A case for positive atheism

[Tiberius]

I see what you are saying, but are they not coherent? One is a judgement about the limitations of the logical application of our total knowledge, the other is that a final logical conclusion regarding god's existence cannot be reached.

I don't know what you mean by "coherent" in this circumstance. Yes, there are two different forms of agnosticism, weak and strong. Strong agnosticism is the position that God's existence cannot be known, weak agnosticism is the position that God's existence is currently unknown.

Do you not first have to conclude that we do not have the information required before you can say that conclusions to the contrary are invalid?

On a personal level yes, but that is true of all beliefs. One bases their position on what their current level of evidence suggests is true.

Also, how is it possible for one to conclude that the existence of god is "unknown or unknowable" (not just "unproven") and still believe that a God exists? If the individual believes that God exists then they claim to know is some way, such as claiming to have "emotional", "spiritual" or "intuitive" knowledge of god, which they deem sufficient in arriving at a conclusion.

There is a very big difference between having a belief and having knowledge. I suggest you read up on the philosophical state of knowledge if you honestly think that someone who believes claims to "know". A belief is by definition, a state in which a person holds a certain proposition to be true; it does not guarantee that the proposition *is true*. Knowledge was described by Plato as "true, justified, belief". In other words, for something to be knowledge, it must be a belief that is both justified, and (more importantly) true.

You also make the mistake of grouping all theists together into one group that claims emotional / spiritual knowledge. These people do exist, I grant you that, but as such they are gnostic theists. The group that do not claim such knowledge are agnostic theists.

I disagree, if you have a positive belief in a proposition then you have concluded that it is real. You cannot hold positive belief in something that you do not think can be known.

Firstly, you ignore weak agnosticism in the above; it is an important omission. Not all agnostics are of the variety that say "God cannot be known". Regardless, your statement that you cannot hold a positive belief in something that you do not think can be known is ridiculous. A belief doesn't require anything but your own subjective reasoning; a crazy person can believe the sky will fall on them, without any evidence other than their delusions, yet it is still a belief. Knowledge simply doesn't come into play with beliefs, because as soon as it does, that belief ceases to be a belief and becomes knowledge.

To demonstrate via a useful example I came up with years back, imagine you are in a room that is sealed so you cannot possibly escape. You hear the sound of rain on the roof of the room, and I think most of us would have no trouble believing that it was raining on the roof. We've heard rain before, we know how it sounds, and despite not being able to see it, we can quite easily believe that it is raining. However, due to our circumstances, whether it is raining or not is an unknown, and if we cannot escape from the room, it is unknowable. It doesn't stop the belief, only the possibility of knowledge.

The issue here is not what knowledge the theists really have, it's the knowledge they claim to have.

...and I agree, when theists do claim knowledge, they are gnostic and not agnostic. However, not all of them do this, and to paint every single theist with the same brush is intellectually dishonest.

They do not meet our standard for 'proof' i agree, but they also believe thing like emotions and intuition are sufficient forms of knowledge for believing positively in a proposition. If you "do not know" then you "do not believe", thus you are an atheist.

Again, painting with the same brush. Intellectually dishonest.

Your statement "If you do not know then you do not believe" is completely false. I honestly don't know if I'll be alive tomorrow; how could I know? A myriad of things could happen to me that cause my death. However, do I believe I'll be alive tomorrow? Yes. Why? Because the chances of me dying are very slim. I would imagine most people are the same, or we'd have people constantly re-doing their Last Will & Testament as a daily chore. So yes, you can "not know" and also believe. Knowledge implies belief, but belief does not imply knowledge.

Being illogical does not make one potentially agnostic.

No...and I fail to see how this is relevant.

I don't buy that for a second, you cannot believe in something that you claim cannot be known because to believe in something requires you feel there is sufficient reason for it, and reason is an application of knowledge. You seem to forget what an acceptable standard of knowledge is for theists...

There could be cases where someone says "i have a feeling that god exists" but does not consider their intuitions sufficient to hold positive belief, that is entirely different from being like fr0d0 and positively believing in God.

Reason is not an application of knowledge; reason is a mental process by which we take premises and propositions and generate conclusions based on them. The conclusions that we generate through reason are often completely wrong, and so they invalidate the first requirement of knowledge (that it be "true"). You can have justified beliefs that are completely wrong, which means they are not knowledge.

As for acceptable standards of knowledge, they are irrelevant. The big point here is that you *can* believe and yet not know, and that if a person claims to know, they must be gnostic. If a person does not claim to know (or claims that such knowledge is unknown) then they are an agnostic. It's really as simple as that.

I hate to bring up Dawkins' scale, or any scale for belief in God, but the one thing that is common on both Dawkins' scale and my own is the position of "Agnostic Theism".

For a better read on agnostic theism, I suggest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism