Why Agnosticism?

[diffidus]

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.

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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.

Diffidus:

Your first statement is not true: In Euclidean geometry, the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degress. This is a statement of absolute fact. There are literally billions of other such statements I could make that are statements of fact. Telepathy is impossible. This is a statement of belief and not absolute fact since it depends on our current state of knowledge - I keep an open mind on this.

When you make the statement ' infinitismal possibility....' , how do you know? We are at a point in history. A few hundred years ago people applied leeches to their skin and bled themselves to cure a fever. Are we now so close in this generation to the very ebb of the tide of knowledge. Funny how every generation thinks along these lines. Prior to the WW1 it was believed by many that a war in Europe had become impossible due the economic interdependence of the countries. After WW1 it was widely believed that WW1 had been the 'war to end all wars'. Then came world war 2. I am not as confident as you that humankind has reached the ebb in the great tide of human knowledge. We are just another generation of people, it is good to learn from history - for all I know our current state of knowledge could be just a drop in the ocean - this is why I keep an open mind.