RE: Agnostic vs Atheist
March 29, 2013 at 1:37 pm
(This post was last modified: March 29, 2013 at 1:38 pm by Simon Moon.)
(March 28, 2013 at 7:19 pm)lewlking Wrote:(March 28, 2013 at 7:16 pm)Darwinian Wrote: Do you
A) Believe there's no God?
or
B) Not believe there's a God?
C) the possibility exists
Very few atheists claim to know, with absolute certainty, that a god (or gods) does not exist. This is the 'agnostic' part of being an agnostic atheist.
An individual can accept that the possibility that a god may exist, and still be an atheist. For most atheists, atheism is not a dogmatic position, it is a provisional one.
Belief is the psychological state in which one holds a proposition as true. Therefore, belief is a binary mental state. Either one accepts the proposition that a god exists as true, or they don't. There is no intermediate state between belief and disbelief.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
