RE: Is Lack of Belief the Best You Can Do?
March 25, 2016 at 5:43 pm
(This post was last modified: March 25, 2016 at 5:52 pm by Simon Moon.)
(March 25, 2016 at 5:18 pm)Felasco Wrote:Quote:There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief. Agnosticism is not a fence sitting position.
Do you believe I'm wearing shoes, or not? Which is it, it must be one or the other, there is no middle ground, you must choose a team, you don't have the option to simply say that you just don't know. Silly, eh?
First of all, that is a pretty mundane claim. If you told me you were wearing shoes, I'd have no reason to disbelieve you. If you told me you weren't wearing shoes, I'd have no reason to disbelieve you. If you told me you were wearing shoes that were given to you by aliens, I'd need a lot more evidence before I believed you.
Why don't I have an option of saying "I don't know"? You have the option of saying "I don't know" when it comes to the god claim. I also take the position that I don't know if gods exist or not.
I am really getting the impression that you don't understand the difference between "belief" and "knowledge".
When it comes to the god claim, I do not claim to know, with absolute certainty, that gods do not exist. This make me an agnostic.
When it comes to the god claim, I disbelieve that gods exist. This makes me an atheist.
Like me, you also seem to hold the position that you don't know if gods exist or not. You are agnostic.
If you currently do not accept the claim that at least one god exists to be true. You are an atheist.
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive positions. Most atheists are also agnostic.
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You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
