RE: Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"
June 25, 2014 at 8:44 am
(This post was last modified: June 25, 2014 at 8:48 am by Whateverist.)
(June 25, 2014 at 4:25 am)jesus_wept Wrote:(June 25, 2014 at 3:18 am)max-greece Wrote: I believe an HTC One 8c is a better phone than a Samsung S5. There are 3 possible reactions:
Agree (Theist)
Disagree (Atheist)
No opinion (Agnostic)
Actually there's a fourth which contains the sentiment "Get a life."
what about "no opinion, therefore I disagree because I obviously don't agree that the HTC is better than the s5"?
Do you actually know if those are actual phones or just made up hypotheticals? Because I really don't. Therefore I really have no opinion (am agnostic) regarding Max's belief.
Why do you think I should "therefore disagree" with his belief? It doesn't at all follow that I don't agree. Rather, I can't agree. But it is equally true that I can't disagree. I simply have no basis for forming an opinion in either direction.
Of course a major difference between Max's example and the god question is that I am aware that actual phones exist, I just don't stay current on what models are available. I don't know if any gods exist. But I suspect the whole god question is nonsense, something I don't feel in regard to the phone question.
Being a phone is a meaningful category for me; I have a reasonable chance of identifying a phone when I see one. Being a god is more problematic because I've never seen one. Worse, there is little agreement as to what the nature of such a thing would be.
Since I have a working category into which I would sort many fanciful creatures and human-like beings from folklore and mythology, I suspect that the xtian god is one of these. I fully understand that such beings were or are more than that to the people for whom the bible is more than folklore. But that would have also been the case at other times for those who believed in the Norse gods or the Greek gods.
