Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[Rampant.A.I.]

atheism to refer to those who reject the existence of God/gods, and agnosticism to mean those individuals who abstain from assigning a truth value to the question of the divine, usually because they view it as unanswerable.

It's unanswerable by nature of the question.

If you claim the literally interpreted God of the bible exists as defined in the bible and by theologians, you contradict yourself.

But it is still possible such a god exists, either internal or external to the human psyche.

In fact, if you look closely at the best definitions of the supernatural, there is no functional distinction from things that are wholly imaginary, and yet it is claimed they still effect the material world.

Insofar as people act in accordance with supernatural beliefs: they do.

In our view, Jeremy Walker has an imaginary friend, who loves him and talks to him, and improves his life. To us, that belief is mistaken. He has trained himself the same way some revival sects to do cordon off areas of his mind, and listen for thoughts to "pop into his mind" and interpret which of those thoughts are God communicating.

To him, he has good reason to believe it is God. He uses a mythological framework to interpret and explain the experience, but no matter how mistaken his interpretation may be, he's still experiencing it.

---

There's no delicate way of saying this, but if you have any experience dealing with the mentally ill, their experiences are real, to them.

Reality is little more than an interpretive shared consensus of observable information and internal experiences.

Have an imaginary friend and you're an eccentric; have a group of 100,000 people experiencing the same imaginary friend and you have a religion. They're experiencing the same brain states, the same chemical releases, and the same centers light up in their brain when they experience the divine.

If it is all in their heads, there is no contradiction between that type of shared delusion and a shared experience of the supernatural, and more importantly: there's no way to test it.

And shared delusions are incredibly powerful. They have a life of their own. The Huichol people of Mexico believe reality is a dream, and dreams are the true reality, and they take peyote to experience reality and wake themselves up from the dream world.

They have very coherent beliefs about the nature of reality passed down by shaman.

Are they deluded at some level? Sure. Are they experiencing something shared? I think so.

We are, however small, integral parts of the universe itself, forged in stars, and though our bodies die, those particles will go on to be reconstituted, sometimes into other life, like sparks of the Brahman.

We are the universe examining itself, and there has been so much time and thought and blood and so many tears spilt in our short existence, that even the superstitions of our early years are inescapable.

There is nothing particularly special or exemplary about any of us that will matter in 100 years, and yet our internal narrative tells us otherwise. History tells us otherwise.

If there is no supernatural realm save for that we have generated, and tell back to ourselves through story and metaphor and archetype, it is indistinguishable from a supernatural realm. The empirically accessible nature of it is null on both accounts.

You can either edify and costume it, give it names and faces, and parade it through town, or you can argue what that realm fundamentally is is ill defined, because we lack the vocabulary and theory to explain what is actually going on, and are too busy infighting over whose costumed anthropomorphic characterization is the best.

And up until very recently, the only vocabulary we has to describe attempts to framework these shared frameworks were called Gods. And then God. And now, Us.

---

Religious people worship a great and powerful sky human. Humanists "worship" the sum of human experience since the first hominid picked up a heavy club, and made it clear to a lion he ought to fuck off. Atheists throw the whole thing in a bin for careful, planned dissection at a later date, because it has blinded so many people, and dismantle their particular brand of blinders from an outside perspective.

Agnostics sit in the bin, knowing for fuck-all there's some sort of greater meaning in there, but they lack the tools to dissect and reassemble a coherent truth from it, and the toolkit probably won't exist in their lifetime.

I don't know. I have no way to know, what my actual beliefs are about religion. I don't have the words to describe the concepts that seem to contradict each other, and don't, simultaneously.

I have been, and felt, as far back as I can remember, like an alien archeologist, trying to piece together some semblance of belief shared by the native culture coherent enough, or at least fake well enough to what those around me regarded as common sense that made any real sense when examined.

Anyway. You said your post ran long?

[One Above All]

Atheism has, like all other words, gained its "meaning" from its usage, and that usage has been that people by and large use atheism to refer to those who reject the existence of God/gods, and agnosticism to mean those individuals who abstain from assigning a truth value to the question of the divine, usually because they view it as unanswerable.

Nobody is asking them to assign a truth value to the question. We're asking them their opinion. Whether they say they won't assign a truth value is irrelevant. See my "car brand" analogy.

[archangle]

agnostic just mean that when a person makes a claim they want to see the evidence of that claim. Then, based on that evidence they can assign a "certainty" value to it.

"this type of god only" claim: Very low probability.
"There is no nothing" Claim: Very low probability.

They both go against observations so there is no need to entertain them as anything other than "Hollywood blv prostitution"

[MindForgedManacle]

Nobody is asking them to assign a truth value to the question. We're asking them their opinion. Whether they say they won't assign a truth value is irrelevant. See my "car brand" analogy.

Er, what? You're not asking them to give a truth value when you ask their opinion? Those are effectively the exact same thing. If you ask me to give my opinion on something, I'm going to be assigning what I think to be the case about it.

[archangle]

You can ram the comma's, or,lack, of, them, up, your, self, centered, ego. a.k.a : asshole

But open wide, you don't want to knock a tooth out.

...I'm beginning to suspect that English is not your first language.
My post didn't imply that you should have placed a comma there. Quite the opposite, it inferred that, because I assumed you had missed a comma, I couldn't see the proper meaning of your post, which wasn't missing any relevant punctuation.
But, you know, call me an asshole for not understanding what I said. Whatever works for you.

You can go fuck your grammar Nazi/mind fucking bs. I don't care. Just stick to the facts. teaknow

you posted:
Um... Is that "One" referring to me? What am I supposed to be looking out for? What do you mean by "with them"?

your post is meaningless gibbervootgen.

Now I am calling you a stupid fuck for not seeing past a possible simple grammar error in the context of the post.

[MindForgedManacle]

It's unanswerable by nature of the question.

Not necessarily. One could construct an argument that does the following:

-Takes a leaf outta of the philosophy of mind's book and lays the groundwork for what constitutes the minimum attributes required for godhood (as philosophers of mind do for the concept of personhood), which would exclude a good many supposed god concepts (many of which really just amount to a worshipped superhuman). Then you proceed with counter-apologetics regarding what is left.

Most of the rest (at least the passage in the spoiler tag) seemed too much like a New Atheist anti-religion rant.

[One Above All]

Er, what? You're not asking them to give a truth value when you ask their opinion? Those are effectively the exact same thing. If you ask me to give my opinion on something, I'm going to be assigning what I think to be the case about it.

...And do you think that your opinions are always true, or that they're just your opinions and may be wrong?
There's a difference between holding an opinion and believing it to be true; hence the labels "agnostic" and "gnostic" when it comes to religious belief or lack thereof.

[MindForgedManacle]

...And do you think that your opinions are always true, or that they're just your opinions and may be wrong?

I'm sorry, but this is very simple: Your opinions are all the things you think are or are not the case. To give your opinion on anything is to say what you think is or is not true on that topic.

There's a difference between holding an opinion and believing it to be true; hence the labels "agnostic" and "gnostic" when it comes to religious belief or lack thereof.

No there isn't. If I hold an opinion that something is true, that is that exact same thing as saying I believe that something is true. Self-evidently, that doesn't mean it's true but that has not been something I've said.

And no. Labels like agnostic have to do with the apparent inability to justify any strong position on the claim that God does or doesn't exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's my opinion that people who talk to fairies have an obligation to auto-euthenize. I know that they have no such obligation in reality, but that doesn;t help me shake loose that opinion.

Ones opinions aren't always interchangeable with truth.

[Whateverist]

agnostic just mean that when a person makes a claim they want to see the evidence of that claim. Then, based on that evidence they can assign a "certainty" value to it.

I would say agnosticism is the position that there isn't enough information available to know for certain what is so regarding what is being discussed. If what is being discussed is a belief you already hold, then your recognition of your lack of evidence is no reason to abandon that belief. If what is being discussed is a belief which you do not already hold, then a lack of evidence is reason enough not to ignore it.

"this type of god only" claim: Very low probability.
"There is no nothing" Claim: Very low probability.

I have to wonder what you mean by "There is no nothing". I'm not aware of any atheists who are solipsistic nihilists regarding absolutely everything.

I guess what you might mean is that regarding the question of a 'greater power' or 'higher consciousness' or a 'grand design' atheists are wed to the view that there is nothing beyond what science can ascertain. But that too is not a necessary position for any atheist. Whether or not there is intentionality beyond that of a particular organism is open for debate, but is of no concern to me. If this higher whatever is powerful enough, it requires nothing of me. If it isn't, then it may or may not achieve its ends and I'm in no way disappointed since I'm not privy to them.