Everyone is Agnostic

[z7z]

I am sure many theists have doubts sometimes. It is impossible for them to be 100% certain there is a God. Atheists such as myself, admit, I can't 100% prove there is no God/spaghetti monster/etc., therefore I am technically an agnostic. 100% Theist/Atheist is impossible because nobody really knows for certain. Granted, I think the chance of God existing are close to zero but I can't say absolute zero as much as I would like to.
And when I mean God, I don't mean a Zeus like Abrahamic God in the clouds, I mean anything "greater than us" or a "higher power" as I've heard before. Therefore in my prideful opinion, everyone is an agnostic because nobody knows nothing.

[robvalue]

Sure, yes. In regard to any (currently) unfalsifiable/untestable proposition such as "Our reality was caused by an intelligence", no one can know the answer. So you could argue that everyone is an agnostic.

However, it doesn't stop people claiming to be gnostic. For a lot of theists, this seems to be important to them. And even some atheists.

A person could say they are a gnostic for all practical purposes. The difference between the actions of a professed agnostic strong atheist and a professed gnostic strong atheist are likely to be very minimal.

(Here I use strong atheist to mean someone who actively believes there is no God.)

[Magilla]

. . . everyone is an agnostic because nobody knows nothing.

mbk734
Devil's Advocate

Religious Views: Agnostic (1% chance of God)

If nobody knows nothing, (I presume you mean nobody knows anything - about "God"), how come you reckon there's "1% chance of God" ?

[hymnalysis]

I definitely see where you're coming from. Technically speaking, you are correct, since all Gods fall under the unfalsifiable hypothesis category. However, in my experience, there are people who know that God is real. I haven't met anyone who feels the opposite way, however.

I'm sure you have all met someone who would know this tune:

"Give me that old time religion
give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me

Makes me love everybody
Makes me love everybody
Makes me love everybody
It's good enough for me"

That tune is best sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford, in my opinion. But in all seriousness, the type of people that listen to / sing this are quite gnostic. Some of the more senior members of my family are prime examples. These are people who have never doubted god, and who act as though he is axiomatic. I can also attest to the existence of "knowing" there's a God personally. Up until right before my deconversion process, I believed that everyone in the world was either a churchgoer, or a non-churchgoer. I actually believed that literally everyone was either a Christian, or just a lapsed one. So that conception is definitely out there on their end.

[Whateverist]

I am sure many theists have doubts sometimes. It is impossible for them to be 100% certain there is a God. Atheists such as myself, admit, I can't 100% prove there is no God/spaghetti monster/etc., therefore I am technically an agnostic. 100% Theist/Atheist is impossible because nobody really knows for certain. Granted, I think the chance of God existing are close to zero but I can't say absolute zero as much as I would like to.
And when I mean God, I don't mean a Zeus like Abrahamic God in the clouds, I mean anything "greater than us" or a "higher power" as I've heard before. Therefore in my prideful opinion, everyone is an agnostic because nobody knows nothing.

You may be right, at least for you, but I don't register any doubt regarding the existence of supernatural crap.  To have a doubt I'd need to have enough interest in the question to care a little bit.  In that I am lacking.

[Minimalist]

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me

Let us worship Zarathustra
Just the way we used to
I'm a Zarathustra booster
He's good enough for me

Let us worship Aphrodite
She's beautiful but flighty
She doesn't wear a nightie
But she's good enough for me

We've got some creative people around here.  I'm sure they could devise a few more stanzas.

[Angrboda]

The definition of knowledge is a matter of ongoing debate among philosophers in the field of epistemology. The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed. Some claim that these conditions are not sufficient, as Gettier case examples allegedly demonstrate. There are a number of alternatives proposed, including Robert Nozick's arguments for a requirement that knowledge 'tracks the truth' and Simon Blackburn's additional requirement that we do not want to say that those who meet any of these conditions 'through a defect, flaw, or failure' have knowledge. Richard Kirkham suggests that our definition of knowledge requires that the evidence for the belief necessitates its truth.

What are you using as your standard of "to know" ? The classical definition would have us forever concluding that we can know nothing about anything. Surely that bar is too high.

[Redbeard The Pink]

mmm...no...


Some of us take it a step farther and go ignostic, which means that we don't just think it's impossible to know whether god exists, we think it's impossible to adequately define god in the first place (making it useless to consider whether it exists, since we have no clue what it is).

If "god" refers to any specific character from religious canon, then I am a gnostic atheist because those can actually be shown to not exist (either by holding contradictory qualities and/or being said to exist somewhere that we can actually go check).

If god simply refers to a "higher power," then EXACTLY what is that? What qualities does it have? What should it do? How does it affect physical reality? Unless you're talking about a specific god, there's really no way to know what you're talking about, much less whether it exists.


I may as well ponder whether The Winderhirdenboogen exists. What's that, you ask? Doesn't matter. It exists, and you can't prove it doesn't.

[robvalue]

Yeah... considering anything that is defined to be beyond investigation is kind of pointless.

[T.J.]

We can't 100% prove those things don't exist, but the burden of proof doesn't fall on us. It falls on the theist making the claim. You can't prove 100% there isn't a pink fluffy monster hiding out on Mars somewhere, but if you made the claim you'd be laughed into nonexistence, and for good reason.

And give Nobody some credit. He actually knows a lot about economics and globalization.