Neil Degrass Tyson is Agnostic

[gilbertc06]

I'm really tired of this. People keep misusing or mislabeling the word Atheist. Atheist DOES NOT conflict with being an Agnostic.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

So if you ask them if God is real, they'll say, "Hmmmm. . . maybe there's something out there. I'm not really sure, but it wouldn't surprise me."

Your question, "is god real?" is not a question concerning BELIEF. You are asking a question concerning KNOWLEDGE.

If someone asked me the same question, other than the end ("it wouldn't surprise me"), I would answer more or less the same. That is why I am agnostic.

If you restated your question so the query was about belief, as in "do you BELIEVE a god exists?" and they responded the same way as above, they are not answering the question.

Describing those people as atheist isn't really an accurate statement of their position as THEY see it; it's semantic bullying.

True, but not for the reason you give. They haven't given enough information to discern whether they are an atheist or not.

The correct question to discern if they are an atheist would be something like, "do you currently hold the premise that a god exists to be true?". If they answer "yes" they are a theist, any other answer would be atheism. Even if they answer, "I don't know", that would still mean that they currently do not hold the premise that a god exists to be true.

The fact is that they are trying to balance ideas of belief and non-belief, and cannot resolve that balance to a single conclusion.

There is no middle ground between belief and disbelief. Either they currently have an active belief that a god exists, or they don't.

I've heard many definitions, both religious and philosophical, for God. Some of them, like "God is the sum total of all experience in the universe" are strangely definitional but necessarily real. Others, like "God is an old man sitting in the sky," are pretty obviously false. So the question itself isn't coherent.

Yes, definitions are important to these discussions.

It's like asking "Do you believe X exists?" and insisting that everyone is an-X-ist because they are unable to form a positive belief in X. That's not how I choose to deal with the semantics-- I choose to say, "The status of my belief is unknown, because I can't process this incoherent question. For some values of X, I might believe, and for some, I might not. Explain exactly what you mean when you say X, and I'll state my belief state."

Yes, X has to be defined.

Once defined, then there are only 2 positions, belief or disbelief.

Still not with me on this? Fine. Do you believe that boobledyboo exists?
Boobledyboo =

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Potatoes

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Until you define boobleydoo, I can not say.

Splendid post.

[Aeon]

I also find it hilarious when people ask the question "do you believe in a god or gods?" When they don't even clearly define what a god or gods are. If you don't know what a god or gods even are, then you can't be certain as to whether you believe in them or not.