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My conclusions about weak Atheism.
#71
RE: My conclusions about weak Atheism.
FatAndFaithless Wrote:
robvalue Wrote:Yeah. Even though some people say "just agnostic", which I consider is incorrect for a weak atheist (second definition), it does at least differentiate. Maybe strong atheists could be "nongodbois".

Really, someone making a counter claim has gone beyond atheism so it could easily have its own name, even though it's a subset of atheism in general.

I prefer to send the question back and say, "Try again with words that mean something". Atheism is giving theism too much credit as a proposition, that it even deserves an answer.

Sure, but saying "I'm just an agnostic" doesn't make any real sense, if you're asking them the simple question "do you believe it's true that a god exists?".  Agnostic simply means they don't think it can be known - but they're not being asked about knowledge.  Just seems that the people who say "I'm just an agnostic" are simply averse to the label "atheist" for whatever reason.  And the messiness of the term atheism can give them a reason.

Some people who say they are agnostic will also say they believe there's 'Something' with a capital S, a higher being or reality of some sort, they just acknowledge that they're not in a position to be able to define it, or even know that it's real, but they still believe. Or they may even believe in a particular version of God while acknowledging that rational justification of the belief is impossible. I went through that as a phase after I stopped being a Christian.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#72
RE: My conclusions about weak Atheism.
(April 5, 2018 at 10:20 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:
FatAndFaithless Wrote:Sure, but saying "I'm just an agnostic" doesn't make any real sense, if you're asking them the simple question "do you believe it's true that a god exists?".  Agnostic simply means they don't think it can be known - but they're not being asked about knowledge.  Just seems that the people who say "I'm just an agnostic" are simply averse to the label "atheist" for whatever reason.  And the messiness of the term atheism can give them a reason.

Some people who say they are agnostic will also say they believe there's 'Something' with a capital S, a higher being or reality of some sort, they just acknowledge that they're not in a position to be able to define it, or even know that it's real, but they still believe. Or they may even believe in a particular version of God while acknowledging that rational justification of the belief is impossible. I went through that as a phase after I stopped being a Christian.

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people use agnostic that way, but the word itself isn't about what someone believes, it's a question about the knowability of that Something, whether or not we can have knowledge about it.  It just rankles my futile hope of having clear, accurate labels that are used consistently.  I've said many times before on here that I don't hold labels as something genuinely vital, but damn it would be nice to have shortcuts.  Because the situation now is two people can say "I am an atheist" and mean two fundamentally different things, and then two other people hearing these statements will take that to mean many fundamentally different things.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
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#73
RE: My conclusions about weak Atheism.
(April 5, 2018 at 8:36 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote:  I reject both claims of "there is a god(s)" and "there isn't a god(s)" because I don't think either claim has met its burden of proof. 

But I take it you don't think that God is not improbable?

There's a difference between "There isn't a god" and "I know there isn't a god." It's not like you think the probability is unknown or 50%... I think it would be incredibly misleading to say you don't think that there aren't any gods, unless you really think that there's as much chance that they exist as not exist (indeed, agnosticism refers to the unknowability of gods, but many people colloquially refer themselves as "agnostic" to mean they have no idea how probable or improbable gods are, and that they could just as easily exist as not exist, so when you are so unwilling to say there isn't a god, but you're perfectly willing to say there isn't any ghosts, it kind of makes you look like those naive people who mistakenly think that agnosticism means god is as likely to exist as not exist. We feel no need to qualify statements such as "ghosts don't exist" or "the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist" with further statements "But I'm not claiming to know that to an absolute certainty!". Duh, you can't prove a negative, but that applies to everything, not just gods, and I don't see why gods should get special treatment and require more qualifiers when they're just as silly as anything else that there's absolutely no evidence of. If not sillier.).
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