Why Agnosticism?

[reverendjeremiah]

Logically the statement ' I do not believe that God exists' is exactly the same as ' I believe that God does not exist'. Trying to pretend that one statement is different to the other is self delusion. To not believe in God implies the belief that God does not exist.

Logically my ass. Here, lets see how that "logic" stands out.

I do not believe that goblins exist
I believe that Goblins do not exist
I do not believe that Unicorns exist
I believe that Unicorns do not exist
I do not believe that Martians exist
I believe that Martians do not exist

Honestly, you are playing favoritism and then using semantics to play your game.

I do not believe I am amused by your antics, and I believe your antics have not amused me.

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Read an interesting argument regarding the atheist/faith debate recently. It goes something like this:

- Universal negative requires absolute knowledge
- Universal positive does not require absolute knowledge

Atheists believe that there is no god and to make this claim they must be omniscient, i.e. all knowing. If they are not omniscient they are basing their belief on a certain degree of faith. Whereas theists do not have to be omniscient to know if god exists since they would only need to scour the universe up to the point where they actually discovered a god.

So essentially, the atheist requires more faith than the theist.

Now, I think there's a fundamental flaw with the argument, however, I'm not completely sure. I mean, to me it seems like the argument would only work under the pretence that there is a god to be found. If there were no god the theist would have to continue their search until they, too, had reached absolute omniscience.

Gah, I can't articulate what I mean because I'm not even sure what I mean. I just know that in my head it seems flawed in some way.

HMMM...let me try.

There is no such thing as Unicorns = Faith

Unicorns exist! = does not require absolute knowledge.

Therefore..it is very likely that unicorns exist, and those who deny their existence should be scoffed at for their silly faith.

Eventually you will realize that many Religions are starting to realize that "faith" is a butt load of bull... so now they are trying to brush the words "faith" and "religion" onto the atheists.