Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[MindForgedManacle]

Really? Ever met a gnostic theist who justified his position rationally?

Sure. Have you never met theists who believed some argument demonstrated that God must exist? I'd say it's rational for them to believe that if they believe the argument works (it wouldn't make sense not to).

True. Retracted.

Okay.

I never said all "agnostics" were atheists, if you'll notice. At best, I said they were bullshitters, since their position is like me asking- You know what, just read my car analogy. I'm not gonna quote it for you. Regardless, even that would be a stretch.

Oh, you're not saying they're atheists, you're just saying they're bullshitters for not admitting that they are. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I fail to see how your analogy says anything different that I haven'talready responded to.

Apples and oranges, as well as cherry picking. Numbers have many groups. Rational and irrational, positive and negative, perfect squares and imperfect squares, integers and non-integers, and so on. You just happened to pick a group where zero is a "special" number.

Okay, that's not what cherry-picking is; learn your fallacies. I picked a relevant and similatr case. If I didn't do that, I WOULD have committed the fallacy known as a category error.

Belief only has two groups: belief or non-belief. Why didn't you pick rational and irrational, or perfect and imperfect squares, or integers and non-integers?

Because those groups aren't like this one. And no, belief has 3 groups: belief, lack of or abstention from belief, disbelief (or contrary belief). You're doing exactly what I said you were doing, and something you've refused to address. "Atheist" is a term whose 'meaning' has been culturally developed (like all words) to convey the concept of people who believe no gods exist. What you're doing is essentially changing what people most often mean by "atheist" such that you can say that "agnostics are bullshitters". But to do so, you are equivocating on the terms people use.

Abstention from making an opinion? Are "agnostics" brain-dead or something?
Everything that can form an opinion does. It's just how our brains are wired. If you've heard or thought about it, you've formed an opinion. At first, it will most likely be a flimsy opinion and subject to rapid and seemingly random change, like when I first heard that, just because something is 100% probable, doesn't mean it will happen, and, inversely, that just because something has a probability of occurring equal to 0%, doesn't mean it won't happen. This still fucks my brain every time I think of it. Anyway, the only way an "agnostic" could exist, and that would be allowing for several light-years worth of leeway here, is if he/she had never heard or even thought about the concept of deities.

I'm sorry, but have you never even heard of people saying things like "I have no opinion on the matter"? People are perfectly capable of not assigning to a proposition a truth value (which is what it means to give an opinion). If I give my opinion on some proposition's truth value (generally), I'm telling you if I think it's true or false. But there are all sorts of propositions I cannot do that for.

In other words, not having an opinion on some topic is not equivalent to thinking it's false.

So either "agnostics" are equivocating, or you (you specifically; I don't know if you call yourself an "agnostic") have no concept of what atheism is.

How are they equivocating, especially seeing as I've demonstrated that you are equivocating? (And no, I'm not an agnostic). You don't even have a concept of what atheism is, because you're demonstrably contradicting what the word is taken to mean by most people.

Gnostic atheists (like myself) do, in fact, assert the non-existent of gods. Agnostic atheists do not. Regardless, atheism doesn't say jack about that. It says "I don't believe". It doesn't say "I'm saying they don't exist". You are conflating rational justifications with opinions. Humans are not rational, period. At least not 100%. You can have an opinion without any justification, and you can have an opinion without saying or even believing that it is 100% true. For lack of justification, you need only look at theists. Regarding not believing that something is 100% true, you need only look at scientists.

Atheism does not merely say that you don't believe, it's the belief no gods exist. Everytime I've shown how that's the case, you didn't respond to it. Again, you're simply describing something atheists and agnostics have in common, and then CHANGING the most widespread definition of "atheism" to that commonality.

And I don't actually think agnostic atheism is necessarily even a coherent position.