Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: May 10, 2024, 12:52 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short)
RE: My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short)
Quote:There's actually three distinct positions, two of which are atheism. These are sometimes called weak and strong atheism. (Strong atheism sometimes gets used to mean gnostic atheism too.) For more discussion on the meaning of agnostic and gnostic, please see here. Notice that there are actually two different questions that can be asked:

Question 1: Do you have an active belief there are one or more gods?
Question 2: Do you have an active belief there are no gods?

Position 1: Y, N: Theist (could be agnostic or gnostic)
Position 2: N, N: Weak atheist (agnostic) - since this position makes no claims of belief, it cannot claim to "know for sure"!
Position 3: N, Y: Strong atheist (could be agnostic or gnostic)

Everyone is in one of those 3 positions by definition. People who say they are "just agnostic" are almost certainly in position 2. So essentially they are agnostic atheists but prefer to drop the "atheist" part. This may be because of the stigma attached to the word, or it may be because they are using different definitions for words. By the definitions I use here, agnostic is not a middle ground between theism and atheism.

Position 2 is the default position. It is undecided.

http://robvalue.wixsite.com/atheism/what-is-atheism

(May 9, 2018 at 4:21 am)Quick Wrote:
(May 9, 2018 at 4:16 am)robvalue Wrote: No, you're still muddling it up. Agnosticism isn't a neutral stance. It's frequently mislabeled as such. The neutral stance is (default) atheism. A/gnosticism relates to how certain you are about your beliefs. It's a separate indicator.

If you're neutral (weak atheism), you are automatically agnostic because you don't even have a belief either way; so you can't claim to know what you don't believe.

Thank you for pointing this out. I didn't make this thread to learn about atheism, but so far, that seems to be one of the things I am getting out of this thread.

You're welcome Smile

It's an extremely common mislabeling, so much so that I'm not at all surprised when people come here using it. And there's no problem in having alternate definitions, if people so wish, as long as they make sure all parties are using the same ones. It's when someone is trying to make a point using one definition and implying it has some relevance to another that the problems occur.

The subtle bit is that not believing a statement does not mean you necessarily believe it's false. You can be undecided; but at that point, you still do not believe the statement to be true. This makes the undecided people, regarding the God question, atheists. That is how the word is commonly used on this site.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
Reply



Messages In This Thread
RE: My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short) - by robvalue - May 9, 2018 at 4:23 am

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Jews view of Jesus themonkeyman 12 4882 December 15, 2013 at 4:18 pm
Last Post: theyear12013
  Jodo Shinshu view on faith TheViolentFemme 11 4377 June 12, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Last Post: John V



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)