Agnostic: a pointless term?

[robvalue]

There are few things I could imagine which are less plausible than an omnipotent being.

If they just said it was a creator in another reality, and didn't add all this superhero shit on the end, then I'd have no problem saying it may be possible. Irrelevant, but maybe possible.

[bennyboy]

Well, I wasn't thinking of a magical creature, just a horse with a horn. My mistake.

In that case, you're right that it's not a good analogy for god, because a unicorn would be plausible.

But they both like virgin girls.


Hmmmm. . . maybe the Christian God IS a unicorn? Why am I the only one who is pointing out that possibility? Jehoovah, eater of carrots and destroyer of lawns.

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, I don't necessarily say that "absence of the evidence for a god is the evidence of its absence." I say "the hypothesis has failed every one of the thousands of times it's been proposed, so I'm calling it disproven."

It's the simple arithmetic of science. Every god-myth ends up being torn to shreds. Just as surely as I can state with certainty that there are no magical fairies and unicorns on Earth, I can state with certainty there is no god, there are no gods, never have been, but who knows, maybe we'll make a quantum-processor-based All-Brain that we used to transcend and become the Machine-God with? That'd be pretty boss...

Despite what every delustionist claims, the bible's been disproven with hearty gusto by science in many, many ways. They can try to square the circle all they want; doesn't change the fact that anyone NOT trying to kid themselves can see the reality of its logical failings. It and the Torah, and the Talmud, and the Quran. All of them. Bunk, baseless, fiction.

In the field of science, a hypothesis is considered null and void and incorrect if it is disproven ONCE.

The god-myth hypotheses have been disproven far more times than that.

Why, therefore, lend any credence or weight to any other possible variations of the exact same fucking hypothesis? The same one that in all its forms comes up invalid over and over and over again?

You can't say you put weight into trusting in science to provide you with the closest thing to truth you can hope for outside of math, and then say you give some credence to another possible future iteration (or iterations) in this endlessly-disproven series of hypotheses. Those two statements are simply not compatible. The scientific method has demonstrated this clearly enough.

Am I actually wrong in saying this? Because I could have sworn that when we talk about creationism and intelligent design, we all agree; the latter is just another attempt at bringing the former hypothesis back around again for another go, despite the former being disproven. Yet somehow, it comes to this subject, where the amount of times it's been disproven numbers in the tens of thousands, and suddenly half the forum is hemming and hawwing and shuffling their feet and shrugging and going "well, MAYBE another version of the hypothesis will be right, we just can't know for certain..."

WHY?

As far as the definition of a god goes by ad populum, one simply does not exist. I know this, because science [aided in many other cases of this ridiculous failure of a hypothesis series by the simple passage of time and geological exploration] has demonstrated it as clearly as it has demonstrated the process of evolution, the progress of climate change, and the secrets of the atom. And just as clearly as it has demonstrated the total failure of creationism and intelligent design to be worthy of any consideration as having any basis in reality and facts.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Why, therefore, lend any credence or weight to any other possible variations of the exact same fucking hypothesis? The same one that in all its forms comes up invalid over and over and over again?

I'm not lending any credence to any god-claim. Indeed, I've explicitly stated that I reject every one I've learned. My opinion, though, is not fact, and I don't make the mistake of thinking that it is.

However, knowledge is always tentative, and subject to revision based on new information or evidence.

The reason why I think you're wrong is that there are many more iterations of god-concepts than merely the Abrahamic. Calling them all "identical" isn't really accurate. That's not to say I accept any of them -- I don't. But until I've examined them myself, a positive disposition is overstepping what I know. I know that the Abrahamic god is horseshit due to internal contradictions. I cannot disprove a deist god with this reasoning, though. I can't imagine what others might think of as god, either. So I say I'm an agnostic atheist: I don't know certainly about every god-claim, but I don't believe in gods because in my experience they all lack evidence.

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, the current general consensus as to what defines a god is... I'm going by the current definitions, of which follow (from google):

God
ɡäd/
noun
noun: God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods

1.
(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead;
Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh;
(God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity;
the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou;
humorousthe Man Upstairs
"a gift from God"
2.
(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

Those are the objective definitions. I'm not giving subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a god any more than I'd give subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a road or a fruit or a building. Some may WANT to, but we're a social species based on communication, and if you want a word or meaning to exclusively have definition according to your own whims...well, then, you're opting out of communication and your ideas are no longer communicable.

Also, Sweedy-Borgy, you said something about the "no true atheist" fallacy. There really isn't such a thing as a true atheist. I may say I'm a "positive atheist" but by no means do I say my own stance defines atheism or atheists.

See, it cannot be stated I never change my views or understanding of things. There's been several times on this forum where if I find myself being backed into a corner, I have stopped to think and wonder why that might be the case; if you find yourself floundering in your argument, if your argument is like a sinking ship and you find the holes erupting faster than you can patch them, then your argument is probably wrong. Say, for example, the Trayvon Martin thing. I'll change my stance if I'm wrong. It probably won't happen instantaneously, but I have the capacity to keep my mind open to the possibility that I am wrong. Something that many, many delusionists do not possess.

Long story short; the "no true atheist" fallacy is indeed still a fallacy.

[bennyboy]

I think "appeal to dictionary" should be classed as a new fallacy, since it's so common.

I don't disagree with what you said, I just don't think a dictionary is the right place to go for a comprehensive definition of Godhood.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Well, the current general consensus as to what defines a god is... I'm going by the current definitions, of which follow (from google):

God
ɡäd/
noun
noun: God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods

1.
(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead;
Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh;
(God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity;
the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou;
humorousthe Man Upstairs
"a gift from God"
2.
(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

Those are the objective definitions. I'm not giving subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a god any more than I'd give subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a road or a fruit or a building. Some may WANT to, but we're a social species based on communication, and if you want a word or meaning to exclusively have definition according to your own whims...well, then, you're opting out of communication and your ideas are no longer communicable.

Even your own link posits, in the second denotation, a very vague concept that you'd be hard-pressed to definitively disprove. Do you want to pretend that it's that cut-and-dried?

[psychoslice]

I think agnostic is an honest label, lets face it, if you don't believe in a god, its just your belief, you cannot prove there is a god, or prove there isn't a god. The word god could be anything, its not a man with a beared which is ridiculers, but there could be something, maybe behind all there is a Consciousness that you don't know about, and this could be called god. I think to get up on your high horse and think you know it all isn't very intelligent at all, leave that part of life as a mystery which we may never know of, and hence the intelligence of agnosticism.

[FlyingSpaghettiMonster]

Agnostics are just people who are afraid to admit the truth that I don't exist.

[Whateverist]

Well, the current general consensus as to what defines a god is... I'm going by the current definitions, of which follow (from google):

God
ɡäd/
noun
noun: God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods

1.
(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead;
Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh;
(God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity;
the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou;
humorousthe Man Upstairs
"a gift from God"
2.
(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

Those are the objective definitions. I'm not giving subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a god any more than I'd give subjective leeway to people to define what constitutes a road or a fruit or a building. Some may WANT to, but we're a social species based on communication, and if you want a word or meaning to exclusively have definition according to your own whims...well, then, you're opting out of communication and your ideas are no longer communicable.

I appreciated the rest of the post so much I had to think twice whether to point out this one fly in the ointment. It would seem that you want to emphasize the Christian god and make it the measure of what will count as a god. When you look beyond xtianity you soon discover a much more varied landscape of gods. I only wish we could clear up the debate over terms so easily but I'm afraid the whole discussion really is stalled at square one unless you want to have a discussion about the Christian god as defined by the bible. Even then we'd need to quibble about how to read the text.