RE: Why Agnosticism?
June 1, 2011 at 6:54 pm
(This post was last modified: June 2, 2011 at 2:16 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(May 31, 2011 at 6:49 am)diffidus Wrote: When I say Agnostic, I mean someone who recognises that there is simply not sufficient knowledge to rule out, with 100% certainty, that God exists.
For me, and Atheist view must be dependent upon a scientific view of the world i.e. that it is based upon a combination of empirical evidence combined with scientific understanding. This gives us an ever deeper understanding of nature and the universe in which we live.
........
On this basis, for me, the only logical position is one of the type of Agnosticism that I have defined. Atheism must rely, hugely, upon a good dose of faith!
Scientific view of the world is such that in principle, not just in practice, there will never, ever be sufficient knowledge to rule anything out with 100% certainty. Using the logic you applied above, the only logical position on anything, including whether you were born out of the sphincter of an alligator, is agnosticism.
However, if you apply agnosticism to any particular god, but not to your parentage or mode of birth, then that strongly implies either:
1. You've been sold a special pleading style of world view in which you, possibly overawed by the magnitude of stupid devotion in others, treat the trivial possibility of god's existence differently from the trivial possibility of your being born out of the ass of an alligator.
2. or A fundamental lack of grasp of the very quantitative, not qualitative, nature of certainty in all knowledge, and therefore you entertain non-sesnsical objections from the stupid devotee purely because the non-zero nature of infinitesimal possibility where it applies to the particularly interested devotee's worship has been pointed out to you, where as the non-zero nature of the possibility that you were born out of the ass of an alligator has not, because you fail to see that qualitative similarity of their mathematical insignificance.