Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[Mister Agenda]

What is the purpose of this thought experiment? I don't see how it has anything to do with the subject.

Yesterday I gave you three traditional definitions of God. Each of them was arrived at by looking at the world in front of us and using reason to think about things. 

If you don't agree with that reasonings' conclusions that's fine; a lot of people don't agree with it. But pretending there's some sort of secret box thing going on is not relevant.

I'll take that as a NO, you can't define what is in the box.
Do you know why you can't define it ?

Because a definition is a description of what something is, what it does, how it behaves, a list of properties or attributes, etc.

And you can't define something without first knowing what it is.

Your definitions of a god are hollow and empty and meaningless because you can't give a definition until you demonstrate that the the thing you are defining actually exists in the first place.

You can't define an unknown.
A god is an unknown value.

I contend the value is zero until such a time anyone can demonstrate that it's value is more than nothing.

Certainly we can define imaginary things. If I talk about unicorns, we can agree on the basics of 'mammal with four legs and a head with one horn'. We can't point to a concrete and say that's a unicorn so we can differ on a lot of details, like whether a one-horned rhino counts as a unicorn; but we know a marmot or Triceratops doesn't. The problem with defining imaginary entities isn't that they can't be defined, it's that there isn't an existent referent to lock the definition down, so there are multiple versions. The unicorn I visualize may have a lot in common with yours, but there will be significant differences as well, such as mine having cloven hooves and yours having hooves like a horse's. And if a writer decides for their work of fiction that unicorns have rainbow-colored breath that stuns their victims; they are free to do so, because they're referring to their own imaginations.

Gods are more fluid conceptually than unicorns; and Bel's idea of a capital-g God seems to differ greatly from what most Evangelicals and Catholics have in mind when they think of God; but God can be defined, at least for the purposes of argument. Just like Superman can, and with many of the same difficulties (Superman's powers and power levels depend a lot on who is writing him at the time).

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That's absolutely true. I thank God there is a day of judgement. I thank God that one day everyone will account for every sentence that came out of his mouth, especially any dismissal of good arguments by babble and noise. I thank God my efforts won't go in vain because these children decided it's time to shout.

It's understandable why people like Hawking proudly declare that "there is no god" and gladly woke up in the morning full of hope, even desire to spread their stupid ideas about religions, Hawking had a fulfilling academic life that somehow silenced his crying inherent tendency to belief, he also had the most stupid opinion about god ever, and this discrepancy is amazing : world class scientists are prepared to babble nonsensical shit when it comes to god and theology. They replace this innate sense towards awe/belief with their advocacy for its opposite, combined with some social status and a sense of "not needing god", it's a simple psychological trick that sadly works. But when it comes to some of these fools here, they obviously can't follow a train of thought without barking, or handle discussing historical figures completely outside of their local legal system, if there is any, yet face any theist with this mocking attitude, like they're in some kind of cleverness challenge or something. That's the kind of attitude that makes a human being deserve hell.

I recall when no one will even admit there are interesting definitions of God and uninteresting ones, they hate the fact that thinking unbiasedly about definitions leads to forced results like God absolutely not existing or having already revealed himself. For them, all theology is red herring, simply because their christianity turned out to be red herring, and they see no problem in generalizing their childhood trauma to all religions.

The first ten years I lived in Japan I went everywhere by bicycle, because the city is compact and a good size. The city I'm in, however, is notorious for aggressive and inconsiderate drivers, and eventually I had to give up. It's dangerous, but more disturbing for my peace of mind was the fact that I was getting really angry at people. 

It seemed to me that it was easy to identify people who, in my personal judgment, deserved to be scolded. But once I picked out who I could get angry at I was in danger of going overboard. All the anger I had pent up about other things found an outlet in the inconsiderate drivers. 

My guess is that something similar is going on here. If people want to demonstrate the falseness of religion or persuade people to change their minds, they wouldn't type what they do. If they are in any way trying to make the world a better place, they would go about things differently. It seems more likely that they choose you and other people with differing metaphysical beliefs as targets for their negative feelings, just because they want targets. 

Part of the problem is the whole New Atheist thing. Dawkins and Hitchens and those guys began with the a priori belief that theology must be so stupid that you don't have to know anything about it to criticize it. They were not bothered by the fact that their books contain numerous factual errors, and neither were their fans. We're well into the second generation of such thinking by now. 

So there's a disconnect between people who want to exchange reasons and talk about things, and people who feel it's fine just to vent.

I don't care if people believe in gods or not. I care if they put forth an effort to be rational. The purpose of this site is not to persuade theists to be atheists. The purpose of this site is not to demonstrate the falseness of religion.

And clearly your purpose is not to demonstrate the truth of religion or to persuade atheists to become theists or you wouldn't have typed this post, you hypocrite. If you were trying in any way to make the world a better place, you would go about things differently.