RE: Can you persuade me from Agnostic to Atheist?
May 19, 2016 at 2:22 pm
(This post was last modified: May 19, 2016 at 2:31 pm by Simon Moon.)
(May 19, 2016 at 2:01 pm)AgnosticMan123 Wrote: Can anyone here persuade or convert me from being agnostic to being atheist?
Agnosticism/gnosticism is a position on what one claims to KNOW about the existence of a god.
An agnostic is someone that does not claim to KNOW if a god exists or not.
Atheism/theism is the position on what one BELIEVES concerning the existence of gods.
Agnosticism is NOT a middle ground between theism and atheism. I am an agnostic in that I do not claim to know if gods exist or not. But I am also an atheist, in that I do not currently believe that gods exist.
Belief is defined by contemporary analytic philosophers of mind as being "the psychological state in which one accepts a premise or proposition to be true".
So, if you currently accept the premise that at least one god exists is true, you are a theist. If you don't accept that premise, you are an atheist. There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief. Belief is a binary mental state.
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.
