Agnostics

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm asking whether you hold a theistic or deistic belief in a god, not about semantics. If you don't hold such a belief in any entity, then you are an atheist. If you do hold such a belief in an entity, then you are a theist.

Just define a deity first, then he can tell you if he believes in it.

[Excited Penguin]

Oh, yes, you can, because that is exactly what happens when you don't understand something. You don't (yet) believe in it.

If you don't understand what "God" means but it means "mount Everest" then that would be a definition of God you believed in before you knew what it meant, because you've always believed mount Everest exists.

Calling mount Everest a God however, isn't something you would do, so when asked "do you believe in any gods?", you wouldn't answer that in the affirmative if you didn't think of mount Everest as of a God(or anything else, for that matter), no matter how the questioner thinks of the same mountain.

[Edwardo Piet]

But how you would answer is different to how you should answer.

The point with ignosticsm is gods aren't clearly defined. Are you familar with ignosticism EP?

[Excited Penguin]

I'm asking whether you hold a theistic or deistic belief in a god, not about semantics. If you don't hold such a belief in any entity, then you are an atheist. If you do hold such a belief in an entity, then you are a theist.

Just define a deity first, then he can tell you if he believes in it.

I'm not a dictionary, Evie. Go use a dictionary, teach your friend how to do it as well.

[FatAndFaithless]

You're familiar with the fact that words can be used different ways by different people? And dictionaries don't set the definitions of words, they describe how they're used by people. That's why they change over time..

[Edwardo Piet]

Just define a deity first, then he can tell you if he believes in it.

I'm not a dictionary, Evie. Go use a dictionary, teach your friend how to do it as well.

Gods aren't clearly defined in dictionaries, many people define gods differently to each other.

If God is a "supernatural being" then you have to explain what that is.

I personally have a typical idea of some entity outside of time and space that supposedly creates the universe from before it even existed... that is something I do not believe in and so therefore I believe in no gods.

But there are many ways to conceive of gods.

[Excited Penguin]

Going in that direction is not a good idea. Making the point that language is interpreted differently by different people only gives the person making that point license to say anything they want and declare it the truth, in the same breath. That is not how language works. There are clearly defined concepts out there, people are generally aware of them, and it is particularly disgusting to see when someone pretends this isn't so only to win an argument.

I'm done here. I sure hope you people are at least aware in the privacy of your own minds of what you've been doing in this thread, or I'm genuinely sorry for you.

[Edwardo Piet]

Silly penguin.

[Edwardo Piet]

Are you basically making the claim that all ignostics are disingenuous?

[FatAndFaithless]

I have never seen someone so unwilling to define the terms of his own question.