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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 11, 2015 at 12:16 pm
(February 11, 2015 at 12:12 pm)robvalue Wrote: I actively seek to police my own confirmation bias, but I'm not so naive as to think I'm totally successful.
Funnily enough, I asked my wife if I have any superstitions at all, in case there was any I hadn't noticed. She said she had never noticed any. Score! I must be a robot or I am nothing.
I get told by my parent's that voodoo crap and spirits and stuff are real but when i go and say yeah...no none of it is real their conformation bias goes into red alert and tries to tell me otherwise and i still no nuh uh. Its kinda funny though.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 11, 2015 at 2:20 pm
This is where science as a whole scores over the individual scientist, in that the method is self-correcting and biases tend towards cancelling out. It's the exact opposite of religiously motivated pseudoscientific preaching, which only amplifies in propagation. That's why we see the same Hovind shit bob back to the surface time and again.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 14, 2015 at 6:05 pm
I got distracted for the last few days. Sorry about the delay.
With the mouth-breathing god-sucker already taken out of the equation (thanks, Parkers!), I'll continue what was being addressed to me before.
Whateverist pretty much had it right; there DOES need to be some general consensus on what exactly constitutes a god.
To trim the fat and put my foot down into a solid position, I should say that my stance that I am 100% sure that no god exists is in regards to the general consensus and the widely-accepted views of what constitutes a god, or gods. It's an ad-populum, but given that religion and the ideas of god/gods are given their society-wide validation through nothing other than via the populace, I feel fairly safe in making that appeal.
YG: I more or less don't care much else about what you have to say, because you're just incapable of grounding your mind in reality. But the one response I shall grace you with is quite simply this:
The burden of proof is on you and your ilk. You and your ilk have never brought forth any of it. It is not I who validates my atheism; it's you. Or, rather, your failures.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 14, 2015 at 6:52 pm
In the sense you've laid out, CoH, I'm fine with a positive assertion of "it doesn't exist", myself.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 12:41 am
Yeah, when I say "the god hypothesis," I typically mean the god everyone is most familiar with, as in the Abrahamic god. I don't have the attention span necessary to consider every other possible definition. I adhere to ad populum when it comes to matters of definition largely because language and communication is based off exactly that.
I still also think that there are no godly figures at all whatsoever by ANY definition, and I'm 100% positive that no proof or evidence shall ever be posited to demonstrate the existence of such figures.
So if such proof ever comes about, I'm gonna feel pretty damn stupid and guilty of misplaced arrogance. But, it doesn't mean I'd continue to state that I know for certain no god(s) exist; at that point, I would have been proven wrong.
Like I said, though...there's only so many thousands of times you can see something disproven or shown to not be true before you go "okay...the concept is bullshit."
Or. Well. At least there's only so many thousands of times I can see that and think that, at any rate.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 4:31 am
Well, no matter the religion or sect, the moment I hear anyone tell me, "Let me tell you about my lord", I put away the pillows and get out the scalpels, mentally speaking.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 6:42 am
(This post was last modified: February 15, 2015 at 6:44 am by robvalue.)
As far as I'm concerned, the definition of "God" is "absolutely anything". Anyone can define anyone or anything "to be God". If someone says the moons is God, can anyone reasonably object? So the question, "do you believe in (a) God?" Becomes, without further clarification, "do you believe in any anything?"
Which is a nonsesical question. Yes I believe there are things that exist, and that by one definition at least, those things are gods.
So "God" has to be defined to some degree before the question stops being a tautology. And given people's utter failure to produce a consistent definition, and that's if they can even produce any coherent definition, the question is, in scientific terms, "fucked". I can answer only one definition at a time.
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 10:09 am
I think Agnostic is only a pointless term when its used as an answer to the question, "Do you believe in god?"
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 2:50 pm
(This post was last modified: February 15, 2015 at 2:53 pm by Pizza.)
Sometimes people don't know that they believe. This is especially true when dealing with confusing and obscure claims of theology.
Also sometimes people just want to be left alone and saying, "I don't know," is an effective way to dodge being hammered over giving a yes or no answer.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal
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RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
February 15, 2015 at 2:58 pm
(February 15, 2015 at 10:09 am)Mr.wizard Wrote: I think Agnostic is only a pointless term when its used as an answer to the question, "Do you believe in god?"
Would like rep on the side with that post? Coming right up.
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