Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[Mister Agenda]

I'm sorry, but you are being pedantic. If someone says they disbelieve something, it is nearly always meant as "i believe X is false".

This is an unsupported assertion. You seem to be making a lot of them in this thread.

You disbelieve in Santa Claus, yes?

Yes, I do, which is another way of saying 'I don't believe in Santa Clause'.

No, did you miss the "disbelief" part? Pretty much only atheists use this lack of belief nonsense to mean atheism.

Not only did I not miss the'disbelief' part, I actually understand what the word means. Why should we use the definition preferred by people who largely despise atheists? Atheists have been defining themselves inclusive of people who merely don't believe since before the turn of the last century. Why should their natterers override our best thinkers?

No one is telling you what you believe, that's just false.

It WOULD probably be more accurate to say that you're telling us how to label and define ourselves. That's SO much more appropriate, right?

We're talking about what people actually mean with these words.

You're talking about what YOU mean with these words and denying that what WE mean by them has any validity at all. You are trying to define weak/negative/agnostic atheists as not atheists. Fuck you.

No, they're focus in the question is obviously centered around an accusation of rejecting theism.

That's a claim. You're speaking about what other people besides you mean. Your claim is completely unsupported and I reject it out-of-hand, and justifiably so.

Again, you're missing the point. Yes, it's binary if you say the options are either "Believe it's true on one hand, and not believe it's true on the other". The prob is, these sorts of questions are ternary (at least), not binary: Believe (theist), Abstain (agnostic), Believe opposite (atheist).

Agnosticism is not knowing, not 'neither believing or not believing'. It's commonly used to reference some sort of halfway belief state between theism and atheism, but theism and atheism are the words for states of belief concerning God. However, agnosticism is a word with multiple senses, and it's not inappropriate to use it so provided it's not in a conversation where the other senses are also being used. This is not a conversation where using the third sense of the word instead of the first sense is not equivocation.

ag·nos·tic/ægˈnɒstɪk/ Show Spelled [ag-nos-tik] Show IPA
noun
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. Synonyms: disbeliever, nonbeliever, unbeliever; doubter, skeptic, secularist, empiricist; heathen, heretic, infidel, pagan.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
3. a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic: Socrates was an agnostic on the subject of immortality.

[quote='MindForgedManacle' pid='696638' dateline='1403815440']
I agree, however you don't realize that this creates a contradiction on your part. If atheism is a response to god claims, that implies there were no atheists prior to god claims, even though on your "lacking belief" definition they WOULD exist prior to god claims, as everyone would be an atheist.

The suffix 'ist' indicates a person concerned with or interested in the main part of the word, in this case, 'athe', 'without god'; babies are incapable of being concerned about whether there is or is not a God or gods. If you want to be pedantic, an atheist is 'a person capable of considering the question who lacks belief in any god or God'. This definition includes those who actively believe there is no god or God, as they necessarily also lack belief in the thing they believe does not exist.

You're bringing up the same thing I earlier questioned you on, just in different words. When you say you're 'not convinced' by theistic claims, are you saying you're unable to give an answer or that the theist's claims are false?

It means their claims aren't convincing enough to justify belief in them. This isn't rocket surgery, MFM. The mere fact that you have to try so hard to be so obtuse should tell you something. I know you're sharp enough, so it seems to me there must be some other explanation for why you're willing to tie yourself up in knots to avoid admitting that someone who doesn't believe in God but is unwilling to claim that they know for certain that nothing that could reasonably be described as a god could possibly exist is still an atheist. Weak atheism isn't some new thing that we made up to avoid the burden of proof when arguing on the internet. It's the conclusion most consistent with rational skepticism: It is impossible to know with certainty that some version of a god does not exist somewhere, but given the current state of my knowledge I think it is at least somewhat improbable that any does, and I don't hold it to be true that any god exists.

But the God of Abraham, who formed the earth in six days, stopped the sun to help someone win a battle, covered the earth with water up to the mountaintops? That God doesn't exist because the evidence indicates those things never happened.

A God who created the universe and is omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient doesn't exist, because that God is a ridiculous pile of omni-attributes that sound like the result of a protracted argument over who has the bestest God. It's a married bachelor, it doesn't exist.

But because I won't accept the burden of proof for any notion of a god or God anyone might possibly imagine before even knowing what will come spewing out of their mouths, I'm not really an atheist, according to you.

I have a problem with that.