Agnostics

[Excited Penguin]

Learn to accept language for what it is, don't try and reinvent the wheel.

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. words can and do have connotations as well as denotations; they can also have shades of meaning that are dependent upon context.

If I'm understanding Benny correctly, he's agnostic in the sense that those times he might believe in god(s) and those times he doesn't are close enough in frequency that he can't really decide for himself. (If I've misstated your position, Benny, please accept my apologies).

Badgering someone to change the way they think of themselves on the basis of your definition of them is not likely to do much more than set his heels in, in my experience.

I really detest the antipathy some atheists display regarding agnostics. Agnosticism is simply someone following the reasoning they find more compelling than yours. If the only case you can make for your point is linguistic, I think that shows less about the person under discussion and more about the limitations of language, which does not -- and cannot -- describe most things even close to perfectly. When the thing being described is as complex as a person's view on deity, the language is truly beggared. This tail-chasing seems to me to be strong evidence of that.

While it is true that words have connotations, people generally prefer their denotations in a conversational or argumentative context, and for a good reason too - clarity. So, it is the norm that unless otherwise specified, one should always use the established definitions of words to express ideas, lest the other parties get confused and don't understand the message being conveyed. Going outside the norm on this is not a good idea. Meaning will be lost and nothing at all will have been gained.

Connotation has its place, though. In poetry for example. Or in philosophy, if I'm not mistaken. Notice that in both cases the medium itself alerts the consumer of the information as to the possibly connotative nature of the words being used. Change the medium, though, and the same cannot always be said to hold true.

I'm not really interested in debating any of your points any further. I believe you are emotionally compromised and so that much more illogical and, consequently, harder to debate. I will summarise my disagreement, nevertheless, thusly:

This is a dick move. Only a person who knows is losing the argument would ever resort to such low tactics as to attack the practice of using perfectly good and established definitions of words. Only someone who is either uneducated, dishonest or both would do this. For obvious reasons, such a discussion is childish and pointless, and can never lead to anything but a continual sabotage of itself by the party guilty of doing this.

I'm not interested. Both of you - grow up and learn to be wrong(in public).