifically, that on said issue their knowledge is either insufficient or non-existent ("I don't know"). What a person believes and what he knows are categorically different things. As I said, "I don't know" is an epistemic response, reflecting agnosticism (privation of gnosis, knowledge). It doesn't tell you whether they are an atheist or a theist ("it tells you nothing about their beliefs"), since both can answer "I don't know" to the question of God's existence; e.g., a fideist says, "I don't know that God exists but I believe he does."Oh fuck, I forgot all about weak agnosticism, my apologies for wasting your time.
*sigh* I fear for every new thing I learn something else gets forced out of my finite memory, I'm forever relearning in a vicious cycle, my only comfort is that when I'm dead I can finally stop learning.
