It seems disingenuous to mix Agnosicism with Atheism. Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)
Except that I'm not sure that true atheists, as distinct from agnostics, actually exist. Challenge any atheist and they'll admit that the existence of one or more deities is possible, but very unlikely.
The real distinction is between "teapot agnostics", who think gods are incredibly unlikely, and "proper" agnostics, who actually think it's reasonably probable. Many teapot agnostics will call themselves atheists just for the sake of saving time.
I'll also admit that the existence of Santa Claus, who lives at the North Pole in some kind of cloaked fortress and has some kind of time-warp technology that allows him to deliver toys to boys and girls world wide in one night is possible.
Nevertheless, I think it would be stupid to describe myself as a Santa Claus agnostic as opposed to a Santa Claus atheist. We have a very good explanation for the Santa Claus story, so there is zero reason to entertain the notion that it might be true.
Same for gods. We have good explanations for how the god stories arose. We can observe that all human societies have these stories, but that they are inconsistent from society to society. We can observe the the believes are convinced that there is something special about theirs--but we see that for the believers from each.
I think the Santa Claus analogy is a poor one since the story of Santa Claus or his existent doesn't solve any know problems. God solves a lot of problems, like where do we come from.
To me agnosticism is being open to possibilities and admitting at this current level nobody has all the answers.
Why would they want to Cop out? In most people's mind Atheist and Agnostic are the same thing.
[Edit: If you are downvoting it will be helpful if you post a reply]
Saint Nick solves a specific problem: Where do the presents come from over the christmas period. It couldn't have been my parents who put them at the end of my bed because they were asleep and as any child knows it's naughty not to be asleep at night. My parents, the guardians of all that is correct in the world, would NEVER be awake at night. So the only reasonable answer is the one given by my parents, the guardians of all the is correct in the world, that there is an advert for Coke climbing into my house and delivering the presents I so wished for.
Then I grew up and it just didn't seem logical any more. Burdened by the truth that may parents, now no longer the guardians of truth in the world, had played a trick on me I went into the world armed with the knowledge that all is not what it seems and that the search for the truth is difficult and long. Over time I realised that this burden was in fact a candle in the darkness of ignorance. A darkness that is in part inherited and in part constructed by the Guardians (whomever they may be) to keep me from the truth.
So you see good old saint Nick has a very specific role in society. He's a lie told by parents to bring darkness into the world of children under the guise of 'magical enchantment'. For some, he is a catalyst to see the lie but for others he is the first snuffing of the harsh light of inquiry and intellectual endeavour that all children are born with.
Why would you even want to know all the answers? Sure, I understand why you want to convince others that you (or your particular collection of fairy tales) have all the answers.
But then you are talking about power & influence, which I guess is the main reason why something that evolved for biological reasons is still around centuries past its expiration date.
>I'll also admit that the existence of Santa Claus, who lives at the North Pole in some kind of cloaked fortress and has some kind of time-warp technology that allows him to deliver toys to boys and girls world wide in one night is possible.
Except you don't.
Why lie so blatantly. If you're trying to establish the truth then you wouldn't do this. This doesn't prove that you always lie to convince other people of your position regardless of it's truth but it does lead us in that direction.
By this same logic I could argue that no scientist is Christian, and no Christian is a scientist.
Ask any scientist who is Christian, "does a good scientist believe claims that cannot be independently verified?" Then ask, "do you believe in god?" The questions "are you a good scientist?" and "can the existence of god be independently verified?" follow.
You'll force this poor scientist to admit they're not a good scientist, or perhaps as a compromise you can say that the existence of god is a hypothesis which they have not yet been able to test to their satisfaction (which doesn't sound like belief to me).
Okay, that's actually not the most common result (I might expect a lecture on politesse, or perhaps a simple request to shut my trap). But I find it detestable to go around and tell people that they label themselves wrong, e.g., "You are not a true atheist." It's almost as villainous to say things like "Strong atheists do not exist." when there are plenty of people who claim to be strong atheists. Say instead something like, "strong atheism is not a tenable position." Or, "strong atheism is logically inconsistent." Then, at least, I won't think of you quite so poorly, and we can argue logic instead of identity.
For the record, I'm positive that there are many good scientists who are also Christians. I'm also positive that there are many strong atheists.
P.S. It's bad enough that as a bisexual male I don't exist, but as a strong atheist too I doubly don't exist. Harsh.
If you really are a strong atheist (ie one with a belief that the probability of the existence of any god is zero rather than merely negligibly small) then I apologise for my assertion of your nonexistence.
What I should have said was that most atheists, such as myself or Richard Dawkins, are really agnostics of the negligibly-small-probability variety.
"Challenge any atheist and they'll admit that the existence of one or more deities is possible, but very unlikely."
To which I counter: "Needlepins & how many angels they can hold." It just doesn't matter.
"God lives in a place where reason can't go" is the kind of weak argument I hate most about theism. If you're arguing about the remote possibility of god existing, you're pulling at straws.
Is it so hard to accept that we are just animals with highly evolved, yet ultimately limited brains? Is it so hard to accept that we can't understand everything?
I prefer "strong atheism" in lieu of the Scottsman-esque term "true atheism."
After all, atheism is commonly just a rejection ("a-") of theism. Adeism, if you will, would be the belief there is absolutely no god. Just like deism weakly claims there is a god but we aren't sure what it's like, but theism tells us everything about this god.
1. If you believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are a theist agnostic. (This is not that silly. Many people believe things they do not claim to know. For instance, you can believe that P != NP while acknowledging the question as unproven and unknown.)
2. If you don't believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are an atheist agnostic.
3. If you claim to know, not just believe, that a god exists, you're a theist (but not an agnostic).
4. If you claim to know there are no gods, you're an atheist (but not an agnostic).
5. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" cannot be meaningfully answered due to flaws in the nature of the question, then you are a theological noncognitivist.
6. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" cannot be answered before defining "god", then you are an ignosticist. An ignosticist who claims that "god" cannot be defined is therefore also claiming that "does a god exist?" can never be answered.
7. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" is not worth answering, then you are apatheistic.
8. Alternatively, if you choose to assume that the answer to the question, "does a god exist?" is "no", but do not consider it worth the effort to attempt to answer the question conclusively, then you are apatheistic.
9. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" cannot be answered because the question cannot be correctly communicated due to differences in the definition of "god" and/or "exist" between the idiolects of the persons attempting to communicate the question to each other, then you are a philosophy major.
9b. If (9) above applies but you manage to work the word "qualia" into the discussion, then you are a philosophy major and I'm changing the subject.
10. If God exists but denies your existence then what does that make you?
A stance of mine is: try not to talk to people who believe that they have a "rational" or "empirical" proof of God's existence for no bigger fool will you find.
During the Enlightenment, which was the heyday of deism, philosophical proofs of God's existence were still taken seriously by most deists. So they weren't agnostic at all--they claimed to know, based upon reason, that God existed. A perfectly consistent Enlightenment-era viewpoint.
However, since they only go as far as "God exists" and never get to the more exotic beliefs, namely the beliefs which always were and always will be taken on faith (God had a human son, who was also God, died, and was resurrected; God chose a Middle Eastern ethnic group for a special purpose; God revealed prophecies to certain people; God is from outer space) they weren't religious.
Really comes down to a matter of definitions. For example, many would claim that atheism is simply the lack of a belief. Some would define agnosticism as the positive belief that the existence of God cannot be known. But these are just example definitions.
Grouping atheists with agnostics is as catch-all as 'Christianity'. I was educated Anglican and to me it's as vastly different from Catholicism as you can tell, my youth minister was actually a methodist and the assistant was baptist. My shop teacher was actually a Quaker, who actively disbelieved in the hierarchical structure of church, who was the person who probably put me on a path to agnosticism.
My agnosticism is of the - God's existence cannot be proven or disproven (at least in my lifetime, or potentially within the human races existence as homo sapiens) so it's illogical to take the side of religion or anti-religion. The logical conclusion (to me) is that it is an unknowable variable, concerning myself with it is a wasted effort.
Besides Greek Mythology has all the cool stories, Heracles slaying Hyrdas and freeing Prometheus. If religion can't entertain me in the slightest then it truly holds no value to me.
I agree definitions vary, and that can cause confusion. For example, people unsure of what to believe can label themselves agnostic. Some call this "fence sitting". At the same time there is what's called weak atheism and strong atheism, the latter asserting there are no gods, which of course is a stupid assertion to make in an absolute sense. So weak atheism makes the most sense as it makes no assertion; it's just the absence of belief. So a weak atheist could technically be labeled agnostic, which is how I define myself, and appears the most rational definition for having no god belief.
There's a definition to atheism I've read once that I think it's the best way to define what atheism means to me: An atheist doesn't believe in god the same way he doesn't believe in santa claus, or werewolves. It's not that he can positively proof god does not exist, only that there's no reason, given current evidences, to believe.
I wouldn't agree with this assessment. Atheism is not a knowledge claim; it's just disbelief in God. Similarly, I don't believe in intelligent life on other worlds, but that isn't a knowledge claim — there's just no good reason to believe in it.
Agnosticism, however, is a knowledge claim: It's the claim that God is is unknowable.
Who is upvoting this? Dawkins - and according to the Dawkins scale / the poll he ran, most atheists - do not claim there is no god. (That's "strong atheism" and a minority viewpoint, as it is a faith statement.) He rejects Christianity, etc., but leaves open the possibility that some definition of a god may exist, while claiming that such a being is unlikely and unproven.
I don't believe there is a god, so I am Atheist. I also don't think the answer to "is there a god?" can be answered definitiely. That makes me Agnostic. I also think that since the answer cannot be determined, the question is a silly one. That makes me an Apathist too.
I think the split is a fairly good indication of how rational someone is. People who consider themselves atheist tend to act more rationally in the bayesian sense.
I'd like to see a split between atheists and agnostics, particularly because the numbers are so high in that category in this community. I would guess that there would be many more agnostics than atheists. I don't think that being an entrepreneur is particularly bayesianly rational :)
Not necessarily--rational Bayesians are more often atheists, but lots of atheists are completely irrational people who have been raised with atheist beliefs by secular liberal society, just like lots of religious people are completely irrational people who have been raised by religious society. (There are also a small number of highly rational people who have, in my opinion, a very small, God-shaped blind spot in their thinking.)
The zero vs. one-or-more dichotomy hits the nail on the head. The problem with Pascal's wager is that its rationale can apply to every proposition. If you're committed to err on the side of safety, you need to accept every possible non-falsifiable idea, because, hey, what if it's true?
Taken to its logical conclusion, accepting Pascal's wager would at best generate immense amounts of cognitive dissonance as you attempted to integrate potentially infinite contradictory ideas into your worldview.
I'm not sure there is a false dichotomy present there. You're either going to burn in hell or you're not. The downside of trying something to get out of that sentence is small and upside is big. It's terrible theology but it's decent logic.
It's false in the sense that it only provides two options and seems to indicate those are the only two options. Believe in the Christian God or don't. It doesn't take in to account Jupiter or Zeus or any other potential deities in determining the 'logic' of choosing to believe or not.
I think it's a false dichotomy because there is more than two possible outcomes. At one end you have 'there is no god' in which case it doesn't matter, fine, but then at the other end there's more than just 'worship God' - there's also 'worship multiple Gods', or 'worship the devil', or endless other possibilities of worship, with no strong reason to pick any one of them.
I think the assumption is that you are considering believing in a Christian God and on those terms the wager is valid. As far as I know other religions offer little promises in terms of what happens if you stick with it.
I think category A would be believing in Jesus and category B would be not believing in Jesus whatever that means to you.
If Agnosticism and Atheism (and nonreligious) were different options I would have a problem choosing which one to vote (and I think many other people here too). There is a lot of overlap among these options, and the definitions vary.
There is more than one definition of Atheism (some classify them in weak and strong atheism, but even these two classes aren't enough for some), and there are different "levels" of Agnosticism depending on your country or culture. Some of these differences are because of communication issues. For example, there is controversy if "lack of belief" and "disbelief" are synonymous (compare with "not liking" and "disliking"). When books on such topics are translated to other languages, such nuances may get lost.
Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)
Sure, but making a knowledge claim doesn't make it any less objective or wise than being neutral.
I can say that there is definitely not a red 1982 Chevy Silverado orbiting Jupiter and that's a "knowledge claim", yet someone who says they're not sure or are neutral about my claim don't hold a superior position in any sense and would, in fact, look a little silly given the lack of evidence against it.
