Agnostics

[bennyboy]

Well, one could answer "no" to both "Do you believe the cat is dead?" AND "Do you believe the cat is alive?"

That's right.  And I think some here would do that-- "I have no active belief about either, so no and no."

If I flip a coin, and ask you if you believe it's heads, you could answer "No.  I have no belief about the state of the coin, since I have no information about its state."  But my way of looking at it is that I hold a conditional belief-- FOR SURE I believe one of the two is true, and I'm simply agnostic about which one that happens to be. To say I lack a belief would mean to say that I lack a belief either that it's heads or it's tails. But I certainly don't lack that.


Or try this on for size: in the case of God, most ask, "Do you believe in God?" anticipating a no answer and saying "You're an atheist."
However, if you ask "Do you believe in not-God ?" things look different.  Would you say anyone who lacks the belief in not-God is a theist?  I doubt it. To me, the tendency to default toward one's own position, and away from its inverse, is simple bias.

When you ask me the first question, I automatically ask myself its negative as well.  The result is either that I'm both an atheist and a theist, or both, or neither.  In other words, the answer is undefined.  Given this, "I don't know" is simpler to me.