Atheism, theism, agnosticism, gnosticism, ignosticism

[HappySkeptic]

I'm going to "more agree" with the OP.

To believe something is to accept a truth claim to the degree that it affects one's actions or view of reality.  The confidence level of a belief has a low correlation with whether the belief affects your actions or view of reality.

If I believe that Jesus saves my sins, I may not necessarily believe that Christianity is all true.  However, believing this dogma means that I will likely go to church, do a bible study, or think about the afterlife.

I may have an extremely low evidence level for this belief, but it doesn't matter if the belief affects my life.  I believe or I don't.  One can't go around half-believing one is going to be saved, and change one's mind every other Tuesday.

Religious beliefs are usually gained through emotion, not through reason.  The claimed high confidence of a believer is usually a smoke screen for the fact that they are scared of their belief not being true (you mean I won't meet Grandma when I die?).  Most believers don't have high confidence, yet they choose to act and live as if they do.  The cognitive dissonance is crazy, but confidence is not belief.

Many atheists treat belief and knowledge as two different dimensional axes (belief vs. knowledge, with belief being mostly binary and knowledge dealing with confidence-level and evidence).  

Dawkins introduced the spectrum of belief-level from 1 to 7 (1 being high).  Frankly, I don't like that scale.  It seems to me that it doesn't measure belief.  Wikipedia says:

the spectrum of theistic probability is a way of categorizing one's belief regarding the probability of the existence of a deity.

Belief and knowledge may be correlated, but not enough to call them the same thing.  An agnostic is not someone who is on-the-fence about whether they believe or disbelieve in a god.  It is someone who realizes the limits to knowledge about the question.  They may or may not choose to believe, for reasons other than knowledge.

[Angrboda]

I'm going to "more agree" with the OP.

To believe something is to accept a truth claim to the degree that it affects one's actions or view of reality.  The confidence level of a belief has a low correlation with whether the belief affects your actions or view of reality.

If I believe that Jesus saves my sins, I may not necessarily believe that Christianity is all true.  However, believing this dogma means that I will likely go to church, do a bible study, or think about the afterlife.

I may have an extremely low evidence level for this belief, but it doesn't matter if the belief affects my life.  I believe or I don't.  One can't go around half-believing one is going to be saved, and change one's mind every other Tuesday.

Religious beliefs are usually gained through emotion, not through reason.  The claimed high confidence of a believer is usually a smoke screen for the fact that they are scared of their belief not being true (you mean I won't meet Grandma when I die?).  Most believers don't have high confidence, yet they choose to act and live as if they do.  The cognitive dissonance is crazy, but confidence is not belief.

Many atheists treat belief and knowledge as two different dimensional axes (belief vs. knowledge, with belief being mostly binary and knowledge dealing with confidence-level and evidence).  

Dawkins introduced the spectrum of belief-level from 1 to 7 (1 being high).  Frankly, I don't like that scale.  It seems to me that it doesn't measure belief.  Wikipedia says:



Belief and knowledge may be correlated, but not enough to call them the same thing.  An agnostic is not someone who is on-the-fence about whether they believe or disbelieve in a god.  It is someone who realizes the limits to knowledge about the question.  They may or may not choose to believe, for reasons other than knowledge.

I'm reminded of a poem by Mark Strand with a line to the effect that a woman is always packing a suitcase with one hand while unpacking it with the other. Even action in its concreteness seems to fail to unambiguously resolve belief because we can and do behave in inconsistent ways. One might even question whether agnosticism in atheism isn't a bit of qualifying one's degree of belief, so as to say, "I'm sure enough to suspend affirmation, but not confident enough to affirm denial." This recalls some thoughts that I had a while back, that, while agnostic atheists may not explicitly affirm denial, we all operate according to an implicit model as to what we think is and is not. That model in an agnostic atheist does not contain a god, even if it does admit of the possibility of it acquiring one. The hitch is that all these ideas, in one way or another, appeal to naive, folk models of cognition. In as much as the mind is inaccurately described by such models, the conclusions so derived will be likewise inaccurate. Things like "tacit belief" which is in a sense absent from such models, but nonetheless relevant, make reasoning about such reasoning difficult and problematic.

[Simon Moon]

Belief is a binary mental state. Either one accepts a premise or proposition as being true, or likely true, or they don't accept it as being true. There is no fuzzy middle ground between belief and disbelief. One important thing to note, is the opposite of 'accepting something as being true', is not, saying it is false.

I disagree here. Belief has different levels of confidence associate with it. So, my confidence in the law of conservation of energy is far higher than my confidence that all genetics is based on DNA.
My confidence that dark matter exists is high, but not as high as my confidence in the conservation of energy.
My confidence in the existence of axions is pretty low, but I see them as plausible, just not yet supported by the evidence.
In a similar way, disbelief can also have confidence levels. My disbelief in the Loch Ness monster has a high degree of confidence.
So, part of my disagreement is that I don't see belief as an all-or-nothing thing. It has degrees the confidence level makes a difference if there are conflicts between beliefs.

You are saying that beliefs have different levels of confidence. I completely agree.

But there is still a binary aspect, in that you are either accept those things (conservation of energy, dark matter, DNA based genetics, etc) as being true, or you do not.

It is kind of like a light dimmer. Sure, there are different levels of light output depending on the position of the dimmer. But, there is a point at which there is no light (disbelief), or some light (belief). That point is where the binary state is. There is no middle ground between light and no light.

[The Grand Nudger]

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that agnosticism is more prevalent among former believers than people who were never there to begin with - were the demo split up along those lines.

[Jehanne]

Dawkins introduced the spectrum of belief-level from 1 to 7 (1 being high).  Frankly, I don't like that scale.  It seems to me that it doesn't measure belief.  Wikipedia says:

the spectrum of theistic probability is a way of categorizing one's belief regarding the probability of the existence of a deity.

Belief and knowledge may be correlated, but not enough to call them the same thing.  An agnostic is not someone who is on-the-fence about whether they believe or disbelieve in a god.  It is someone who realizes the limits to knowledge about the question.  They may or may not choose to believe, for reasons other than knowledge.

Maybe Wikipedia has too many pages; here's a more specific link for those who are interested:

Wikipedia -- Spectrum of theistic probability

Maybe you intended that in your post.

[Jehanne]

I disagree here. Belief has different levels of confidence associate with it. So, my confidence in the law of conservation of energy is far higher than my confidence that all genetics is based on DNA.
My confidence that dark matter exists is high, but not as high as my confidence in the conservation of energy.
My confidence in the existence of axions is pretty low, but I see them as plausible, just not yet supported by the evidence.
In a similar way, disbelief can also have confidence levels. My disbelief in the Loch Ness monster has a high degree of confidence.
So, part of my disagreement is that I don't see belief as an all-or-nothing thing. It has degrees the confidence level makes a difference if there are conflicts between beliefs.

You are saying that beliefs have different levels of confidence. I completely agree.

But there is still a binary aspect, in that you are either accept those things (conservation of energy, dark matter, DNA based genetics, etc)  as being true, or you do not.

It is kind of like a light dimmer. Sure, there are different levels of light output depending on the position of the dimmer. But, there is a point at which there is no light (disbelief), or some light (belief). That point is where the binary state is.  There is no middle ground between light and no light.

Scientific truth is contingent truth, testable & correctable; in this sense, scientific theories will always be provisional, in that they remain, in principle, falsifiable.  Yet, discovering a molecule other than DNA that is the fundamental basis of heredity is pretty damn improbable, so improbable, in fact, to be in the same category as claiming that the South won the Civil War.  Now, in a billion years, the outcome of the United States Civil War may come into dispute, but, not DNA.

[Neo-Scholastic]

With respect to knowlege as justified true belief, I interpret that very narrowly to mean this: knowledge consists of propositions that correspond with real facts that have significant warrant.

[The Grand Nudger]

Like the proposition, which corresponds to real facts, and has significant warrant...that gods are anthropomorphized characters used as literary devices in the exposition and dissemination of our very human normative beliefs. Put your thumb on them, wait to see if they escape the page.

Thus, I can't be an agnostic, because I don't think this is an unknown or an unknowable. There are no gods in the sense that god believers think they exist. People ask, "what if there's something else, somewhere else, somewhen else, that sortof matches their descriptions if you squint sideways on the winter solstice?" IDK, but we're talking about gods, not whatever the fuck those are, if they are. I imagine they'd think our god stories were a real knee slapper. Fire the writers kindof stuff.

"Bill, Bill, come over here, you have to hear this! Now, human, tell my friend Bill -exactly- what you just told me....about these gods of yours."

[Ranjr]

I've also noticed more ill defined positions lately.  But nothing like that ignosta uptrend in oh seven.

[Jehanne]

With respect to knowlege as justified true belief, I interpret that very narrowly to mean this: knowledge consists of propositions that correspond with real facts that have significant warrant.

As if Divine Revelation is "knowledge"? Why don't you just come out and say it?! Problem with "divine revelation" is that no one can universally agree on its "sources".

Twenty years ago I remember reading an artucle in Sky & Telescope about 5 different research groups who set off to measure the age of the Universe. None of the groups collaborated and only two groups were aware that the "other" group was working on the same problem. They all showed-up at one of the biannual American Astronomical Society meetings where they presented their results, and, of course, got to know one another.

Using different techniques, they all got the same value within their stated confidence intervals.