Agnostics

[Excited Penguin]

Why do you not agree with soft atheism?

It's not that I don't agree with it.  It's that for me, personally, the soft definition is too trivial to bother with.  This is probably because I'm Canadian, and in my family and hometown, there really wasn't much in-your-face theism for me to both disassociating from them.  So when I use the term "atheism," it's in the sense that someone believes that there isn't a God.  It took me a while to accept soft atheism as a thing, and I argued against it for a while a few years ago.  But now, I've come to understand people here, their position, and why they find that definition meaningful.  It's cool with me-- just not the way I use the word in reference to my own ideas.

I'm sorry if I appeared condescending. I'll really make an effort now to have a conversation, no matter what it takes. Just fair warning for anyone else reading this, I'm disregarding what I know on the matter as of this point forward and will probably do some logic-bending efforts to attempt to reach some middle ground here, 'cause apparently being honest and sincere about what you know is being an asshole. But that's enough about that.

I didn't call you an asshole because of your argumentation or your position.  I called you one because you used insulting language.  You said I seemed stupid and uneducated.  While there are many bad things about me, I don't think being stupid or uneducated count among my faults.

It seems to me you are a little manic-- running hot and cold, very reasonable one post and very belligerent another.  So I'm willing to take at face value that you get steamed and have to step away sometimes, and I respect that.  I have no problem with you, personally.  But the problem here is that I've introduced every angle I can think of to support my position.  I thought the idea of conditional belief was original and compelling enough to deserve a few posts.  But there's not much more I can say.  I've said my peace, and I'm getting tired of the repetitive nature of the thread.

Unless someone can come up with a new angle, or interesting new examples, then there's really nothing left to do but disagree and move on.

I just think your views are incredibly simplistic, add no meaning whatsoever, and to think you're original because of them is ridiculous.

I shouldn't have called you stupid or uneducated though(now please point me to where I did). Instead I should've said(like I think I said), that your views are the result of a bad education and that you espouse great stupidity with every post on the matter.

If you think that counts as insults, that's too bad, benny, because I'm not going to sugarcoat reality because of your definition of insults(nor anyone else's for that matter). I agree with not insulting people(you're ugly, or too shart, or too fat, etc), but insulting ideas people hold is perfectly ok. Ideas merit no respect whatsoever. I'm sorry you can't differentiate between yourself and the ideas you agree with, but that's an incredibly infantile thing to do - notice here, again, I'm saying the idea of doing it is infantile, not you necessarily. You see, a person is incredibly multifaceted, just because you espouse stupidity on this issue, in my view, doesn't mean I won't find you brilliant on a wholly different issue. Every single person is incredibly complex and has tens of sides to them. Not one thing should define them, nor should they identify with any one thing about them too much - to the point where criticism of an idea affects them personally.

[bennyboy]

I just think your views are incredibly simplistic, add no meaning whatsoever, and to think you're original because of them is ridiculous.

I didn't say I was original. I said I thought the idea of a conditional belief was original enough to be worth a few posts of discussion. I used an analogy to a common physics problem to draw a parallel. These are not ideas normally that come up in a discussion about agnosticism, as far as I know, and I wanted to see if anyone thought there was any merit to them.

I shouldn't have called you stupid or uneducated though(now please point me to where I did). Instead I should've said(like I think I said), that your views are the result of a bad education and that you espouse great stupidity with every post on the matter.

. . . and we're off to the races again. I tried to take the high road and keep it civil, but you just couldn't let it go. I was perfectly happy pressing the "reset" button and either walking away or awaiting some fresh new angle to pop up that would be worth discussing.

If you think that counts as insults, that's too bad, benny, because I'm not going to sugarcoat reality because of your definition of insults(nor anyone else's for that matter). I agree with not insulting people(you're ugly, or too shart, or too fat, etc), but insulting ideas people hold is perfectly ok. Ideas merit no respect whatsoever. I'm sorry you can't differentiate between yourself and the ideas you agree with, but that's an incredibly infantile thing to do - notice here, again, I'm saying the idea of doing it is infantile, not you necessarily. You see, a person is incredibly multifaceted, just because you espouse stupidity on this issue, in my view, doesn't mean I won't find you brilliant on a wholly different issue. Every single person is incredibly complex and has tens of sides to them. Not one thing should define them, nor should they identify with any one thing about them too much - to the point where criticism of an idea affects them personally.

Look, we're talking about how people identify with regard to the God issue, an issue important enough to have a website, hundreds of threads, and many thousands of comments about it. If you think that calling a person's ideas about his self-identification stupid is meaningfully different than calling the person himself stupid, you're. . . well, do I really need to say it?

Again, I don't care much if you are insulting. Members here have insulted me, many much more vehemently than you, including at least a few people in this thread. The problem with you is that you have nothing interesting or useful to say to me. I read your posts looking for even the faintest sign of creative thinking, and see nothing but a stereotype of the most common ideas found in the AF threads on this issue and others. Nor are you witty, either in your expression of your ideas or in your insults. Even a decently-constructed cat meme would be more intellectually stimulating than the watching-paint-dry experience of you flogging your etymological dead horse for 20 pages.

So look, you can insult me all you want. I hereby grant you a pass to flame me with every hostile turd that can manage to percolate into your black-and-white-thinking digital robot brain. I ask only one thing-- say something FUCKING INTERESTING.

[Mister Agenda]

I didn't know that because you substituted a nonsense word for 'bacon'.

That's kind of the point.

And that I can't believe you before I know what you mean is my point.

[wiploc]

In your example, the two are mutually contingent, by definition.  In my example, I'm lacking information which doesn't necessarily PROVE to anyone else that God is real, but represents the knowledge I personally would need to resolve a question about my belief.

 
So this is may be an example you like better:

• If you are taller than me then I believe you are heavier than me.  But if you're shorter than me then not.
  

In any case, your example is a conditional, but your claim is that you can simultanioiusly believe that something is both true and false.  That claim, even if true, is not supported by your example.

If I asked you if you thought Schrodinger's cat was alive, how would you answer?

"No, of course not."

[bennyboy]

In your example, the two are mutually contingent, by definition.  In my example, I'm lacking information which doesn't necessarily PROVE to anyone else that God is real, but represents the knowledge I personally would need to resolve a question about my belief.

 
So this is may be an example you like better:

• If you are taller than me then I believe you are heavier than me.  But if you're shorter than me then not.
  

In any case, your example is a conditional, but your claim is that you can simultanioiusly believe that something is both true and false.  That claim, even if true, is not supported by your example.

I'll have to go back and look at this again. I think you are wrong, but it's the second time you've mentioned it, so let me give you a promissory note for now.

If I asked you if you thought Schrodinger's cat was alive, how would you answer?

"No, of course not."

What if I asked you if you thought Schrodinger's cat was dead. How would you answer?

[The Grand Nudger]

Ignoring that this reference gives the notion of fairies -entirely- too much credence.  I'd tell you I don't know, let's open the killing box and see?   

[bennyboy]

And that I can't believe you before I know what you mean is my point.

Maybe not. But as it turns out, you DO have a believe about the thing-- you just don't know it, because you haven't learned what the heck I'm talking about yet. So if you asked ME, "Do you believe in boobledyboo," I'd say, "I don't know. . . what does that word mean to you?" I don't disregard your stance, of default disbelieving until you are a good enough definition to form a coherent answer. But I'd rather force the coherent question first before making a statement about beliefs. If pressed, I'd say, "Dude, step off! I don't know what you're even talking about," and not "Dude, I don't believe in that. . . but can you tell me what it is?"

Not saying you're wrong. Just saying that the way I would approach that situation would be different than your way of approaching it.

In general, I'd say I'm agnostic on God in generalfor a variety of reasons. But as soon as you define what your specific usage of the term "God" means, I have an excellent chance of being able to make a belief statement about it. And in my experience, I'm either hard atheist or antitheist about almost all the specific God ideas I'm presented with; and the others I generally disagree with on a personal level: "God is love," I would say such a God must be real since I believe love is real, but I don't think much of that definition, and I wouldn't really call that particular thing God.

[FatAndFaithless]

Well, one could answer "no" to both "Do you believe the cat is dead?" AND "Do you believe the cat is alive?"

[bennyboy]

Ignoring that this reference gives the notion of fairies -entirely- too much credence.  I'd tell you I don't know, let's open the killing box and see?   

The problem is that in the case of almost any God idea, the box is unopenable.  It makes me wonder how many sick fucks have done actually cat-in-box experiments just because it seems like such a fun idea, though.  

[Excited Penguin]

That's just it, benny, if the box is unopenable, and the truth on the matter is unknowable, you might as well( in fact this is all you get to do) disbelieve in it. Since it doesn't affect you in any way, you can very well disbelieve in it. This is the logical thing to do. Do you have to worry about Lord Voldemort on the base of your agnosticism about everything? Of course not. Do physicists act like a parallel, metaphysical world that beyond any possible reach exists? No, because it doesn't help them to in any way. Just so for a person considering the question of god existence. I don't know if it does or it doesn't, but since I have no reason whatsoever to believe that anything I would call a God exists, I might as well express doubt and skepticism on the matter. Your doctrine of doubting everything, even the truth or falsity of any given proposition, while perfectly wise in theory, doesn't really work in practice.