Agnostic Skepticism- My Views

[robvalue]

I'm not understanding the point. You can just relabel the universe as god if it makes one happy to do so. I don't see a problem with that; neither do I see the point.

Being "alive" means whatever we say it means, it's a subjective interpretation of reality. So sure, we could say the universe is "alive" if we want, but who said god has to be alive anyway? The word means literally nothing, and we've already said it is the universe. God hasn't been mapped to anything real ever, not even in a very vague abstract sense, so no one can say what it isn't. Everyone makes up their own stuff, even people in the same religion.

For example, ignorant is describing to me in another thread that god is like the act of me being myself, or something. I could just disallow that, but on what grounds? It's not enough like the man in the clouds which is obviously what people are thinking of but trying so hard not to say?

[robvalue]

When I say God isn't mapped to anything, contrast it with a dragon. These aren't real creatures, but they do map quite closely to things that are real. They're live animals, with four legs, scales and wings... and so on. We have enough criteria to be able to roughly say what is and isn't a dragon, given a drawing of one. We agree.

Not so with a god. There's nothing that's universally agreed, as far as I'm aware. Nothing real that it is remotely like. So as far as I'm concerned, it means anything and nothing. Often not even being a creator of a reality is enough for something to be a god, according to many people. And it needn't even be that, according to pantheists. So it's just "whatever".

[Whateverist]

Yes. "Lack"'s primary denotation and connotation is one of "Not enough" or IOW... "Something is lacking".

I feel like whenever we tell the theists that we lack belief it's like we're throwing them a fricken ball with "Opportunity For You Theists To Equivocate" written on it lol.

What if we say to them "I lack belief in gods just as I lack the disgusting habit of boring people to tears telling them how they ought to fear my special boogyman"?  Would that get it done?

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes. The amusing snark makes it clear that you don't literally think you lack it.

Although they still might completely ignore the latter half of your statement and cherry pick you "Oh so you lack belief in gods eh? You admit it! You know you ought to believe and look at me with my confirmation bias please punch me!" theists tend to say stuff like that all the time right?

Nah it's just my O.C.D. at work. Like really you don't lack disgusting habits either People with disgusting habits lack non-disgusting habits

[Asmodee]

I can't believe I forgot the single biggest reason NOT to label yourself "agnostic".  We've all (well, most of us, apparently) had that time where someone asks us about our beliefs, we say that we're atheist, they freeze up for a moment, make the sign of the cross and back away slowly.  Or they go off on us, telling us how we're going to hell.  They burn bright, but they burn out quickly.  We're used to it.  But do you know what they hear when you say you're agnostic?  They hear, "I am ALMOST convinced God is real.  I just need someone to spend the next few months with me telling my why their beliefs, alone, are right in a see of wrong beliefs."  And you can't get them to stop until they see you actively perform a Satanic ritual.  It's a lot easier than you might think.  You basically need a pentagram, a stick to hold above your head and shake now and then and a rudimentary understanding of the German language.  Everything sounds Satanic when you say it in German.

[The Grand Nudger]

Would you then say the HUMAN isn't alive, it is just the neurons inside him which are alive?  No, that doesn't work, either, because the neurons themselves are 99.9999999% empty space, too.  So, for that matter, are all the atoms in the neurons.

You know that the reason it "doesn't work" has to do with your atrocious formulation and not anything to do with how we determine what is and what is not alive, where the boundaries of that living thing lie, and at what point we exit those boundaries and move into the non-living subsrate in which it exists...right?  None of it has -anything- to do with your fascination of spatial appropriation at relative scales.  

It's kind of paradoxical, really-- there's nothing that humans are made up of that can knowingly be said to be life/alive, and yet here we are-- living out our days with intent, and sense of purpose, and a rich subjective experience of our actions and their consequences.

I'm made up of quite a bit that can be said to be life.......my simplest building block is a cell, the basic unit for all known living organisms.  Each one is alive.

The idea that it would be sensible to call the universe a living thing, because it has living things in it, makes about as much sense as calling a jar a living thing for being chock full of fireflies.

[bennyboy]

I'm made up of quite a bit that can be said to be life.......my simplest building block is a cell, the basic unit for all known living organisms.  Each one is alive.

The idea that it would be sensible to call the universe a living thing, because it has living things in it, makes about as much sense as calling a jar a living thing for being chock full of fireflies.

And I qualified that, didn't I? I asked in what sense an individual universe, with nothing to interact with, could be called alive.

Anyway, as usual this all comes down to semantics. How do you define life? Sentience? The ability to interact? Something which consumes part of its environment and reforms it? The universe couldn't do the latter, by definition. It could be sentient, I don't know, and I'm not sure even mind qualifies something to be called alive-- certainly by your definitions of mind, it wouldn't. But nobody says God has to be alive-- I'd say a massive sentience would for sure be callable by the word "God."

But your semantics are too anthropocentric. Are you solid, or are you empty space?