Agnostics

[bennyboy]

Again, I refer you to the convenience of language. If you are an atheist most of the time, then that is what you should call yourself. If one a scale from 0 to 100, 0 being you don't believe in (any) God at all, 100 being you completely believe in (a) God, you are under the 50 mark, then you should call yourself an atheist and vice versa.

You are looking to debate language, which is a worthy goal, not one you fulfill by hiding behind the meaningless(by itself) label agnostic though.

"I don't know" is the most meaningful and truthful thing I can say-- about almost any philosophical question. It doesn't need additional qualifiers or considerations.

If you ask me if I believe Schrodinger's cat is dead, what can I say? I have a conditional belief-- the cat is alive if X, and dead if not X. Since I do not know if X (the release of a radioactive particle triggering poison release, I believe it was), then I'm in an ambiguous state-- the cat is alive-dead. It would be dumb to say I lack a belief that it is alive, OR that I have such a belief.

The same goes for God. For example, I'd define a pan-psychic Universe as God. I think, based on what little I know about consciousness and QM, that it's quite possible that the Universe is panpsychic; I believe that the most elemental mental event might be the transmission and absorption of photons, since this represents a combination of state-change, transmission of information, and a kind of persistence of information over time. However, since mind is subjective, I have no way of knowing whether non-Earth life form systems really experience qualia. I do not have any way of resolving "X," and therefore hold both positions at the same time.

What if solipsism represents truth? What if I am the only existent agent, and y'all are figments of my imagination? In that case, I'd define MYSELF as God. Again, I cannot resolve "X," cannot establish as confirmed fact whether others exist or do not exist. I hold both positions at the same time, as a CONDITIONAL BELIEF.

Conversely, what if despite all my sensation of an external physical monist universe, no such thing actually exists? What if it's an idealistic universe? If there is some central organizing principle, then I'd define that as God, too, since while ideas themselves aren't mind, whatever makes them might be. But there's no way to resolve "X," to prove that what I experience really is as it seems. I can believe so, I can make fun of those who don't believe so, but I cannot actually know for sure.

I've thought about this a lot over the past couple days, and I'd say that at the core of my agnosticism is this issue of conditional belief. When I say, "I don't know," I really mean "I have a conditional belief, but cannot resolve the condition, and believe that it cannot be resolved."