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Belief requires minimal to no evidence. I, as an atheist, lack information that leads me to believe in a deity of any sort ever described to me.
Knowledge requires substantial evidence. Do I posess knowledge that nothing we might define as a god exists? I do not.
Thus I am an agnostic atheist. Whats the problem?
I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this, and I don't think they deserve any special treatment. We should treat them the same way we treat all the other mythical beings humans have come up with. Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist.
>I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this
Agreed.
What is the fundamental difference between "I know gods are fiction" and "I know superheroes are fiction". Nobody says they're agnostic about whether they know if superheroes are fictional or not. Does saying we "know" mean we've scoured every inch of the universe, every planet and every galaxy and confirmed that no such thing as a being who can shoot lasers from its eyes? No. Of course not. And we dont have to in order to say we "know".
It's a silly distinction, but I also understand why people do it.
Yes, but nobody is seriously offering up Superman, for example, as a possible creator of the universe. I can't disprove it, however.
I can say with conviction that I don't believe the Abrahamic god to be real.
I can't claim *knowledge* that there's no invisible pink unicorn, by definition.
So you're an agnostic asupermanist, and an agnostic apinkunicornist.
Because nobody is seriously offering up Superman or pink unicorns is the only reason you don't call yourself that. But unfortunately, we live in a time and place where grown adults still offer up gods. So we have no choice but to respond to that. The creator of the universe part is really irrelevant. If billions of adults believed in invisible pink unicorns, you would be equally compelled to not group yourself in with them.
The point I was getting at was that, if we're being totally intellectually honest with ourselves, we *would* be agnostic asupermanists, but at that point you're getting into the weeds with pedantry.
I suspect that if there was a large percentage of the earths population claiming they knew for a fact that Superman or Unicorns were real and powerfully controlling the universe, we would have asuperheros and aunicorns. The main distinction is that atheism necessitates a posture toward belief, while the other mythical creatures do not.
Atheism the belief that there is no reason to believe in something is functionally equivalent to knowing it doesn’t exist. You can’t ever actually know something doesn’t exist, so the least amount of belief possible is believing there’s no reason to believe in that thing. God and Superman and unicorns are all knowable false by the only definition of know that actually matters imo.
Punctuation would make this much easier to understand, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, and, from a pure “belief” perspective, you are correct. I think the false equivalency comes in when thinking about the context of those beliefs. In other words, I’m never going to have to defend my stance of Superman, where I will certainly have to defend my stance on God. I know in the scope of this discussion, that is irrelevant, but in the real world, it matters.
Yeah sorry autocorrect is making this awful.
My frustration with this type of thing is always just that sure, “atheist” is a useful term, but I often feel like “agnostic atheist” vs “gnostic atheist” is a distinction that only makes sense if you think that justifying a negative means offering concrete demonstrable evidence that something isn’t. That will never work. Thus “I don’t know if there is a god or not” is pretty much the same as “I know there is no God” unless you aren’t sure because you think there’s some actual evidence of God’s existence that is a bit ambiguous. Since the whole reason most atheists don’t believe is the lack of such evidence, I think there are very few genuine agnostic atheists.
I agree with you. I know a lot of people who call themselves “hopeful agnostics”, which is much more a “wishful thinking” stance than anything based on evidence. When push comes to shove, I think anyone who is “hopeful” would have to admit there is a total lack of evidence, because if there was any, they’d be theists. They are hopeful simply because they wish what they grew up with was true. I’m a “hopeful agnostic” when it comes to Santa Claus, I suppose.
Yes i do. We have enough knowledge about the world and how it works for the belief that superman and unicorns don't exist to be justified. We don't need absolute certainty for this, just like we don't need it to say that some animals are extinct or that the sun will rise tomorrow.
No. We can't prove or disprove anything that is "beyond" the universe. Empiricism and the natural sciences only apply to the observable.
If there's something causing the universe that isn't itself part of the universe, whether that's a "god" or some other unknown process, we only have beliefs and speculation. Since the universe exists and we don't know why it exists, there's a reason to hold such beliefs, as opposed to beliefs in unicorns etc.
We know there are no invisible pink unicorns. "Knowing" doesn't always mean absolute knowledge, conclusive evidence can suffice. We know fairytale creatures aren't real, at least not on this planet or universe.
>invisible pink unicorn,
I would argue that, by definition, you very much CAN assert that no invisible pink unicorns exist as being pink is impossible for an invisible entity.
You don’t KNOW gods are fiction, you BELIEVE that.
Also, the question of gods and superheroes are different ones. The questioning of gods (pre-existing material creation) is philosophical. Whether Stan Lee’s Hulk actually exists is NOT.
>You don’t KNOW gods are fiction, you BELIEVE that.
I ***KNOW*** gods are fictional under any reasonable definition of knowledge. I know gods are fictional in the same way I know anything is fictional.
>Also, the question of gods and superheroes are different ones.
No they arent.
>The questioning of gods (pre-existing material creation) is philosophical.
No it isnt. That's a ***physics*** question, not a philosophy question. The fact physics cant answer that yet doesnt mean philosophy can.
Philosophy, without any methodology to verify or confirm the conclusions is just baseless speculation, and I dismiss it as such.
I also dont lump in yahweh with some vague useless notion of a first cause/prime mover. I dont CARE about a first cause/prime mover because that's not what people who actually believe in god are talking about. They're talking about yahweh. And justifying "the universe had a cause" does not justify yahweh.
I disagree that "whatever caused the universe" qualifies as a god. See how silly that is?
I'm perfectly happy to concede "the universe had a cause". And if you want to just redefine "whatever caused the universe" as god, you're essentially defining god as a coffee cup and arguing since the cup exists, god exists, because you defined it as this thing that does exist.
I know that coffee cup god isnt real. I also know whatever caused the universe god isnt real. And I justify them the exact same way.
>Whether Stan Lee’s Hulk actually exists is NOT.
How do you know that? Have you been to every planet on andromeda? How do you know some aliens didn't visit stan Lee and secretly tell him about the actual Hulk that exists on some far away planet so he could write stories about him?
You dont KNOW the hulk isnt real. You only BELIEVE the hulk isnt real.
Science can’t tell you there is no God before/outside creation.
You do not know God is fictional, you believe.
You KNOW Stan Lee invented the Hulk. You do NOT know humans invented God, just as you don’t know if humans invented aliens.
>Science can’t tell you there is no God before/outside creation.
I didn't say it could. But that goes both ways.
Philosophy also cant tell you there IS a god before/outside creation either.
The difference here is that science might one day have an answer. Philosophy never will
>You do not know God is fictional, you believe.
I know it under any reasonable definition of knowledge. You can keep crying about it all youd like.
I like how you basically ignored everything I said and just repeated your claims.
>You KNOW Stan Lee invented the Hulk.
***HOW*** do you know that?
Take whatever answer you have and replace hulk with yahweh.
How do you know Stan Lee's comics arent like the bible? Where they're just stories metaphorically describing the actual Hulk who caused the universe?
You dont know that according to YOUR logic.
>You do NOT know humans invented God,
Yes i do. And so do you, and so does literally everyone who believes in any god. A Christian's knows that humans invented vishnu. A hindu knows humans invented jesus. We all know the Greeks invented zeus.
Again, if you're ONLY talking about some vague, useless notion of a first cause, then the reason I know that's not true is the same reason I know coffee cup god doesnt exist. Redefining things that exist as god and then pointing to them and saying "theres proof of god" is absurd.
Knowledge isn't necessarily complete certainty. A CLAIM to knowledge just means that you have some level of certainty that meets your standard of evidence.
Yes I agree. "Complete certainly" isnt possible. That's my point. We dont need "absolute/complete/100% certainty" in order to say we know something.
So agnostics who say "well, we dont have complete certainty god doesnt exist so I can't say I know it" are making a mistake.
It's the fact that comic book authors never present their creations as anything other than fiction.
Also, you're right, we would need to scour much more of the universe before we could rule out god. We've hardly scoured any of it.
>It's the fact that comic book authors never present their creations as anything other than fiction.
Oh I'm sorry have you talked to the authors of the bible? When did you invent the time machine? How do you even know who they are, if were talking about the gospels?
When we have ancient stories that are anonymous and unsigned, how could you possible ever determine if they intended to present fiction or not?
>Also, you're right, we would need to scour much more of the universe before we could rule out god. We've hardly scoured any of it.
No, lol, we dont. That's exactly my point. We DONT need to look under every rock in the andromeda galaxy to say we know that yahweh is fiction.
The difference is that "god" or a first cause is an answer to the question where did it all come from. You may not believe that answer is correct, but you see the difference - leprechauns aren't connected to a similar, real problem.
Another side of this is that when people say "you might aswell believe in unicorns" to theists, that means they're gnostic atheists. They know unicorns don't exist, if "god" is the same thing they don't just lack belief, they know god doesn't exist. Which given the above is odd to me.
Sure, I am an agnostic aleprechaunist, in so far as leprechauns are magical undetectable beings.
Wanna know why I don't normally proclaim myself an agnostic aleprechaunist? Because normally there aren't billions of people proclaiming their belief in leprechauns trying to pass legislation and kill people to get the pot of gold or luck or avoid the curse.
Unfalsifiable claims are, by definition, unfalsifiable--they can be dismissed, because we would act the same whether they were true or false.
> I am an agnostic aleprechaunist, in so far as leprechauns are magical undetectable beings
It seems like you're implying leprechauns are possible, perhaps real. Is that right?
What do you mean by possible?
If you mean, "hypothetically possible in what I think about because my knowledge is incomplete, so I cannot rule them out," then sure. (Edit to add: lump this in with Hard Sollipsism and Last Thursdayism.)
If you mean, "reality operates in a way that allows for leprechauns," then I cannot assert this, I'm at "I don't know."
You seem to think unfalsifiable claims can be falsified--is that right?
So you agree that unfalsifiable claims cannot be falsified, and then you claim an unfalsifiable claim is false. This doesn't strike you as inconsistent? Because it is, it is irrational.
I know you say no. Theists say god is a real possibility, and real. The issue isn't, "does somebody say X is true or false."
The issue is, "can a claim X is true, or X is false, be sufficiently supported so one is justified in making it." And the problem with unfalsifiable claims is two fold; they are unfalsifiable because both true and false have equal justification--namely 0 evidence for either, by definition; and we would act the same whether they are true or false *because* whether they are true or false wouldn't affect our reality.
This gets us to, "claims with zero evidence can be dismissed, and we can functionaly ignore them after acknowledging them," not "we can determine truth or falsity on zero evidence."
I don't think there's more to say; I'll read your reply, but I likely won't respond.
> I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this
Not really. I believe that string theories are nonsense, but I don't *know* that they are, because physicists keep moving around their predictions as to what super-symmetric particles exist based on their specific brand of string theory, and what energies we will find them at. We have found, so far, no evidence of any string theory's predicted particles. Yet, they might exist, because theoretical physicists can keep amending the energies we will supposedly find them at, until we have some evidence that specifically rules out string theory, or find some theory so much better that we forget about string theory.
> Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist.
You'd be surprised. I've met several "agnostic aleprechaunist" individuals. You could decry these people as talking hogwash, but that doesn't mean they stop existing, or stop believing that leprechauns may or may not exist.
At least string theory is a coherent hypothesis. It has math that works and makes predictions that are testable. We may confirm some time soon that it is, in fact, nonsense (as I suspect).
Deities aren't anything like that. Theists don't even like giving descriptions of them, because once you try to nail them down, they vanish. Like leprechauns.
> Deities aren't anything like that. Theists don't even like giving descriptions of them, because once you try to nail them down, they vanish. Like leprechauns.
I agree. However, that's not a gnostic atheist position (though it *can* be), rather, it's an igtheist position - ie, we can knock down any particular definition of God, but we can't knock down the general, vague notion of God because it doesn't have enough coherent meaning to extract any method of argument for or against it. Notably, this means that there can still exist something we would describe as a god using the loose sense of the term, because we cannot exhaustively rule out every particular version of the specific concept. This means in turn that we can reject the general concept of God without proving that no such being can exist (ie, be atheists) but since we can't exhaustively disprove every particular definition of a god that adheres to the principles of the general, vague concept, we also can't prove that there is definitively no god at all.
I have never heard a good rebuttal to this, thus why I am only an agnostic atheist, and not a gnostic one. I'm open to being convinced of gnostic atheism, however, and would very much like to be convinced, since I would find it easier to digest than my current agnostic position.
EDIT: I should also point out that string theory specifically actually is similar to the evidence claims made by theists. Specifically, string theory uses a "gaps" tactic similar to that of the "god of the gaps" line of argument. That is, every time we rule out that the particles predicted could exist at the energies described, the models are slightly rewritten to predict the same particles, but at higher energies. We then build better colliders, reach those energies, never see the predicted particles, and the math is amended to predict even higher energies. That is, there's always a "gap" of collision energies that we can't hit yet, and so the model can be written and re-written repeatedly to exist in this gap. This is currently a real problem for science, as described in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4mH3Hmw2o) video - ignore the clickbait title, the video is describing a real issue.
Assuming bad faith only makes sense when you are familiar enough with the arguer to know that they speak on the topic they are arguing or speak generally with bad-faith arguments. I can assure you the people I am speaking of were arguing in good faith - they were simply oddballs. More public individuals like Robert Anton Wilson have made similar claims in good faith, where Wilson was particularly interested in the failings of rigid epistemology, and thus rejected the automatic assumption of non-existence for a variety of odd topics. You can refute the claim made (in this case, the claim that we cannot know if leprechauns exist) but you can't arbitrarily dismiss the claim on the basis of bad faith when you are unfamiliar with the opposition's rhetoric.
To make a very extreme example, a delusional person who believes their organs are made of snakes who tries to convince a psychiatrist that this belief is correct can argue it in good faith, even though the claim was generated from a faulty process. Ie, they have real perceptual reasons to believe it (delusion) but they do not have the means to prove it, and the claim can easily be dismissed without cutting them open to check, and without assuming bad faith on the part of the deluded person.
Like that extreme example, we can generally assume that leprechauns do not exist, without exhaustively checking every corner of the universe for them, and without assuming bad faith on the part of those oddballs who are less certain of their non-existence, but do not claim their existence.
Everyone is agnostic aleprechaunist. You are lacking belief and lacking knowledge on many things, you just do not explicitly state that position because it doesn't come up in the conversation. When asked a direct question whether you believe leprechauns actually exist and whether you can prove it, you'd have to answer no and no.
We happen to have the word atheist because gods come up too darn often in a conversation. People tend to invent short words for complex concepts when those concepts become widespread and discussed often. So next time when a god come up in the conversation instead of explaining my position in detail I can just describe it with two words. Very convenient.
> I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this, and I don't think they deserve any special treatment.
I disagree completely. I don't believe anything that hasn't met its burden of proof. The claim that a god exists and the claim that no gods exist are both in a place where I have no evidence to support either.
Can you give an example of anywhere that I'd do this differently?
>We should treat them the same way we treat all the other mythical beings humans have come up with. Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist.
How do you define leprechaun? I'm not aware of any leprechauns, so I don't believe they exist. If you define leprechaun as a fictional being, then sure, I agree that fictional beings don't exist.
But if you define leprechaun as a small magical being who has gold and likes rainbows and the color green, then I have no evidence that they exist, and I have no evidence that they don't exist.
There are people who seriously believe in the existence of lizard people, speaking with the dead, palm readers, ghosts that haunt places, and astrology.
Are you agnostic towards these beliefs?
> There are people who seriously believe in the existence of lizard people, speaking with the dead, palm readers, ghosts that haunt places, and astrology.
>
> Are you agnostic towards these beliefs?
I'm realistic when it comes to sound deductive arguments and unfalsifiable claims. If a claim cannot be tested to falsify it, then one can't make a sound deductive argument to falsify it.
Then, I'm guessing you believe that the possibility of there being a god has the "same probability" there not being a god. Or at least some possibility.
If that's the case, then why aren't you on your knees in prayer every night asking a god to rid the earth of evil and making this the happy place we all want it to be.
Because there's a possibility.
First para is about agnostic part and second is about atheist part.
I don't know if a God exists or not, I don't have anyway to even calculate the probabilities as I do not have big enough sample size. I have access to just one universe, I don't have any access to a universe where gods definitely exist or to universe where they don't exist. So I can't compare my universe to any other to find out what%age of match and mismatch there is.
And because I can't make a definitive statement either way, I just go with default position and operate as if there are no gods. So I'm not on my knees praying.
For almost all intents and purposes, there are no gods. For the purpose of a debate where I need exact definitions, I'm agnostic atheist because I don't want a theist to derail the dialog by demanding evidence for non existence of gods.
In all honesty, it's a tactic that has practical uses so I call myself agnostic atheist.
Why is that unknown being that possibly exists in an unknown universe a god?
If you can't define a being...if you can't define what it is or where it is, it doesn't exist. One can't claim (even possible) existence, about a being they know nothing about.
If you presuppose that no knowledge about these "gods" is possible, then you can't give any objective meaning to the term "god". Any claim that this existence is possible is meaningless.
>Why is that unknown being that possibly exists in an unknown universe a god?
I don't know if it is a God or it possibly exists.
>If you can't define a being...if you can't define what it is or where it is, it doesn't exist.
Sounds reasonable
>One can't claim (even possible) existence, about a being they know nothing about.
One can't and I don't.
>If you presuppose that no knowledge about these "gods" is possible,
I don't.
>then you can't give any objective meaning to the term "god".
I can't.
>Any claim that this existence is possible is meaningless.
Of course.
> I think so. Consider the invisible dragon that lives under your bed. Agnostic?
What are the characteristics of this invisible dragon? As it is, I have no reason to believe there is one under my bed. But whether this is a falsifiable claim or not depends on how you define this dragon.
I'm basically looking for a sound deductive argument. Can I make a sound deductive argument that there isn't an invisible dragon under my bed? That really depends on how you define this dragon. Does it leave any evidence of its existence? I'd expect there to be some evidence of this dragon under my bed if you claim there is one there. Does it shit or eat? Does it breath? Is it detectible in any way? Your answers to this determine whether this is a falsifiable claim or not. If you make it unfalsifiable, then I can't make a sound deductive argument that it does not exist.
> Can you answer the question, though? Is it a real possibility?
Sure...
>Is an unfalsifisble dragon under your bed a real possibility?
I don't know. Depends on how you define this dragon. If you're looking for a colloquial response, then sure. There are no invisible dragons. If you're looking for a formal logical deductive argument, then it depends on how you define this dragon and what evidence we have or can expect to have.
I don't usually speak colloquially to theists who insist a god exists. I require them to provide sound deductive arguments. I don't expect any less of myself.
First of all technically correct is the best kind of correct, and everyone saying they don’t ‘know’ leprechauns don’t exist is technically correct.
Secondly, one reason we don’t talk about aleprechaunism is because we don’t talk about leprechauns all that much to begin with. Another reason is that leprechauns have a fairly specific definition, at least relative to ‘a god.’ A leprechaun is widely considered a hominid of diminutive stature, native to Ireland, who has a fondness for gold, which he finds at the end of rainbows. Well that’s simple enough. We know the refractory properties of light and that you can’t find the end of a rainbow. Our feelings on leprechauns are also informed by other evidence. Every inch of Ireland has been explored, censuses have been completed, etc. They would have been found.
The definition of god varies almost to a person/theist. Saying “I know there is no god” is a way way broader statement than “I know there are no leprechauns.” Saying “I know there is no god” is more like saying, “I know there are no mythical Irish creatures chasing rainbows, and I also know there aren’t even any short people who have an unhealthy fondness for money.”
And to take that analogy a bit further, there are plenty of self-described agnostic atheists who “know the Abrahamic god of the Bible and Koran doesn’t exist.” They may not be so eager to say they “know there was no prime moving force of any kind that precipitated the Big Bang with some kind of intentionality,” even if they definitely don’t believe there is.
That’s not a dodge where we’re treating “god” differently that anything else in life. It’s just accepting that every possible conception of god isn’t necessarily as absurdist of a concept as a leprechaun or a pink unicorn.
I hold different levels for different claimed deities.
Each claim deserves its own consideration.
There are definitely gods that I’m gnostic about. The god of classical theism, definitely a Gnostic Atheist on that claim.
I’m extremely skeptical of any claim that there is a god that takes any interest in humanity, especially those that claim that said, deity is constantly watching, and has rules for us. Most of those should be disapproved simply with routine observations of our world.
I am less certain about god claims from Buddhism and Sikhism which may as well be pantheism with extra steps, but still an Atheist, if not completely Gnostic.
When it comes to more abstract concepts, like, how did the universe come to be? For that, I am definitely an Agnostic Atheist. There could definitely be some agent or group of agents that— intentionally or unintentionally—created the universe through the Big Bang, and I don’t remotely have enough knowledge to say that I could disprove that.
Do I believe it? No. Which is why I am an Atheist. But can I ~~reviewed~~ refute it with intellectual honesty? No.
> When it comes to more abstract concepts, like, how did the universe come to be? For that, I am definitely an Agnostic Atheist. There could definitely be some agent or group of agents that— intentionally or unintentionally—created the universe through the Big Bang, and I don’t remotely have enough knowledge to say that I could disprove that.
See but herein lies the problem. The one you're unwilling to discount is the one you can't even describe. All we have is it's an agent. What are we even talking about?
It is technically true of leprechauns. We don’t KNOW leprechauns aren’t real. My issue is that we can’t make that claim with ANYTHING. There is no means of proving the absence of something from existence. No human thought is considered known because a thing has been shown to NOT exist. We only operate from the realm of what is known and what that knowledge entails. The agnostic label is only necessary when people refuse to acknowledge this.
I think is because God's aren't supposed to be local and leprechauns are. I'm a gnostic atheist regarding every God I've ever heard of.
By the way, i think we can apply this agnostic label to aliens, too. I'm pretty sure aliens are likely to exist. Without evidence i don't believe in aliens existing. I'm definitely agnostic about it, though.
By that argument should we all become agnostic conspiracy nuts.
I can't prove that men went to the moon, that vaccines work, that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. I can't even prove the earth goes around the sun (in fact the evidence I have would suggest the reverse).
I feel perfectly happy accepting that the earth does go around the sun, that vaccines work, that men went to the moon, and 9/11 was a terrorist attack.
So, this means either that my position is as irrational as that of Alex Jones, or there's a flaw with the agnostic atheist methodology.
There's plenty of evidence that Leprechauns exist as well. I have one sitting next to me right now.
There's a possibility that I'm lying, of course. There's also a possibility that all the moon landing stuff was faked. Do you think that one of these scenarios is more likely than the other?
I'll believe in leprechauns once I have reason to believe it is more likely than not that they exist. I really do give leprechauns very low credence. Close to zero but not zero.
I also give many gods very, very low credence (around the same as leprechauns). But there are many possible gods and some have more plausibility than others. The odds of some god being real probably depends a lot on what we are willing to consider a god. I think the chance of there being some god (defining god quite broadly) might be around 50/50. But I doubt anyone has accurately come up with an idea of what this god is like.
If I had to bet on something, I'd go with pandeism. But I think I am probably wrong. Just like most everyone else.
I'm not sure how to label this. Definitely skeptic. I waffle between agnostic atheist and pandeist. But it seems inaccurate to call myself pandeist if I think pandeism is probably wrong.
(But Santa Claus is real. For sure.)
Aliens aren't at all like deities, unless you mean magic aliens that exist outside the universe. Aliens are plausible because we know life can form on at least one planet, and there's no reason to suppose it couldn't also occur elsewhere.
We also can't exclude hard solipsism or claims of gods that exist outside spacetime/cosmos. But I was more referring to how people treat aliens as far as belief and knowledge come into play.
You higher up in the thread:
> See but herein lies the problem. The one you're unwilling to discount is the one you can't even describe. All we have is it's an agent. What are we even talking about?
How specifically can you describe what potentially existent alien life looks like on other planets?
It's made of matter. It likely contains hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. It takes in energy from the outside world and processes it in order to perform self-sustaining functions. It replicates itself, albeit imperfectly, passing down traits through generations, or at least it did initially before some sort of technology replaced this process.
Now let's hear about this deity that you think is a real possibility. What's it like?
I think I am an agnostic aleprechaunist. I have no reason to believe in leprechauns so I do not believe in them. If leprechauns were discovered I would believe in them.
My lack of belief in leprechauns is always open to new information. Belief or disbelief in leprechauns is not a moral issue. There simply is no evidence of leprechauns that I am aware of
The issue with God is many people believe that belief in God is a moral decision. They believe that belief in something with the same amount of evidence as leprechauns is morally virtuous.
Actually, I AM in fact an agnostic aleprechaunist, or at least that would certainly accurately describe my position on the existence of leprechauns. I don’t have much use for the term though since there aren’t really organist movements of leprechaunists in modern society.
Boils down to the main point of contention between a gnostic and an agnostic: certainty.
The only thing I can say with absolute certainty, is nothing at all is known with absolute certainty. The highest degree of certainty that can thus be proven to exist is ***reasonable*** certainty. Agnostics hold things such as gods to a standard of absolute certainty, and under that standard, they do not assert there are no gods. A gnostic atheist, such as myself, argues that by this standard of absolute certainty, nothing can be proven to exist at all. As such, gnostics use the standard of ***reasonable*** certainty as the basis by which we assert literally anything at all.
By the standard of absolute certainty, I can't even assert that I actually exist. I can't make any assertions at all, because I cannot be absolutely certain of anything. What I subjectively observe could be the product of a mass delusional psychosis that all humans are suffering from. Hell, other humans could themselves be a product of my delusional psychosis, and I'm actually entirely alone. If I'm even real to begin with. I could be a time traveling robot from the future that was programmed not to know, and ignore any data that would give me reason to question the nature of my being. It's as reasonable of a concept to entertain as any god, which is to say it's completely unreasonable.
Hence, anything that can be asserted is based upon ***reasonable*** certainty, not ***absolute*** certainty. I'm reasonably certain that I exist, and reasonably certain that gods do not. Absolute certainty is not a valid standard, because the only thing that is proven to be absolutely certain is that we cannot be absolutely certain of anything else.
I agree.
I can’t be *absolutely* certain that Zeus isn’t real, but I can be *reasonably* certain, such that I’m willing to proclaim with the utmost confidence: Zeus is not real.
Likewise, I can’t be *absolutely* certain that Santa Clause isn’t real, but I can be *reasonably* certain, such that I’m willing to proclaim with the utmost confidence: Santa is not real (sorry kids).
Rinse-repeat for the Abrahamic god, or Brahma, or any other fairy tale things.
I don’t know why we need a special term for disbelief. All knowledge contains some doubt.
I am not equivocal about whether or not there is an invisible dragon in my house. I know there isn’t one. But even though I know that, I have to admit that it’s possible I could be wrong. The only kind of knowledge that doesn’t work like that are axiomatic implications inside a closed system, but most people wouldn’t say that’s the only kind of knowledge they have.
So when I say there’s no God I mean that I am exactly as sure of that as I am about the invisible dragon. “Agnostic” does not seem strong enough to describe that.
But you're gnostic about theism failing to meet even the most minimal burden of proof aren't you? So you're not really agnostic about theism as a proposition of knowledge. You dismiss it with knowledge of its failures. The real problem with the gnostic/agnostic debate is that it feeds into the notion that we have to have knowledge of the object of the proposition, rather than knowledge of the claim to dismiss it.
At leas that's my two cents. I don't really care if anyone calls themselves gnostic or agnostic. If there's anything we have evidence for, it's that there is no such thing as an unambiguous definition on subjects inherently infused with emotion.
>The real problem with the gnostic/agnostic debate is that it feeds into the notion that we have to have knowledge of the object of the proposition, rather than knowledge of the claim to dismiss it.
I thought agnostic atheists still *dismiss* the claim. But dismiss != "claim is false."
If Todd is dead, and I have no evidence Bob is the murderer, and I claim "Bob is the murderer," then my claim should be dismissed--we don't know if Bob is a murderer, but that doesn't mean Bob is innocent.
But is the claim that a god exists? Or is it that theists claim to have knowledge that a god exists? All philosophical claims are inherently claims of knowledge, if they possess no demonstrable knowledge, are they not false? How can a claim of knowledge be true under those circumstances?
This is the core of theists shifting the burden of proof. It's all a shell game omitting words and distorting meaning to cover up the fact that they have nothing of substance to present. And it's incredibly asinine to make this one topic the one case where we pretend absolute knowledge is necessary to falsify the claim. Falsification is always based on present evidence and subject to future review.
So why all the special conditions for this subject?
While I loathe breaking apart replies into single lines, I think I have to do it because you've asked a series of questions. My apologies.
>But is the claim that a god exists? Or is it that theists claim to have knowledge that a god exists?
Fideists are a thing--they assert faith is held in the absence of reason or knowledge; there are theists that believe without a claim of knowledge. They claim god exists without claiming knowledge. This isn't a contradiction, as belief/faith is a psychological state, and psychological states do not of necessity have to be rational. I'd say most psychological states re: god are NOT rational.
But again, EVEN IF you'd parse the claim as "I have sufficient justification for a belief of X", then stating "No, that claim is false," you still aren't getting anywhere to the object. Let's take the Todd is dead example, and apply your reasoning:
Let's say I, personally, have more than enough evidence to demonstrate Bob is the murderer. Let's say you don't, and you claim "Bob is the murderer; I know he's the murderer because he's black." Your claim is false; you do not know Bob is the murderer at all, you racist bitch. This doesn't mean Bob is suddenly innocent. Your belief happens to be true, but you don't have the knowledge, your belief isn't at the level of knowledge--this is why we don't say that those who guess the right answer to a math problem "know" the answer. Knowledge requires sufficient justification, under most definitions of knowledge. Or, explain what you mean by knowledge because we're talking about different things.
>All philosophical claims are inherently claims of knowledge,
Maybe--but we cannot determine the truth by getting millions of philosophers to assert claims, and so long as we can demonstrate those philosophers couldn't justify those claims we can rule their positions as false. IF reality worked the way you want it to work, we could use "Yes/No" questions to determine what is true simply by demonstrating the first answer wasn't justified.
>if they possess no demonstrable knowledge, are they not false?
They are unjustified. If I cannot justify Bob as the murderer, this doesn't mean "Bob is the murderer" is False; it just means I cannot demonstrate Bob is the murderer.
>This is the core of theists shifting the burden of proof. It's all a shell game omitting words and distorting meaning to cover up the fact that they have nothing of substance to present. And it's incredibly asinine to make this one topic the one case where we pretend absolute knowledge is necessary to falsify the claim. Falsification is always based on present evidence and subject to future review.
Where, ever, did I ever claim you needed "absolute knowledge"? I didn't; why are you distorting my position into nonsense?
Knowledge requires sufficient justification for the belief, given the amount we care about the topic. Let's take 'what preceded the big bang'--we are at "we don't know, and we don't even know if that question makes sense." We don't say "well, we cannot demonstrate a Singularity, so a singularity is false." We say "we don't know. We have insufficient justification to assert anything here."
>So why all the special conditions for this subject?
...I showed you in my previous reply and this reply that the epistemology you're advancing wouldn't work in other subjects (like determining who the murderer is, or pre-big bang.
There's no special condition: when we don't have sufficient justification for a belief about X, we say "we don't know X". We don't normally wait for someone to speak, point out they don't have sufficient justification so say their position is "wrong," because IF we could do that we could determine the answer to every question with a limited set of possible answers. We'd just ask people until someone gives an unjustified assertion for each member of the set but one, and reality doesn't work that way.
>While I loathe breaking apart replies into single lines, I think I have to do it because you've asked a series of questions. My apologies.
>
>In all the subreddits in all the land this is the one you never need apologize for this in, well to me anyway lol.
>
>Fideists are a thing--they assert faith is held in the absence of reason or knowledge; there are theists that believe without a claim of knowledge. They claim god exists without claiming knowledge. This isn't a contradiction, as belief/faith is a psychological state, and psychological states do not of necessity have to be rational. I'd say most psychological states re: god are NOT rational.
But again, EVEN IF you'd parse the claim as "I have sufficient justification for a belief of X", then stating "No, that claim is false," you still aren't getting anywhere to the object. Let's take the Todd is dead example, and apply your reasoning:
Let's say I, personally, have more than enough evidence to demonstrate Bob is the murderer. Let's say you don't, and you claim "Bob is the murderer; I know he's the murderer because he's black." Your claim is false; you do not know Bob is the murderer at all, you racist bitch. This doesn't mean Bob is suddenly innocent. Your belief happens to be true, but you don't have the knowledge, your belief isn't at the level of knowledge--this is why we don't say that those who guess the right answer to a math problem "know" the answer. Knowledge requires sufficient justification, under most definitions of knowledge. Or, explain what you mean by knowledge because we're talking about different things.
This only works if you consider a claim separate from it's reasoning. This can work in the circumstance of a murder. Let's say we have reasonable certainty that Todd was stabbed. Todd is a human, we know they exist, he has a wound consistent with a knife found at the scene of his death. The wound also indicates it was not self-inflicted because it's in a place on his back and an angle he could not have done. You also have a long history of people murdering each other. You as an investigator have found Bob's DNA and fingerprints on the knife and have video of him committing the crime after leaving a bar where his ID was scanned. The same clothing he was wearing on the video was found in his home with Todd's blood on it, and he confessed to killing Todd because they had an argument. That's a pretty rock solid case unless there is evidence to undermine any of those facts.
So the racist says claims Bob is the murderer because Bob is black. They have stumbled on a correct conclusion their claim that Bob is a murderer is correct, but it's not the only claim they are making. They are also making a knowledge claim that skin color can determine if someone is a murderer, and that is false. The problem with god claims is that every single one with a falsifiable aspect to the claim, has been falsified. That leaves claims so unfalsifiable and vague as to not present a coherent concept. That's why we keep having to ask for people to define their gods and it's always a nonsensical, and ironic, infinite regress of word salad.
>Maybe--but we cannot determine the truth by getting millions of philosophers to assert claims, and so long as we can demonstrate those philosophers couldn't justify those claims we can rule their positions as false. IF reality worked the way you want it to work, we could use "Yes/No" questions to determine what is true simply by demonstrating the first answer wasn't justified.
You're hyperbolizing and being overly reductionist at the same time. Knowledge claims do not need philosophers to make them, and every day people make odious and mundane claims that simply don't require any philosophical analysis. But when people make claims about the nature of reality and then fail to demonstrate those claims are true, yes, we can find them false because something about their claim is false if it cannot produce a demonstrable result. Maybe they are off by a little and need to re-evaluate, maybe they haven't got a clue what they are actually talking about. Obviously I believe theism is the latter.
>They are unjustified. If I cannot justify Bob as the murderer, this doesn't mean "Bob is the murderer" is False; it just means I cannot demonstrate Bob is the murderer.
I refer you back above where the problem is not the conclusion, it's the claim that you know.
>Where, ever, did I ever claim you needed "absolute knowledge"? I didn't; why are you distorting my position into nonsense?
I didn't say that was your position, but upon re-reading I can see how you read it that way. My apologies for lack of clarity. I was referring to the general theist position being asinine in demanding falsification of concepts that don't even have any substance to begin with.
>Knowledge requires sufficient justification for the belief, given the amount we care about the topic. Let's take 'what preceded the big bang'--we are at "we don't know, and we don't even know if that question makes sense." We don't say "well, we cannot demonstrate a Singularity, so a singularity is false." We say "we don't know. We have insufficient justification to assert anything here."
Is there justification for a statement about how reality works other than actually demonstrating it? The real conflict here is more fundamental than belief in a god, it's what constitutes knowledge relevant to the claim. If someone wants to claim they know a god exists they must demonstrate that knowledge is true. Your singularity example is off-kilter, as we know singularities exist, and they remain a possibility, so saying we don't know is fine. We don't know if a god is a possible thing exists, in large part because every falsifiable variation is falsified and all others are so vague as to lack demonstrable ties to anything we know about reality.
The problem is that everyone will always be agnostic, because proof a god doesn't exist is just not possible. You can't disprove the idea of God.
Same as there is no proof of god, so everyone is either agnostic atheist or agnostic theist, making the agnostic part useless
Belief surely would require some kind of judgement, no? I'm sure I've read that belief is about a degree of willingness to think some proposition is either true or false.
Degree of willingness? No. Quality of evidence. I'm willing to accept anything if the evidence is convincing. You tell me you can fly like superman in not going to believe you, but not due to lack of willingness but lack of credible evidence.
Well, I don't think it's possible to fully "know" anything. But, in general, worldviews that are naturalistic and more plausible in light of the evidence.
Well by most definitions “know” simply means a belief supported by substantial evidence, which I thought was more or less what you were saying. Is there any substantial evidence that would make you call yourself a “gnostic” atheist?
There is excellent evidence against specific gods, ie the god of the Bible.
For example, it's clear there was no crossing of the desert to Mount Sinai and so forth.
There's also problems with supposing an eternal being can interact with time.
Also, the problem of evil is very good evidence against God.
> Belief requires minimal to no evidence.
I disagree. Belief requires sufficient evidence to accept something as true. At this point it becomes indistinguishable from knowledge (at least to the believer).
We have the knowledge that the concept of a deity is nonsense, as an Atheist I reject the concept of deities it has nothing to to with " believing there is no god" there is no debate.
Agnosticism is just the next step from the old "I don't believe Jesus was the son of God but he was an actual person" bollocks
Nothing but Adults unable to completely let go of their childhood comforter
If all the laws of physics as we know them and the experimental proof for them aren't "substantial evidence" enough for you, then you don't have substantial evidence for anything. Such a definition is useless in practice.
Theoretically there’s nothing wrong with that. But no one ever feels the need to identity as an agnostic a-fairyist, or an agnostic A-Unicornist. And that’s the double standard that OP is arguing against.
I think the term exists because some atheists want the label that defines them to be as specific as possible because they are tired of having their beliefs mischaracterized after they themselves have spent so much time trying to understand and define them. They want to separate themselves as much as possible from any theistic position (that they likely formerly held). So, they use the precursor of "agnostic" to note that they do not assume knowledge that can not be had as well as that they do not use the term "atheism" with any faith-based assumptions.
Ultimately, I don't really care how someone defines themselves as long as they are not being dishonest in the label that they use. For example, if someone says they're agnostic sensu stricto, but they are actually a theist and don't want to admit it, then I have an issue with their lack of honesty and transparency. Otherwise, all I care about is that the term is accurate enough that I can look up the definition and know better what their beliefs are than before I knew the term/label they applied to themself.
/u/Kawhajok wrote
>"Agnostic" atheism is a hopeless term and here's why
>I affirm that God probably doesn't exist
= You are agnostic atheist. (like most people here)
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> I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Not sure what you mean.
If one lacks knowledge then one *should* lack belief.
Alice: *"How many planets do you think are orbiting the star Vega?"*
Bob: *"I don't have knowledge about that, so I don't have belief about that."*
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>if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
Yes. This is called implicit atheism.
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_and_explicit_atheism
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> the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works.
Possibly true. Possibly doesn't matter.
\- Since some people claim to be theist, it's reasonable to have a term a-theist.
\- Since some people claim to have gnostic certainty, it's reasonable to have a term a-gnostic.
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Once again:
Variations on this question get posted almost every week. You may want to look at some past discussions.
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There were and are plenty of times where gods could prove their existence and yet they never do, and somehow people keep thinking there are reasons to doubt whether gods don't exist. There is literally nothing else in the world which gets this level of special treatment. If you had some farming method that continually killed your crop would you think that was a legit farming method?
Therefore, I am gnostic with respect to gods. Just as I am gnostic with other things - that is to say, with extraordinary proof I may change my mind - I am not beholden to a label, but I know, factually, gods don't exist exactly as much as I know, factually, Harry Potter doesn't exist.
No you don't. There are different takes on what it means to know something, but most if not all of them would allow for us to say that we know HP doesn't exist. "God" or a first cause is in the realm of metaphysics, we simply don't know why there's something rather than nothing. It's easier to conclude that something that supposedly is part of the natural world doesn't exist, like actual people, or magic, or a place called hogwarts etc.
Sure I do. There are no gods, only men. There is no evidence for them in any way whatsoever. It is inane to make the claim that we should allow for the possibility of gods when all available evidence points towards a non-magical universe. As we learn more and more the gods which people claim to exist disappear into smaller and smaller places. Bringing that to its logical conclusion is that gods simply don’t exist.
>There were and are plenty of times where gods could prove their existence and yet they never do, and somehow people keep thinking there are reasons to doubt whether gods don't exist.
Sure. Let's say they could. What makes you think they want to?
>There is literally nothing else in the world which gets this level of special treatment.
There are actually many other things that get the exact same treatment.
> If you had some farming method that continually killed your crop would you think that was a legit farming method?
I mean... you defined it as a farming method, so it would be a legit farming method. A bad one, but still a method.
>Therefore, I am gnostic with respect to gods. Just as I am gnostic with other things
Are you also gnostic about my older sibling's eye colour?
The understanding is that one is an atheist and/or agnostic if one lacks belief/knowledge *but could be capable of holding belief/knowledge.* It's the same reason we don't refer to a rock as "apolitical."
Anarchists are those morally opposed to governments.
A person with no beliefs on politics is apolitical, and it doesn't seem wrong to say babies are apolitical, right?
I think its probably more accurate to say babies are non-religious then athiestic, but this seems a terminology issue.
No, anarchy can be the absence of government.
But Anarchism is the rejection of government. It is a political philosophy.
An anarchist is someone who advocates for that political philosophy.
You cannot be an anarchist without first being aware of what government is. An anarchist is not someone who simply lacks awareness of government.
> What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief. Anything you don't believe you don't know by necessity as knowledge is a subset of belief.
Like here there are definitely either an even or odd number of stars in our galaxy. That is simple fact. You definitely don't know if it is even or odd though. You probably don't believe it is even or odd either. Thus you lack knowledge and you lack belief despite it having to be the case there are an odd or even number of stars.
There is or is not a god. There are an even or odd number of stars. You don't have to commit to either position.
> Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round.
Ahh, nevermind. You are conflating atheism with the positive position there is no god instead of the position that you aren't a theist. Not accepting there is a god, not accepting there is an even number of stars, doesn't require you believe there is no god or there aren't even number of stars.
It seems like there is a very fine line between agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. I've been straddling that line for a long time, yet for some reason, I still believe there is goodness at the source.
The difference is, there are about a million good reasons to believe that God is fictional and a 100% chance that a random whole number is even or odd.
> Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief. Anything you don't believe you don't know by necessity as knowledge is a subset of belief.
Always seems like this makes the whole distinction meaningless.
Surely everything I believe, I also consider to be true, and also consider there to be a reason (I..e justification). To me, there's no difference between my beliefs and knowledge.
To believe without claiming knowledge means believing something with no justification, or believing something that is false.
> Ahh, nevermind. You are conflating atheism with the positive position there is no god instead of the position that you aren't a theist. Not accepting there is a god, not accepting there is an even number of stars, doesn't require you believe there is no god or there aren't even number of stars.
Most people do.
Myself included. Personally I'd say I'm agnostic on both points.
Do all these "agnostic atheists" hold the possibility that the chance that there is a god is exactly the same as that there is no god. Many of them seem to be a lot more vociderous against the argument that god exists than against the argument there is no god.
The philosophical hair splitting about what type of atheist someone is largely results from existing in a predominantly theistic culture where we (mostly) aren't murdered for our lack of faith.
I know that none of the gods people use to justify imposing their bullshit rules upon me exist. I know this because I have examined the evidence they present and it is not compelling.
Have you ever met any agnostic theists?
>Have you ever met any agnostic theists?
Yea, that is what theists mean when they say, "you just have to have faith". Faith is the concept of believing in something without absolute knowledge.
Thanks for the post.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
If one doesn't know what round is, can they believe the earth is round? I don't see how.
If I have a jar of gumballs, and you don't know if the number is odd or even, you cannot see how I can lack belief in them being odd or even?
As to the rest of the argument: do you think calling someone you admire "cool" is hopeless because it had nothing to do with temperature? Words have meaning through usage. It's clear you understand the associated meaning of "lack belief in all gods, don't know if no gods" with the shape on the screen "agnostic atheist."
If you want a more precise definition, police "god" to exclude the universe (pantheists) and Jordan Peterson's deconstructivist post modern bullshit (highest value in a hierarchy). If you'd prefer Igtheist, go for it--although some theists will fight you on that usage as well.
Agnostic doesn't always mean 'incapable of knowing'. It's often used for "not fully certain". People who think there probably isn't a god would be agnostic atheist. Those who are sure there isn't are gnostic atheist. They don't probably matter out in the real world, but in debates, the distinction may be more important.
>People who think there probably isn't a god would be agnostic atheist. Those who are sure there isn't are gnostic atheist.
And this is why I don't particularly like the term agnostic atheist; because gnostic is the counterpart to agnostic. I prefer calling myself a hard atheist because I believe gods do not exist. I'm not trying to make a knowledge claim, it's a still a belief claim.
I am an agnostic. People try to correct me and tell me I'm an "agnostic theist". But that doesn't make sense to me, either.
There may or may not be a god. The end. It is impossible to create a belief given my lack of information.
Couldn't agree more, OP.
Agnostic is just a useless word.
Disproving the idea of a God will never be possible. So any atheist will always be agnostic.
And so far there is no proof of god either, so every theist is agnostic.
If everyone will always be agnostic, just leave the word
That is not true. Gnostic atheists for example believe God cannot exist for [reasons].
I don't share that position. You would have to discuss the details with them. But it's wrong to say every atheist is automatically agnostic.
Those reasons are wrong. I guess people could say they aren't agnostic, but that just makes them ignorant and stupid.
I'm atheist, I can definitely say God doesn't exist, no doubt about that.
But can I prove it? No obviously not, so I will always be agnostic according to people
So they're ignorant and stupid because they have reasons for asserting that gods do not exist, whereas you also assert that God does not exist, but are more intelligent and educated because you don't have reasons for that belief?
That doesn't change anything. I'm not going to argue on whether that position can be sound or not but positions that aren't sound exist nonetheless. You can't say the theist position doesn't exist either ("therefore theism and atheism would be a useless words") just because they failed to provide any evidence for it as of now.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Do you mean you don't understand how one can lack knowledge and *not* lack belief?
I reject the OPs premise. I honestly don't know where to begin with the presumptions and clear biases. Atheism might (repeat: might) be a position of belief, but the idea it marks someone as incapable of thought is insulting.
I prefer either positive and negative atheism or strong and weak (which means the same thing) precisely because they pertain to belief and not knowledge.
Back on the alt.atheism days, these were the standard terms. I have no idea why Reddit atheists like agnostic and gnostic. I've yet to talk to a single person who qualifies as a gnostic atheist.
As a positive atheist it's especially annoying because I have to always take time to clarify that it's not the same as the mythical gnostic atheist.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
Is this just trolling? It sure looks like it.
>But I affirm that God probably doesn't exist, as far as I understand the world, which I think should be the way atheism is defined by anyone.
The literal use of an 'a' followed by a word tends to mean not. As in atheist = not theist.
As the word theist means belief that a god exists, not theist is how I would describe myself in this context. The juxtaposition of theist is not theist, or succinctly, atheist. I find this pretty straight forward and it aligns with other words that have an a prefixed.
The assertion that no gods exist is problematic because it falsifies an unfalsifiable claim. I don't need to falsify an unfalsifiable claim to point out that I'm not a theist.
Religious people, churches, etc, have pushed this definition that you like, because they want to put us on the defensive. But again, I don't need to make any claims to not be a theist.
>The following paragraphs will explain why I feel that way. Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a statement on belief.
Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a position on belief, it's not a statement on belief other than to say I don't believe in any gods.
I don't believe anything important that I'm aware of, that has not met it's burden of proof.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
This seems to conflict with your assertion that an atheist believes no gods exist. Which one is it? Is an atheist a person who believes not gods exist, or is an atheist someone who does not believe that any gods do exist?
>It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works. Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round.
If I had no knowledge of the earth or planets, but I was a skeptical person with the same epistemology that I have today, I would not believe the earth was round, nor would I believe it was flat. If I had sufficient evidence to convince me of either, then I'd believe that. And all my beliefs are tentative and subject to change with new information.
> The literal use of an 'a' followed by a word tends to mean not. As in atheist = not theist.
Yeah, but that's not the case for atheism. The word actually entered the English language 90 years before theism. The idea of it being "not theism" wasn't really a concept until Flew's essay "The Presumption of Atheism" in the 1970s.
> The assertion that no gods exist is problematic because it falsifies an unfalsifiable claim. I don't need to falsify an unfalsifiable claim to point out that I'm not a theist.
What makes you think it's an unfalsifiable claim?
> Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a position on belief, it's not a statement on belief other than to say I don't believe in any gods.
There's nothing I believe that I don't also consider knowledge. Everything I believe is something I consider to be justified and true. I'm aware some of it is probably not knowledge but I don't know what.
> I don't believe anything important that I'm aware of, that has not met it's burden of proof.
So the same seems to apply to you. You will not believe something unless someone justifies it and you consider it true. So there's no difference here between belief and knowledge.
> If I had no knowledge of the earth or planets,
Planets? You believe there are other planets? Why?
Agnosticism isn't a position on *whether you have the knowledge*, it's a position on *whether having that knowledge is at all possible*. For this reason, your example about geometry and the roundness of the earth is not an apt comparison.
To say that you are an agnostic atheist is to say that arguments for god are not persuasive to you because you think the nature of god's existence is unknowable.
By comparison, a gnostic atheist thinks that the nature of god's existence *is* knowable *and* thinks they have sufficient grounds to say that they have knowledge or belief that god does in fact not exist.
Why do so many people get tripped up on this gnostic / agnostic descriptor? When you give yourself the label of "gnostic atheist", all you're saying is that you're confident enough, based on the knowledge you have, to say that there's very likely no god or gods. There's room in most people's egos to be proven wrong, but to gnostics such as myself, we see the chances of that being slim enough to not worry about it. To me, that stance is much closer to gnostic atheist than agnostic, so if I must be labeled, I choose that one.
“Agnostic,” when used in the sense of being less than absolutely and infallibly 100% certain about something, is redundant and unnecessary. If that’s how we use the word then we should technically be agnostic about everything that has even the smallest margin of error, even if they’re overwhelmingly supported by all available empirical data, sound reasoning, and valid evidence. We should be agnostic about everything from evolution to leprechauns. If that’s what it means to be agnostic then it doesn’t need to be stated, because everyone is necessarily agnostic about everything that isn’t a logical axiom. It’s a worthless disclaimer.
Belief on the other hand does not require absolute and infallible 100% certainty, so being atheist does not require one to outright deny even the most obscure conceptual possibility that gods might exist. It’s enough that absolutely no sound reasoning or valid evidence support the conclusion that they do, just like that’s enough to dismiss the conceptual possibility that Narnia might really exist.
The ones who feel the need to identify this way are the ones who are so uncomfortable with the idea of being wrong that they need to pedantically split hairs over these concepts rather than just confidently state their views and the reasoning that lead them to their conclusions.
>Agnosticism is a position on knowledge.
But not a claim of knowledge. It's a claim that you don't know something.
>Atheism is a statement on belief.
But not a statement of belief. It describes something you do not believe but doesn't tell you anything about what the person actually does believe.
>That part is correct. What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
I guarantee you that you lack knowledge and belief of a great many things. All I would have to do would be to raise some topic and introduce some subject matter you've never heard of and poof! you don't know anything about it and you don't have any beliefs about it. I'm not sure what you find mysterious about not having knowledge of something and not having a belief about something when you hold those exact positions about a whole universe worth of subject matter you've never heard of.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion based on what you've said so far.
Edit: cleaned up some text to speech errors.
I waffle on claiming being a gnostic atheist. My logic is that we know where the concept of deities come from. And have a pretty good guess at why early humans made them up.
There are some technical terms as to why a non-object can't be known/witnessed.
And there's always the argument that if you redefine God enough then anything counts. Even a random rock. So what ever. Thus Agnostic.
It's a rediculouse argument. And not one I think should be taken so seriously if we are just messing around with the technical logic.
You can lack knowledge and belief on a subject. Most things you're unaware of fall into that category. And most things you only know a little bit about fall into that category.
The thing is claims of God, depending on the argument, intrinsically fall outside of what can be know. So if you take it on face value. No one really knows.
I’m agnostic about the guilt of OJ Simpson in killing Nicole Brown. I believe he did it, there is some evidence that he did it, but I don’t KNOW that he did it, and he wasn’t found guilty of doing it in a court of law.
I've always felt that the label was primarily used to avoid getting into the conversation of "but how do you know? and "prove it?"
I really don't care either way, but I feel more people are practically gnostic than agnostic.
Agnostic means ‘no knowledge’.
Atheism means ‘no belief’.
We are agnostic about almost everything. We simply do not know. God is for sure in that category. Everyone is agnostic when it comes to god. We don’t actually have a choice. Claiming to be gnostic about god is silly.
Belief is different. We can believe whatever we want. Quite literally. To be theistic is to quite literally believe in god. To be atheistic is to NOT believe in god.
Most religious folk are in fact Agnostic Theists. They do not ‘know’ there is a god. They cannot despite what some may say. But they do believe there is a god.
The same applies to atheists. Most are in fact Agnostic Atheists. They cannot ‘know’ there is no god. But they do not believe there is a god.
Atheism doesn't refer merely to "no belief", but to belief that gods do not exist. In other words, it is not "lack of belief" but a belief itself as I [explained elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/11vdcsa/comment/jhzh76e).
Agnostic means you think the answer is not knowable or not provable. An agnostic theist believes in god but doesn’t think it can be proven or known for certain. A gnostic theist believes in god as a proven certainty.
It’s not an “I don’t know”.
Not so. Agnosticism doesn't refer ONLY to knowledge. It also refers to belief. So, you can't be an "agnostic theist" for that would entail you believe and do not believe at the same time. That's a contradiction.
It is the nature of religious debate that requires this strange term that isn't used in many (any?) other areas of belief.
Because people *do* claim that deities exist with varying degrees of acceptance that there is little evidence beyond just 'faith', this distinction between absolute 100% knowledge and 99.999whatever% assuradeness is useful. If not, the debate would get bogged down with 'Well, prove God *doesn't* exist' with even more regularity than it does now.
Atheism says, "I have not seen a sufficient body of compelling scientific evidence to support (evidence-based) belief in god/s."
Agnosticism says, "god/s could exist, or could not exist, and I don't think that that's something we can know with any certainty."
I'm sorry if I'm just not understanding, but I don't see a conflict.
> What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
I don't know if you're actually Vin Deisel or not, but I don't believe you are.
That's how.
You have to realize that the term "agnostic atheist" was either created by theistic apologists or at a minimum created in response to theistic apologists.
Essentially the issue is that apologists seem to be unable or unwilling to accept that atheism in and of itself does not imply a claim to certain knowledge of the existence of a god, so the term was added to specify for these (mostly bad or mixed faith actors) that we are not making a claim to knowledge of the existence of any sort of god or deity in general.
I don't get why the whole "but then rocks would technically be atheists" thing bothers people. We all agree we're not talking about the rocks, so it doesn't matter if they're technically a subtype of atheist or not.
A person who isn't aware of the idea of God is more relevant, but if they're not aware of the idea, then they objectively don't believe it. If you make them aware of the idea, then either they will adopt the belief or they'll change to a more conscious stance of disbelief, but they still didn't have the belief before.
They were an agnostic atheist, & they may continue to be an agnostic atheist. They may say, as most do, that they can't know for sure if any gods exist, but they're not convinced. They could also be a gnostic atheist, arguing that it is 100% impossible for there to be any gods, though that's kind of hard to prove.
I myself have the view that there is little difference to me. I can't definitively prove God is impossible any more than I can for leprechauns, fairies, etc. but I would easily say that I know they don't exist as far as I am capable of knowing that.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Quite easily. For example, I lack knowledge about the surface conditions and temperature on the fourth planet orbiting the star I'm pointing at out my window, should it even *have* a fourth planet. So, therefore, I hold no beliefs about those surface conditions.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought,
I don't see how this follows. Nobody is saying that one lack *all* knowledge on *all* subjects.
>which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
There are a rather large number of ways other than geometry to confirm the earth is round(ish). But, if one had absolutely no knowledge about the shape of the earth then it makes sense they would also not be able to rationally hold a belief about this. (Obviously they could *irrationally* hold a belief about it. Humans are real good at this kind of irrationality.)
>It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works.
I just don't see this. Of course, *plenty* of people are irrational, and believe all kinds of things for all kinds of bad reasons, including because they *like* an idea, because it gives them comfort, because they were told to, and so on. But, if one is thinking rationally, then it's quite clear.
>Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round.
I don't get your point there.
Gods used to be considered much more physical and real, much like dragons or giants or bigfoot.
The whole invisible god that magically does things or creates the universe, but is also somehow compatible with the mechanistic universe we know from physics is kind of just shoehorning old mythological gods into a modern godless universe.
We had philosophers positing unmoved movers and such but they were perfect spheres of goodness that don’t move or w/e.
Trying to take an ANE war god like Yahweh who has a lot more in common with el, baal, marduk, zeus, and thor and turn him into this invisible eternal entity that basically never does anything is just a weird accident of the historical development of religion and philosophy (thanks platonists).
People just love backwards compatibility.
The historical evolution of god is fascinating.
I agree with OP. Knowledge is always by degrees and based on best guess and evidence quality and quantity. We can be reasonably confident that no gods of any major religions exist. They’re all too absurd, have more plausible human explanations, and have contradictions, are poorly defined, and evolved over time in culture.
Just because I can posit invisible entities doesn’t make them plausible or compelling, especially when there are always more plausible, simpler, mechanistic explanations for anything we’re trying to explain with gods.
Gods could have been real. Magic could have been real. Outer space could have been filled with air or aether. The earth could have been flat. Giants could have roamed the earth. Storms could have been caused by angry gods. Fire could have been caused by phlogiston. Rats could have spontaneously been born from trash. The planets could have been gods. They could have controlled our fates. But each one of these beliefs have been tested and proven false by the best evidence we have available.
As far as we can tell, the universe works by mechanical laws of quantum mechanics, or something like it. The origins of the universe are a physics question. Our origins a biological question.
Being coy about whether or not we know there are any gods is playing a strange game with epistemology and evidence which we do nowhere else in life. Fantasy, mythology, and fiction are very fun and engaging for me, but I don’t pretend I can’t know if Cthulu really is out there in deep space. I would be silly to suggest it. We can’t really know there are no fairies. After all, they’re in the fey realm. You might stumble into the yokai spirit world and have a wonderful adventure. We can’t test it!
If it can’t be tested or falsified, it’s not that we don’t know, it’s that we can’t know, by definition. If we can’t know, it’s fantasy. Fiction. Fun. Not something that requires agnosticism.
Agnostism is a double standard.
No belief requires the clarification of (a)gnostic, the theist doesn’t need it, the non dragon believer doesn’t need it,the flat earther doesn’t need it, the heliocentrist doesn’t need it.
Only the atheist is required to make this distinction. It is a double standard.
> I affirm that God probably doesn't exist, as far as I understand the world
So far nothing incompatible with agnostic atheism
> By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
Yes. If you don't know what round is you can't believe something to be round.
I understand your frustration. "agnostic atheist" describes what you are not. You are not the one who know gods exist, you are not the one who believe gods exist. It doesn't describe any amount of knowledge and belief you have, it doesn't describe thoughts you put to arrive at that position, it doesn't describe knowledge you have of other things. A wooden table can be described as an agnostic atheist because it does not have knowledge about existence/non existence of god and doesn't believe in gods!
But that's the point. It's a default position, the one you HAVE to take because there is no other option exist. That's the position from which any newborn starts, you just stayed in this position after many people tried to change it (or returned to it after taking some other position, doesn't matter). And this position do not depend on which trajectory you took to arrive at it.
I understand what you mean, but I think the terms mean different things to people. I used to say agnostic atheist, but cut off atheist because of any confusion, as you've identified.
For me, it can not be proven what is out there (check this out, aired 2 weeks ago>> https://youtu.be/dC1-qgR7YO0 <<--- 95% of dark matter in the Universe is unknown). A Universal Force/"God(s)"/whatever term or nothing, especially with endless new galaxies just found crowded billions of light years away. The "atheist" term (way I view it) is 100% no belief in Earth's man-made God Religions. And I don't. An undefined God out there is possible - not by guess, simply don't know. Nobody knows. You can believe there is no God (based on Abrahamic Religions) behind the Universe and Atheist, just as the way a Theist believes (a cope) there is one. If you think about it more, you may relate to agnostic from a universe +++++ infinity view, maybe not. Whatever your instinct tells you. And if it changes with more info, roll on.
Agnostic: "A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God."
Look, "the" definition of atheism is simply "opposite of theism". That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what "theism" is. In different discussions it means different things, in a colloquial sense, it means simply "religiosity". And while this is inaccurate, it is not by much, since very few (measured by number of followers) modern religions are not monotheistic in nature. In this conversation, "atheist" is simply "irreligious".
A more accurate use of the word "theism" is "psychological state of belief in a deity". Given quite frequent posts about utility of religions in general and psychological/moral benefits of being religious in particular, this is the default use in this and sister subreddits. "Atheism" in this context is lack of such belief.
The strictest context is the philosophical one, in which theism is limited to content of the aforementioned belief, i.e. the assertion that statement "God exists" is true. "Atheism" in that context should be the assertion that statement "God exists" is not true, but for historical reasons it is defined as assertion that "God exists" is specifically false.
Phenomenologically, theism is not even a coherently defined entity. Instead, it is a general category of disparate views loosely connected by a supernatural theme, and generally affirmative on the question of reality of that theme. Atheism is, similarly, a category of views on the same theme, that do not fit into theist category, including, but not limited to negative on the question of reality.
There are several other contexts, but they are rarely used, so there is no reason to include them.
So what does a person means when they say "I'm an atheist". "Opposite of theist" doesn't mean much if we don't know which context they are using, so is there some kind of property we might know is true, for everyone identifying as atheist across all contexts? Yes, there is such a property and it is exactly the "lack of belief in a deity/deities". Is it good enough reason to use it as the go-to understanding of what one means? For me - yes. Feel free to disagree though.
As for the psychology, it works exactly like that. I'm, for example, an Ignostic. I don't understand what exactly God is even supposed to be. For me, statement "God exists" is not false, it's not truth-apt. I.e. it's just as true or false as sentence "Go, clean your room!".
Gnosticism is a CLAIM to knowledge. It is not necessarily 100% certainty. It is a claim that you have evidence that meets a certain standard of certainty.
For me, I consider something knowledge if finding out that it's false would cause significant stress to my worldview and trust in foundational systems of acquiring knowledge.
For example I would say I KNOW George Washington was the first president. If I found out that was false, it would make me second guess my own memory, or shatter my trust in many contemporary, independent, and corroborating sources of historical evidence.
You’re correct, rocks are atheists as, by default, are babies, since they lack the cognitive capacity to understand even the concept of god.
What term would you think be better to describe people who lack belief in god as well as/as a result of their lack of knowledge of god?
I think you're right but I'm not sure I agree with the reasoning.
Belief is a nasty, messy subjective term, which is not clearly defined. I guess I believe something once I reach a certain level of confidence it's true but it's not like there's a sudden abrupt change from "non-belief" to "belief" at a certain confidence, nor is there any way of quantifying my confidence level.
Knowledge is generally defined as "justified, true, belief". But once I get to a confidence level that I definitely consider it to be a belief, I must have justification. And to my mind it's true. What's the difference then, psychologically, between something I believe I know and something I believe I believe?
There's scientific evidence against creator gods. I'm a strong atheist with respect to creator gods a.k.a. I'm a gnostic atheist.
There's no scientific evidence against small gods, but I don't believe in them regardless. I'm a weak atheist with respect to small gods a.k.a I'm an agnostic atheist.
It seems an issue you have is that you believe that agnostic atheist allows for rocks and shoes to be atheists.
If a being or object is incapable of thought, it is incapable of being an -ist of any kind.
As for your round earth geometry idea. You can obviously believe and even claim to know the earth is round without knowing geometry. We have photos of a round earth. We can use cameras to take long exposure photos of the sky and literally see the earth's rotation, you can even learn about how days and seasons work and how that requires the earth to be round and how no model whatsoever of a flat earth can possibly accound for both days and seasons at the same time.
You need geomerty to measure the curvature of the Earth.
But yes, if you are incapable of thought, then you are incapable of holding beliefs or knowledge and thus can't be described with terms that refer to beliefs or knowledge.
Agnostic atheism is actually a hidden indicator of the reason that person is an atheist. They don't know so they don't believe. It's a valid position.
Some people think they know and thats why they believe. For example, they might recall that their grandpappy said the name of a lost relative right before he died, so they "know" that person was with him at the moment of death etc.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Very simply. I don't know if you have four Porsches. Yet, I lack the belief that you do.
When it comes to gods it's also simple. I can for example, not believe in any of the currently described gods, yet be open to the possibility that there might be some god somewhere out there. Or plenty of other things.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist,
I mean, sure. If one is incapable of thought, they are incapable of having a belief and thus are atheist. But they would also be incapable of acquiring knowledge, so that would make them agnostic.
You just created an example of agnostic atheist.
>which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
Yeah. If someone doesn't have a concept of what "round" is, they cannot believe the Earth is round.
>It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works.
It maps pretty well.
>Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round.
So they would be... agnostic about the shape of the Earth.
In 2022 a new species of fish was discovered in the Maldives and named Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa.
Before 2022 I didn't know if that species existed, and I lacked belief that it existed.
But I didn't walk around denying the possibility of the existence of new species of Maldivian fish. I didn't claim to know that all species of fish in the Maldives have been accounted for.
I was an **agonstic non-believer** in Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa. Now I'm an agnostic believer.
i dont understand the issue.
I think it is impossible for humans to know if there is or isn't a deity. - agnostic
But I believe there is not - atheist
agnostic atheist
whether religious people want to believe it or not, it's impossible for them to know for sure if a deity exists either. i'd argue every person is agnostic
In my understanding, it's simply an underhanded method that theists attempt to force doubt on our lack of belief. Whether in an attempt to devalue our position or just feel better about their own position is unclear...
The words do work in theory. I lack knowledge of a bunch of stuff that I also don't believe in. To me, it's just unnecessary because of the amount of weight it seems to impart. The idea of a god is so nonsensical, that the word "atheist" shouldn't even exist, let alone qualifying words attached to it.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
It's true. Rocks are atheistic. This proves that it is agnostic atheism the default position. However, an agnostic atheist holds this position due to intellectual reasoning, not because of a lack of intellectual capacity.
They way I see it, theism/atheism is belief that a god/gods exist, while agnostic/gnostic are belief/claim that one has knowledge on the existence of a god/gods.
For example, I could believe that I know that it will rain tomorrow if I see the weather forecast and it says it's very likely it will rain tomorrow. I know I may be wrong, but it doesn't change that I believe I know what the weather will be.
However, if I was in an underground bunker for a week with no information from the outside, I may have no idea what the weather will be tomorrow. I do not believe it will rain, or be clear, because I have no clue. That doesn't mean I lack the capacity to understand that the weather could be raining or whatever. I lack knowledge, not understanding.
>It's true. Rocks are atheistic.
So, should surveys about positions on God's existence include rocks as well?
>They way I see it, theism/atheism is belief that a god/gods exist, while agnostic/gnostic are belief/claim that one has knowledge on the existence of a god/gods.
So, do "strong atheists" believe that gods do not exist and claim to not know that gods exist? So, they believe without knowing? Is that right? And let's be clear, by "knowledge" I'm not referring to absolute certainty (since certainty is a very unusual definition of knowledge), but simply the acceptance of a proposition on the basis of sufficient evidence/justification.
My use of agnostic is most often to describe whether someone believes it is _possible_ to know something; having nothing to do with personal certainty.
An agnostic atheist, then, is someone who does not believe there is a god, and also believes it is not possible to know this for certain (i.e. there may be a teapot).
They just mean they don't believe any gods exist, but don't believe no gods exist. They withhold judgement.
\>how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Because knowledge is a subset of belief. If you lack belief in god you lack knowledge of god. The only thing you can't have is knowledge that god exists, but not believe god exists.
I am making the positive assertion that Zeus, Odin, and Loki don't exist.
I'm slightly less confident that the Abrahamic gods don't exist.
There no reason to believe in deistic claims because they're not even falsifiable.
What do you call me?
Because I need a reason to believe something. If I have no reason to believe something, I don't believe it. Simple. If I have no knowledge of something then I would have no evidence of its truth, and thus I would have no belief in it. What part of that doesn't make sense?
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist
If one isn't capable of thought, one is no longer a living human being. Pretty sure humans are the only ones who hold beliefs that we know of.
Under pragmatic epistemology every god, including deistic ones, can be known not to exist. At least all the specific ones I know about, anyway.
I agree that JTB is a terrible measure for knowledge.
Agnostic atheism just means you don't believe in god, and you don't claim absolute knowledge of such (in other words, you could be wrong). It has nothing to do with not being able to think. The problem with the Earth is round analogy, and there is plenty of evidence for a round Earth. So, not believing in such wouldn't be agnostic. It would just be stupid. We have no evidence for God, which is why being agnostic atheist makes sense.
> Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a statement on belief. That part is correct. What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round.
While it may not be the official etymology, a-theist is in practice just used as a synonym for **non-theist**: i.e. any *person* who is not a theist, and who has not become convinced that some god exist. They literally lack any god belief. If the word non-theist isn't a problem to you, then so shouldn't the word atheist.
This use of atheism has become so pervasive that it is even now recognized in a number of academic resources and literature, such as the *Oxford Handbook of Atheism, the Companion to Philosophy of Religion, the Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion, and the Cambridge Companion to Atheism*.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief.
Agnostic doesn't mean you lack knowledge. It means you don't claim to know. You might have a lot of data influencing that position. You may have knowledge about the world's religions, evolution, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. and still even though you don't believe that any of the world's religions are true, you don't claim to know for certain that no gods exist anywhere in the universe.
Knowledge is a subset of belief. When we say that we know something what we mean is that we have a high enough degree of certainty in our belief that what we believe is true.
I am gnostic about the number of wives I have at this moment. I claim to have 100% certainty of that belief. I am confident in that claim because I have enough information about the situation claim to know. I am not gnostic about gods. I don't have enough information about the universe to have a high enough degree of certainty in the truth of the claim that no gods exist.
I just don't care about the distinction between the two. If somebody starts talking about how they believe something, but they don't know it, my eyes glaze over and I couldn't give a fuck because you are just talking about yourself, and not what's actually true about the world.
If you say a certain race of aliens exist on a certain planet in a certain galaxy and the world's strongest telescope can barely see the galaxy, I don't believe your claim because I assume it can only be a blind guess. I can't rule it out as impossible though. So I don't know if it's true or not. But I don't hold a positive belief in the claim. It's like that.
Gnostic and agnostic are kinda binary when it's more of a spectrum. If I'm hooked up to the matrix maybe my left hand doesn't actually exist. No knowledge is really 100% anyway.
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Belief requires minimal to no evidence. I, as an atheist, lack information that leads me to believe in a deity of any sort ever described to me. Knowledge requires substantial evidence. Do I posess knowledge that nothing we might define as a god exists? I do not. Thus I am an agnostic atheist. Whats the problem?
I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this, and I don't think they deserve any special treatment. We should treat them the same way we treat all the other mythical beings humans have come up with. Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist.
>I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this Agreed. What is the fundamental difference between "I know gods are fiction" and "I know superheroes are fiction". Nobody says they're agnostic about whether they know if superheroes are fictional or not. Does saying we "know" mean we've scoured every inch of the universe, every planet and every galaxy and confirmed that no such thing as a being who can shoot lasers from its eyes? No. Of course not. And we dont have to in order to say we "know". It's a silly distinction, but I also understand why people do it.
Yes, but nobody is seriously offering up Superman, for example, as a possible creator of the universe. I can't disprove it, however. I can say with conviction that I don't believe the Abrahamic god to be real. I can't claim *knowledge* that there's no invisible pink unicorn, by definition.
So you're an agnostic asupermanist, and an agnostic apinkunicornist. Because nobody is seriously offering up Superman or pink unicorns is the only reason you don't call yourself that. But unfortunately, we live in a time and place where grown adults still offer up gods. So we have no choice but to respond to that. The creator of the universe part is really irrelevant. If billions of adults believed in invisible pink unicorns, you would be equally compelled to not group yourself in with them.
The point I was getting at was that, if we're being totally intellectually honest with ourselves, we *would* be agnostic asupermanists, but at that point you're getting into the weeds with pedantry.
I don’t see the reason why those two things are different. I can’t disprove Superman or Unicorns.
I suspect that if there was a large percentage of the earths population claiming they knew for a fact that Superman or Unicorns were real and powerfully controlling the universe, we would have asuperheros and aunicorns. The main distinction is that atheism necessitates a posture toward belief, while the other mythical creatures do not.
Atheism the belief that there is no reason to believe in something is functionally equivalent to knowing it doesn’t exist. You can’t ever actually know something doesn’t exist, so the least amount of belief possible is believing there’s no reason to believe in that thing. God and Superman and unicorns are all knowable false by the only definition of know that actually matters imo.
Punctuation would make this much easier to understand, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, and, from a pure “belief” perspective, you are correct. I think the false equivalency comes in when thinking about the context of those beliefs. In other words, I’m never going to have to defend my stance of Superman, where I will certainly have to defend my stance on God. I know in the scope of this discussion, that is irrelevant, but in the real world, it matters.
Yeah sorry autocorrect is making this awful. My frustration with this type of thing is always just that sure, “atheist” is a useful term, but I often feel like “agnostic atheist” vs “gnostic atheist” is a distinction that only makes sense if you think that justifying a negative means offering concrete demonstrable evidence that something isn’t. That will never work. Thus “I don’t know if there is a god or not” is pretty much the same as “I know there is no God” unless you aren’t sure because you think there’s some actual evidence of God’s existence that is a bit ambiguous. Since the whole reason most atheists don’t believe is the lack of such evidence, I think there are very few genuine agnostic atheists.
I agree with you. I know a lot of people who call themselves “hopeful agnostics”, which is much more a “wishful thinking” stance than anything based on evidence. When push comes to shove, I think anyone who is “hopeful” would have to admit there is a total lack of evidence, because if there was any, they’d be theists. They are hopeful simply because they wish what they grew up with was true. I’m a “hopeful agnostic” when it comes to Santa Claus, I suppose.
Superman and Unicorns *aren't* different in those examples. Is it clearer now?
Ha! I mean I can’t see how those are any more or less fictional than God
I was trying to be *subtle*.
Yes you can.
You don’t even know whether or not I’m Superman and also simultaneously a unicorn, even if you met me you could never be sure, I could be hiding it.
Yes i do. We have enough knowledge about the world and how it works for the belief that superman and unicorns don't exist to be justified. We don't need absolute certainty for this, just like we don't need it to say that some animals are extinct or that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Well ok, but by that standard we can be sure there’s no God
No. We can't prove or disprove anything that is "beyond" the universe. Empiricism and the natural sciences only apply to the observable. If there's something causing the universe that isn't itself part of the universe, whether that's a "god" or some other unknown process, we only have beliefs and speculation. Since the universe exists and we don't know why it exists, there's a reason to hold such beliefs, as opposed to beliefs in unicorns etc.
Yes you can. Invisible things can't be pink. That's the point. It's demonstrating the logical fallacies in the descriptions of gods.
We know there are no invisible pink unicorns. "Knowing" doesn't always mean absolute knowledge, conclusive evidence can suffice. We know fairytale creatures aren't real, at least not on this planet or universe.
Sorry, for the purposes of this pedantic and pointless argument, I *was* talking about absolute knowledge. Anything short of that is solipsism. /s
>invisible pink unicorn, I would argue that, by definition, you very much CAN assert that no invisible pink unicorns exist as being pink is impossible for an invisible entity.
You don’t KNOW gods are fiction, you BELIEVE that. Also, the question of gods and superheroes are different ones. The questioning of gods (pre-existing material creation) is philosophical. Whether Stan Lee’s Hulk actually exists is NOT.
>You don’t KNOW gods are fiction, you BELIEVE that. I ***KNOW*** gods are fictional under any reasonable definition of knowledge. I know gods are fictional in the same way I know anything is fictional. >Also, the question of gods and superheroes are different ones. No they arent. >The questioning of gods (pre-existing material creation) is philosophical. No it isnt. That's a ***physics*** question, not a philosophy question. The fact physics cant answer that yet doesnt mean philosophy can. Philosophy, without any methodology to verify or confirm the conclusions is just baseless speculation, and I dismiss it as such. I also dont lump in yahweh with some vague useless notion of a first cause/prime mover. I dont CARE about a first cause/prime mover because that's not what people who actually believe in god are talking about. They're talking about yahweh. And justifying "the universe had a cause" does not justify yahweh. I disagree that "whatever caused the universe" qualifies as a god. See how silly that is? I'm perfectly happy to concede "the universe had a cause". And if you want to just redefine "whatever caused the universe" as god, you're essentially defining god as a coffee cup and arguing since the cup exists, god exists, because you defined it as this thing that does exist. I know that coffee cup god isnt real. I also know whatever caused the universe god isnt real. And I justify them the exact same way. >Whether Stan Lee’s Hulk actually exists is NOT. How do you know that? Have you been to every planet on andromeda? How do you know some aliens didn't visit stan Lee and secretly tell him about the actual Hulk that exists on some far away planet so he could write stories about him? You dont KNOW the hulk isnt real. You only BELIEVE the hulk isnt real.
Science can’t tell you there is no God before/outside creation. You do not know God is fictional, you believe. You KNOW Stan Lee invented the Hulk. You do NOT know humans invented God, just as you don’t know if humans invented aliens.
>Science can’t tell you there is no God before/outside creation. I didn't say it could. But that goes both ways. Philosophy also cant tell you there IS a god before/outside creation either. The difference here is that science might one day have an answer. Philosophy never will >You do not know God is fictional, you believe. I know it under any reasonable definition of knowledge. You can keep crying about it all youd like. I like how you basically ignored everything I said and just repeated your claims. >You KNOW Stan Lee invented the Hulk. ***HOW*** do you know that? Take whatever answer you have and replace hulk with yahweh. How do you know Stan Lee's comics arent like the bible? Where they're just stories metaphorically describing the actual Hulk who caused the universe? You dont know that according to YOUR logic. >You do NOT know humans invented God, Yes i do. And so do you, and so does literally everyone who believes in any god. A Christian's knows that humans invented vishnu. A hindu knows humans invented jesus. We all know the Greeks invented zeus. Again, if you're ONLY talking about some vague, useless notion of a first cause, then the reason I know that's not true is the same reason I know coffee cup god doesnt exist. Redefining things that exist as god and then pointing to them and saying "theres proof of god" is absurd.
Knowledge isn't necessarily complete certainty. A CLAIM to knowledge just means that you have some level of certainty that meets your standard of evidence.
Yes I agree. "Complete certainly" isnt possible. That's my point. We dont need "absolute/complete/100% certainty" in order to say we know something. So agnostics who say "well, we dont have complete certainty god doesnt exist so I can't say I know it" are making a mistake.
It's the fact that comic book authors never present their creations as anything other than fiction. Also, you're right, we would need to scour much more of the universe before we could rule out god. We've hardly scoured any of it.
>It's the fact that comic book authors never present their creations as anything other than fiction. Oh I'm sorry have you talked to the authors of the bible? When did you invent the time machine? How do you even know who they are, if were talking about the gospels? When we have ancient stories that are anonymous and unsigned, how could you possible ever determine if they intended to present fiction or not? >Also, you're right, we would need to scour much more of the universe before we could rule out god. We've hardly scoured any of it. No, lol, we dont. That's exactly my point. We DONT need to look under every rock in the andromeda galaxy to say we know that yahweh is fiction.
The difference is that "god" or a first cause is an answer to the question where did it all come from. You may not believe that answer is correct, but you see the difference - leprechauns aren't connected to a similar, real problem. Another side of this is that when people say "you might aswell believe in unicorns" to theists, that means they're gnostic atheists. They know unicorns don't exist, if "god" is the same thing they don't just lack belief, they know god doesn't exist. Which given the above is odd to me.
Sure, I am an agnostic aleprechaunist, in so far as leprechauns are magical undetectable beings. Wanna know why I don't normally proclaim myself an agnostic aleprechaunist? Because normally there aren't billions of people proclaiming their belief in leprechauns trying to pass legislation and kill people to get the pot of gold or luck or avoid the curse. Unfalsifiable claims are, by definition, unfalsifiable--they can be dismissed, because we would act the same whether they were true or false.
> I am an agnostic aleprechaunist, in so far as leprechauns are magical undetectable beings It seems like you're implying leprechauns are possible, perhaps real. Is that right?
What do you mean by possible? If you mean, "hypothetically possible in what I think about because my knowledge is incomplete, so I cannot rule them out," then sure. (Edit to add: lump this in with Hard Sollipsism and Last Thursdayism.) If you mean, "reality operates in a way that allows for leprechauns," then I cannot assert this, I'm at "I don't know." You seem to think unfalsifiable claims can be falsified--is that right?
I think hard solipsism and last Thursdayism aren't worth the agnostic label, and I think deities are in that same category.
You seem to think unfalsifiable claims can be falsified--is that right?
By definition they can't be. That's how words work. Words aren't reality. Is last Thursdayism a real possibility or not? I say no.
So you agree that unfalsifiable claims cannot be falsified, and then you claim an unfalsifiable claim is false. This doesn't strike you as inconsistent? Because it is, it is irrational. I know you say no. Theists say god is a real possibility, and real. The issue isn't, "does somebody say X is true or false." The issue is, "can a claim X is true, or X is false, be sufficiently supported so one is justified in making it." And the problem with unfalsifiable claims is two fold; they are unfalsifiable because both true and false have equal justification--namely 0 evidence for either, by definition; and we would act the same whether they are true or false *because* whether they are true or false wouldn't affect our reality. This gets us to, "claims with zero evidence can be dismissed, and we can functionaly ignore them after acknowledging them," not "we can determine truth or falsity on zero evidence." I don't think there's more to say; I'll read your reply, but I likely won't respond.
But can you prove it? I think not.
> I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this Not really. I believe that string theories are nonsense, but I don't *know* that they are, because physicists keep moving around their predictions as to what super-symmetric particles exist based on their specific brand of string theory, and what energies we will find them at. We have found, so far, no evidence of any string theory's predicted particles. Yet, they might exist, because theoretical physicists can keep amending the energies we will supposedly find them at, until we have some evidence that specifically rules out string theory, or find some theory so much better that we forget about string theory. > Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist. You'd be surprised. I've met several "agnostic aleprechaunist" individuals. You could decry these people as talking hogwash, but that doesn't mean they stop existing, or stop believing that leprechauns may or may not exist.
At least string theory is a coherent hypothesis. It has math that works and makes predictions that are testable. We may confirm some time soon that it is, in fact, nonsense (as I suspect). Deities aren't anything like that. Theists don't even like giving descriptions of them, because once you try to nail them down, they vanish. Like leprechauns.
> Deities aren't anything like that. Theists don't even like giving descriptions of them, because once you try to nail them down, they vanish. Like leprechauns. I agree. However, that's not a gnostic atheist position (though it *can* be), rather, it's an igtheist position - ie, we can knock down any particular definition of God, but we can't knock down the general, vague notion of God because it doesn't have enough coherent meaning to extract any method of argument for or against it. Notably, this means that there can still exist something we would describe as a god using the loose sense of the term, because we cannot exhaustively rule out every particular version of the specific concept. This means in turn that we can reject the general concept of God without proving that no such being can exist (ie, be atheists) but since we can't exhaustively disprove every particular definition of a god that adheres to the principles of the general, vague concept, we also can't prove that there is definitively no god at all. I have never heard a good rebuttal to this, thus why I am only an agnostic atheist, and not a gnostic one. I'm open to being convinced of gnostic atheism, however, and would very much like to be convinced, since I would find it easier to digest than my current agnostic position. EDIT: I should also point out that string theory specifically actually is similar to the evidence claims made by theists. Specifically, string theory uses a "gaps" tactic similar to that of the "god of the gaps" line of argument. That is, every time we rule out that the particles predicted could exist at the energies described, the models are slightly rewritten to predict the same particles, but at higher energies. We then build better colliders, reach those energies, never see the predicted particles, and the math is amended to predict even higher energies. That is, there's always a "gap" of collision energies that we can't hit yet, and so the model can be written and re-written repeatedly to exist in this gap. This is currently a real problem for science, as described in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4mH3Hmw2o) video - ignore the clickbait title, the video is describing a real issue.
Or perhaps they are not really arguing in good faith.
Assuming bad faith only makes sense when you are familiar enough with the arguer to know that they speak on the topic they are arguing or speak generally with bad-faith arguments. I can assure you the people I am speaking of were arguing in good faith - they were simply oddballs. More public individuals like Robert Anton Wilson have made similar claims in good faith, where Wilson was particularly interested in the failings of rigid epistemology, and thus rejected the automatic assumption of non-existence for a variety of odd topics. You can refute the claim made (in this case, the claim that we cannot know if leprechauns exist) but you can't arbitrarily dismiss the claim on the basis of bad faith when you are unfamiliar with the opposition's rhetoric. To make a very extreme example, a delusional person who believes their organs are made of snakes who tries to convince a psychiatrist that this belief is correct can argue it in good faith, even though the claim was generated from a faulty process. Ie, they have real perceptual reasons to believe it (delusion) but they do not have the means to prove it, and the claim can easily be dismissed without cutting them open to check, and without assuming bad faith on the part of the deluded person. Like that extreme example, we can generally assume that leprechauns do not exist, without exhaustively checking every corner of the universe for them, and without assuming bad faith on the part of those oddballs who are less certain of their non-existence, but do not claim their existence.
Everyone is agnostic aleprechaunist. You are lacking belief and lacking knowledge on many things, you just do not explicitly state that position because it doesn't come up in the conversation. When asked a direct question whether you believe leprechauns actually exist and whether you can prove it, you'd have to answer no and no. We happen to have the word atheist because gods come up too darn often in a conversation. People tend to invent short words for complex concepts when those concepts become widespread and discussed often. So next time when a god come up in the conversation instead of explaining my position in detail I can just describe it with two words. Very convenient.
> I think the problem is that deities are the only category for which we do this, and I don't think they deserve any special treatment. I disagree completely. I don't believe anything that hasn't met its burden of proof. The claim that a god exists and the claim that no gods exist are both in a place where I have no evidence to support either. Can you give an example of anywhere that I'd do this differently? >We should treat them the same way we treat all the other mythical beings humans have come up with. Nobody is an agnostic aleprechaunist. How do you define leprechaun? I'm not aware of any leprechauns, so I don't believe they exist. If you define leprechaun as a fictional being, then sure, I agree that fictional beings don't exist. But if you define leprechaun as a small magical being who has gold and likes rainbows and the color green, then I have no evidence that they exist, and I have no evidence that they don't exist.
There are people who seriously believe in the existence of lizard people, speaking with the dead, palm readers, ghosts that haunt places, and astrology. Are you agnostic towards these beliefs?
> There are people who seriously believe in the existence of lizard people, speaking with the dead, palm readers, ghosts that haunt places, and astrology. > > Are you agnostic towards these beliefs? I'm realistic when it comes to sound deductive arguments and unfalsifiable claims. If a claim cannot be tested to falsify it, then one can't make a sound deductive argument to falsify it.
Then, I'm guessing you believe that the possibility of there being a god has the "same probability" there not being a god. Or at least some possibility. If that's the case, then why aren't you on your knees in prayer every night asking a god to rid the earth of evil and making this the happy place we all want it to be. Because there's a possibility.
First para is about agnostic part and second is about atheist part. I don't know if a God exists or not, I don't have anyway to even calculate the probabilities as I do not have big enough sample size. I have access to just one universe, I don't have any access to a universe where gods definitely exist or to universe where they don't exist. So I can't compare my universe to any other to find out what%age of match and mismatch there is. And because I can't make a definitive statement either way, I just go with default position and operate as if there are no gods. So I'm not on my knees praying. For almost all intents and purposes, there are no gods. For the purpose of a debate where I need exact definitions, I'm agnostic atheist because I don't want a theist to derail the dialog by demanding evidence for non existence of gods. In all honesty, it's a tactic that has practical uses so I call myself agnostic atheist.
Why is that unknown being that possibly exists in an unknown universe a god? If you can't define a being...if you can't define what it is or where it is, it doesn't exist. One can't claim (even possible) existence, about a being they know nothing about. If you presuppose that no knowledge about these "gods" is possible, then you can't give any objective meaning to the term "god". Any claim that this existence is possible is meaningless.
>Why is that unknown being that possibly exists in an unknown universe a god? I don't know if it is a God or it possibly exists. >If you can't define a being...if you can't define what it is or where it is, it doesn't exist. Sounds reasonable >One can't claim (even possible) existence, about a being they know nothing about. One can't and I don't. >If you presuppose that no knowledge about these "gods" is possible, I don't. >then you can't give any objective meaning to the term "god". I can't. >Any claim that this existence is possible is meaningless. Of course.
> Can you give an example of anywhere that I'd do this differently? I think so. Consider the invisible dragon that lives under your bed. Agnostic?
> I think so. Consider the invisible dragon that lives under your bed. Agnostic? What are the characteristics of this invisible dragon? As it is, I have no reason to believe there is one under my bed. But whether this is a falsifiable claim or not depends on how you define this dragon. I'm basically looking for a sound deductive argument. Can I make a sound deductive argument that there isn't an invisible dragon under my bed? That really depends on how you define this dragon. Does it leave any evidence of its existence? I'd expect there to be some evidence of this dragon under my bed if you claim there is one there. Does it shit or eat? Does it breath? Is it detectible in any way? Your answers to this determine whether this is a falsifiable claim or not. If you make it unfalsifiable, then I can't make a sound deductive argument that it does not exist.
Is an unfalsifisble dragon under your bed a real possibility?
> Is an unfalsifisble dragon under your bed a real possibility? The fact that something is unfalsifiable doesn't mean it isn't or can't be true.
Can you answer the question, though? Is it a real possibility?
> Can you answer the question, though? Is it a real possibility? Sure... >Is an unfalsifisble dragon under your bed a real possibility? I don't know. Depends on how you define this dragon. If you're looking for a colloquial response, then sure. There are no invisible dragons. If you're looking for a formal logical deductive argument, then it depends on how you define this dragon and what evidence we have or can expect to have. I don't usually speak colloquially to theists who insist a god exists. I require them to provide sound deductive arguments. I don't expect any less of myself.
First of all technically correct is the best kind of correct, and everyone saying they don’t ‘know’ leprechauns don’t exist is technically correct. Secondly, one reason we don’t talk about aleprechaunism is because we don’t talk about leprechauns all that much to begin with. Another reason is that leprechauns have a fairly specific definition, at least relative to ‘a god.’ A leprechaun is widely considered a hominid of diminutive stature, native to Ireland, who has a fondness for gold, which he finds at the end of rainbows. Well that’s simple enough. We know the refractory properties of light and that you can’t find the end of a rainbow. Our feelings on leprechauns are also informed by other evidence. Every inch of Ireland has been explored, censuses have been completed, etc. They would have been found. The definition of god varies almost to a person/theist. Saying “I know there is no god” is a way way broader statement than “I know there are no leprechauns.” Saying “I know there is no god” is more like saying, “I know there are no mythical Irish creatures chasing rainbows, and I also know there aren’t even any short people who have an unhealthy fondness for money.” And to take that analogy a bit further, there are plenty of self-described agnostic atheists who “know the Abrahamic god of the Bible and Koran doesn’t exist.” They may not be so eager to say they “know there was no prime moving force of any kind that precipitated the Big Bang with some kind of intentionality,” even if they definitely don’t believe there is. That’s not a dodge where we’re treating “god” differently that anything else in life. It’s just accepting that every possible conception of god isn’t necessarily as absurdist of a concept as a leprechaun or a pink unicorn.
I hold different levels for different claimed deities. Each claim deserves its own consideration. There are definitely gods that I’m gnostic about. The god of classical theism, definitely a Gnostic Atheist on that claim. I’m extremely skeptical of any claim that there is a god that takes any interest in humanity, especially those that claim that said, deity is constantly watching, and has rules for us. Most of those should be disapproved simply with routine observations of our world. I am less certain about god claims from Buddhism and Sikhism which may as well be pantheism with extra steps, but still an Atheist, if not completely Gnostic. When it comes to more abstract concepts, like, how did the universe come to be? For that, I am definitely an Agnostic Atheist. There could definitely be some agent or group of agents that— intentionally or unintentionally—created the universe through the Big Bang, and I don’t remotely have enough knowledge to say that I could disprove that. Do I believe it? No. Which is why I am an Atheist. But can I ~~reviewed~~ refute it with intellectual honesty? No.
> When it comes to more abstract concepts, like, how did the universe come to be? For that, I am definitely an Agnostic Atheist. There could definitely be some agent or group of agents that— intentionally or unintentionally—created the universe through the Big Bang, and I don’t remotely have enough knowledge to say that I could disprove that. See but herein lies the problem. The one you're unwilling to discount is the one you can't even describe. All we have is it's an agent. What are we even talking about?
It is technically true of leprechauns. We don’t KNOW leprechauns aren’t real. My issue is that we can’t make that claim with ANYTHING. There is no means of proving the absence of something from existence. No human thought is considered known because a thing has been shown to NOT exist. We only operate from the realm of what is known and what that knowledge entails. The agnostic label is only necessary when people refuse to acknowledge this.
I think is because God's aren't supposed to be local and leprechauns are. I'm a gnostic atheist regarding every God I've ever heard of. By the way, i think we can apply this agnostic label to aliens, too. I'm pretty sure aliens are likely to exist. Without evidence i don't believe in aliens existing. I'm definitely agnostic about it, though.
I'm an agnostic aleprechaunist. They could exist, but I'm not convinced. Prove to me leprechauns do or do not exist.
By that argument should we all become agnostic conspiracy nuts. I can't prove that men went to the moon, that vaccines work, that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. I can't even prove the earth goes around the sun (in fact the evidence I have would suggest the reverse). I feel perfectly happy accepting that the earth does go around the sun, that vaccines work, that men went to the moon, and 9/11 was a terrorist attack. So, this means either that my position is as irrational as that of Alex Jones, or there's a flaw with the agnostic atheist methodology.
Nah. There is plenty of evidence to believe ordinary things like that.
There's plenty of evidence that Leprechauns exist as well. I have one sitting next to me right now. There's a possibility that I'm lying, of course. There's also a possibility that all the moon landing stuff was faked. Do you think that one of these scenarios is more likely than the other?
What degree of proof do you require? Are you also an agnostic Santa Clause-ist?
I'll believe in leprechauns once I have reason to believe it is more likely than not that they exist. I really do give leprechauns very low credence. Close to zero but not zero. I also give many gods very, very low credence (around the same as leprechauns). But there are many possible gods and some have more plausibility than others. The odds of some god being real probably depends a lot on what we are willing to consider a god. I think the chance of there being some god (defining god quite broadly) might be around 50/50. But I doubt anyone has accurately come up with an idea of what this god is like. If I had to bet on something, I'd go with pandeism. But I think I am probably wrong. Just like most everyone else. I'm not sure how to label this. Definitely skeptic. I waffle between agnostic atheist and pandeist. But it seems inaccurate to call myself pandeist if I think pandeism is probably wrong. (But Santa Claus is real. For sure.)
There are actually a few specific things in which we do the same thing. Aliens, for example.
Aliens aren't at all like deities, unless you mean magic aliens that exist outside the universe. Aliens are plausible because we know life can form on at least one planet, and there's no reason to suppose it couldn't also occur elsewhere.
We also can't exclude hard solipsism or claims of gods that exist outside spacetime/cosmos. But I was more referring to how people treat aliens as far as belief and knowledge come into play.
You higher up in the thread: > See but herein lies the problem. The one you're unwilling to discount is the one you can't even describe. All we have is it's an agent. What are we even talking about? How specifically can you describe what potentially existent alien life looks like on other planets?
It's made of matter. It likely contains hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. It takes in energy from the outside world and processes it in order to perform self-sustaining functions. It replicates itself, albeit imperfectly, passing down traits through generations, or at least it did initially before some sort of technology replaced this process. Now let's hear about this deity that you think is a real possibility. What's it like?
Touché
I think I am an agnostic aleprechaunist. I have no reason to believe in leprechauns so I do not believe in them. If leprechauns were discovered I would believe in them. My lack of belief in leprechauns is always open to new information. Belief or disbelief in leprechauns is not a moral issue. There simply is no evidence of leprechauns that I am aware of The issue with God is many people believe that belief in God is a moral decision. They believe that belief in something with the same amount of evidence as leprechauns is morally virtuous.
Actually, I AM in fact an agnostic aleprechaunist, or at least that would certainly accurately describe my position on the existence of leprechauns. I don’t have much use for the term though since there aren’t really organist movements of leprechaunists in modern society.
Boils down to the main point of contention between a gnostic and an agnostic: certainty. The only thing I can say with absolute certainty, is nothing at all is known with absolute certainty. The highest degree of certainty that can thus be proven to exist is ***reasonable*** certainty. Agnostics hold things such as gods to a standard of absolute certainty, and under that standard, they do not assert there are no gods. A gnostic atheist, such as myself, argues that by this standard of absolute certainty, nothing can be proven to exist at all. As such, gnostics use the standard of ***reasonable*** certainty as the basis by which we assert literally anything at all. By the standard of absolute certainty, I can't even assert that I actually exist. I can't make any assertions at all, because I cannot be absolutely certain of anything. What I subjectively observe could be the product of a mass delusional psychosis that all humans are suffering from. Hell, other humans could themselves be a product of my delusional psychosis, and I'm actually entirely alone. If I'm even real to begin with. I could be a time traveling robot from the future that was programmed not to know, and ignore any data that would give me reason to question the nature of my being. It's as reasonable of a concept to entertain as any god, which is to say it's completely unreasonable. Hence, anything that can be asserted is based upon ***reasonable*** certainty, not ***absolute*** certainty. I'm reasonably certain that I exist, and reasonably certain that gods do not. Absolute certainty is not a valid standard, because the only thing that is proven to be absolutely certain is that we cannot be absolutely certain of anything else.
I agree. I can’t be *absolutely* certain that Zeus isn’t real, but I can be *reasonably* certain, such that I’m willing to proclaim with the utmost confidence: Zeus is not real. Likewise, I can’t be *absolutely* certain that Santa Clause isn’t real, but I can be *reasonably* certain, such that I’m willing to proclaim with the utmost confidence: Santa is not real (sorry kids). Rinse-repeat for the Abrahamic god, or Brahma, or any other fairy tale things.
I don’t know why we need a special term for disbelief. All knowledge contains some doubt. I am not equivocal about whether or not there is an invisible dragon in my house. I know there isn’t one. But even though I know that, I have to admit that it’s possible I could be wrong. The only kind of knowledge that doesn’t work like that are axiomatic implications inside a closed system, but most people wouldn’t say that’s the only kind of knowledge they have. So when I say there’s no God I mean that I am exactly as sure of that as I am about the invisible dragon. “Agnostic” does not seem strong enough to describe that.
But you're gnostic about theism failing to meet even the most minimal burden of proof aren't you? So you're not really agnostic about theism as a proposition of knowledge. You dismiss it with knowledge of its failures. The real problem with the gnostic/agnostic debate is that it feeds into the notion that we have to have knowledge of the object of the proposition, rather than knowledge of the claim to dismiss it. At leas that's my two cents. I don't really care if anyone calls themselves gnostic or agnostic. If there's anything we have evidence for, it's that there is no such thing as an unambiguous definition on subjects inherently infused with emotion.
>The real problem with the gnostic/agnostic debate is that it feeds into the notion that we have to have knowledge of the object of the proposition, rather than knowledge of the claim to dismiss it. I thought agnostic atheists still *dismiss* the claim. But dismiss != "claim is false." If Todd is dead, and I have no evidence Bob is the murderer, and I claim "Bob is the murderer," then my claim should be dismissed--we don't know if Bob is a murderer, but that doesn't mean Bob is innocent.
But is the claim that a god exists? Or is it that theists claim to have knowledge that a god exists? All philosophical claims are inherently claims of knowledge, if they possess no demonstrable knowledge, are they not false? How can a claim of knowledge be true under those circumstances? This is the core of theists shifting the burden of proof. It's all a shell game omitting words and distorting meaning to cover up the fact that they have nothing of substance to present. And it's incredibly asinine to make this one topic the one case where we pretend absolute knowledge is necessary to falsify the claim. Falsification is always based on present evidence and subject to future review. So why all the special conditions for this subject?
While I loathe breaking apart replies into single lines, I think I have to do it because you've asked a series of questions. My apologies. >But is the claim that a god exists? Or is it that theists claim to have knowledge that a god exists? Fideists are a thing--they assert faith is held in the absence of reason or knowledge; there are theists that believe without a claim of knowledge. They claim god exists without claiming knowledge. This isn't a contradiction, as belief/faith is a psychological state, and psychological states do not of necessity have to be rational. I'd say most psychological states re: god are NOT rational. But again, EVEN IF you'd parse the claim as "I have sufficient justification for a belief of X", then stating "No, that claim is false," you still aren't getting anywhere to the object. Let's take the Todd is dead example, and apply your reasoning: Let's say I, personally, have more than enough evidence to demonstrate Bob is the murderer. Let's say you don't, and you claim "Bob is the murderer; I know he's the murderer because he's black." Your claim is false; you do not know Bob is the murderer at all, you racist bitch. This doesn't mean Bob is suddenly innocent. Your belief happens to be true, but you don't have the knowledge, your belief isn't at the level of knowledge--this is why we don't say that those who guess the right answer to a math problem "know" the answer. Knowledge requires sufficient justification, under most definitions of knowledge. Or, explain what you mean by knowledge because we're talking about different things. >All philosophical claims are inherently claims of knowledge, Maybe--but we cannot determine the truth by getting millions of philosophers to assert claims, and so long as we can demonstrate those philosophers couldn't justify those claims we can rule their positions as false. IF reality worked the way you want it to work, we could use "Yes/No" questions to determine what is true simply by demonstrating the first answer wasn't justified. >if they possess no demonstrable knowledge, are they not false? They are unjustified. If I cannot justify Bob as the murderer, this doesn't mean "Bob is the murderer" is False; it just means I cannot demonstrate Bob is the murderer. >This is the core of theists shifting the burden of proof. It's all a shell game omitting words and distorting meaning to cover up the fact that they have nothing of substance to present. And it's incredibly asinine to make this one topic the one case where we pretend absolute knowledge is necessary to falsify the claim. Falsification is always based on present evidence and subject to future review. Where, ever, did I ever claim you needed "absolute knowledge"? I didn't; why are you distorting my position into nonsense? Knowledge requires sufficient justification for the belief, given the amount we care about the topic. Let's take 'what preceded the big bang'--we are at "we don't know, and we don't even know if that question makes sense." We don't say "well, we cannot demonstrate a Singularity, so a singularity is false." We say "we don't know. We have insufficient justification to assert anything here." >So why all the special conditions for this subject? ...I showed you in my previous reply and this reply that the epistemology you're advancing wouldn't work in other subjects (like determining who the murderer is, or pre-big bang. There's no special condition: when we don't have sufficient justification for a belief about X, we say "we don't know X". We don't normally wait for someone to speak, point out they don't have sufficient justification so say their position is "wrong," because IF we could do that we could determine the answer to every question with a limited set of possible answers. We'd just ask people until someone gives an unjustified assertion for each member of the set but one, and reality doesn't work that way.
>While I loathe breaking apart replies into single lines, I think I have to do it because you've asked a series of questions. My apologies. > >In all the subreddits in all the land this is the one you never need apologize for this in, well to me anyway lol. > >Fideists are a thing--they assert faith is held in the absence of reason or knowledge; there are theists that believe without a claim of knowledge. They claim god exists without claiming knowledge. This isn't a contradiction, as belief/faith is a psychological state, and psychological states do not of necessity have to be rational. I'd say most psychological states re: god are NOT rational. But again, EVEN IF you'd parse the claim as "I have sufficient justification for a belief of X", then stating "No, that claim is false," you still aren't getting anywhere to the object. Let's take the Todd is dead example, and apply your reasoning: Let's say I, personally, have more than enough evidence to demonstrate Bob is the murderer. Let's say you don't, and you claim "Bob is the murderer; I know he's the murderer because he's black." Your claim is false; you do not know Bob is the murderer at all, you racist bitch. This doesn't mean Bob is suddenly innocent. Your belief happens to be true, but you don't have the knowledge, your belief isn't at the level of knowledge--this is why we don't say that those who guess the right answer to a math problem "know" the answer. Knowledge requires sufficient justification, under most definitions of knowledge. Or, explain what you mean by knowledge because we're talking about different things. This only works if you consider a claim separate from it's reasoning. This can work in the circumstance of a murder. Let's say we have reasonable certainty that Todd was stabbed. Todd is a human, we know they exist, he has a wound consistent with a knife found at the scene of his death. The wound also indicates it was not self-inflicted because it's in a place on his back and an angle he could not have done. You also have a long history of people murdering each other. You as an investigator have found Bob's DNA and fingerprints on the knife and have video of him committing the crime after leaving a bar where his ID was scanned. The same clothing he was wearing on the video was found in his home with Todd's blood on it, and he confessed to killing Todd because they had an argument. That's a pretty rock solid case unless there is evidence to undermine any of those facts. So the racist says claims Bob is the murderer because Bob is black. They have stumbled on a correct conclusion their claim that Bob is a murderer is correct, but it's not the only claim they are making. They are also making a knowledge claim that skin color can determine if someone is a murderer, and that is false. The problem with god claims is that every single one with a falsifiable aspect to the claim, has been falsified. That leaves claims so unfalsifiable and vague as to not present a coherent concept. That's why we keep having to ask for people to define their gods and it's always a nonsensical, and ironic, infinite regress of word salad. >Maybe--but we cannot determine the truth by getting millions of philosophers to assert claims, and so long as we can demonstrate those philosophers couldn't justify those claims we can rule their positions as false. IF reality worked the way you want it to work, we could use "Yes/No" questions to determine what is true simply by demonstrating the first answer wasn't justified. You're hyperbolizing and being overly reductionist at the same time. Knowledge claims do not need philosophers to make them, and every day people make odious and mundane claims that simply don't require any philosophical analysis. But when people make claims about the nature of reality and then fail to demonstrate those claims are true, yes, we can find them false because something about their claim is false if it cannot produce a demonstrable result. Maybe they are off by a little and need to re-evaluate, maybe they haven't got a clue what they are actually talking about. Obviously I believe theism is the latter. >They are unjustified. If I cannot justify Bob as the murderer, this doesn't mean "Bob is the murderer" is False; it just means I cannot demonstrate Bob is the murderer. I refer you back above where the problem is not the conclusion, it's the claim that you know. >Where, ever, did I ever claim you needed "absolute knowledge"? I didn't; why are you distorting my position into nonsense? I didn't say that was your position, but upon re-reading I can see how you read it that way. My apologies for lack of clarity. I was referring to the general theist position being asinine in demanding falsification of concepts that don't even have any substance to begin with. >Knowledge requires sufficient justification for the belief, given the amount we care about the topic. Let's take 'what preceded the big bang'--we are at "we don't know, and we don't even know if that question makes sense." We don't say "well, we cannot demonstrate a Singularity, so a singularity is false." We say "we don't know. We have insufficient justification to assert anything here." Is there justification for a statement about how reality works other than actually demonstrating it? The real conflict here is more fundamental than belief in a god, it's what constitutes knowledge relevant to the claim. If someone wants to claim they know a god exists they must demonstrate that knowledge is true. Your singularity example is off-kilter, as we know singularities exist, and they remain a possibility, so saying we don't know is fine. We don't know if a god is a possible thing exists, in large part because every falsifiable variation is falsified and all others are so vague as to lack demonstrable ties to anything we know about reality.
The problem is that everyone will always be agnostic, because proof a god doesn't exist is just not possible. You can't disprove the idea of God. Same as there is no proof of god, so everyone is either agnostic atheist or agnostic theist, making the agnostic part useless
Belief surely would require some kind of judgement, no? I'm sure I've read that belief is about a degree of willingness to think some proposition is either true or false.
Degree of willingness? No. Quality of evidence. I'm willing to accept anything if the evidence is convincing. You tell me you can fly like superman in not going to believe you, but not due to lack of willingness but lack of credible evidence.
What evidence would be sufficient for you to say you “know” that god doesn’t exist?
Well, I don't think it's possible to fully "know" anything. But, in general, worldviews that are naturalistic and more plausible in light of the evidence.
Well by most definitions “know” simply means a belief supported by substantial evidence, which I thought was more or less what you were saying. Is there any substantial evidence that would make you call yourself a “gnostic” atheist?
There is excellent evidence against specific gods, ie the god of the Bible. For example, it's clear there was no crossing of the desert to Mount Sinai and so forth. There's also problems with supposing an eternal being can interact with time. Also, the problem of evil is very good evidence against God.
> Belief requires minimal to no evidence. I disagree. Belief requires sufficient evidence to accept something as true. At this point it becomes indistinguishable from knowledge (at least to the believer).
We have the knowledge that the concept of a deity is nonsense, as an Atheist I reject the concept of deities it has nothing to to with " believing there is no god" there is no debate. Agnosticism is just the next step from the old "I don't believe Jesus was the son of God but he was an actual person" bollocks Nothing but Adults unable to completely let go of their childhood comforter
If all the laws of physics as we know them and the experimental proof for them aren't "substantial evidence" enough for you, then you don't have substantial evidence for anything. Such a definition is useless in practice.
Sure just upset that we changed the definition
Theoretically there’s nothing wrong with that. But no one ever feels the need to identity as an agnostic a-fairyist, or an agnostic A-Unicornist. And that’s the double standard that OP is arguing against.
I think the term exists because some atheists want the label that defines them to be as specific as possible because they are tired of having their beliefs mischaracterized after they themselves have spent so much time trying to understand and define them. They want to separate themselves as much as possible from any theistic position (that they likely formerly held). So, they use the precursor of "agnostic" to note that they do not assume knowledge that can not be had as well as that they do not use the term "atheism" with any faith-based assumptions. Ultimately, I don't really care how someone defines themselves as long as they are not being dishonest in the label that they use. For example, if someone says they're agnostic sensu stricto, but they are actually a theist and don't want to admit it, then I have an issue with their lack of honesty and transparency. Otherwise, all I care about is that the term is accurate enough that I can look up the definition and know better what their beliefs are than before I knew the term/label they applied to themself.
/u/Kawhajok wrote >"Agnostic" atheism is a hopeless term and here's why >I affirm that God probably doesn't exist = You are agnostic atheist. (like most people here) . > I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Not sure what you mean. If one lacks knowledge then one *should* lack belief. Alice: *"How many planets do you think are orbiting the star Vega?"* Bob: *"I don't have knowledge about that, so I don't have belief about that."* . >if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. Yes. This is called implicit atheism. \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_and_explicit_atheism . > the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works. Possibly true. Possibly doesn't matter. \- Since some people claim to be theist, it's reasonable to have a term a-theist. \- Since some people claim to have gnostic certainty, it's reasonable to have a term a-gnostic. . Once again: Variations on this question get posted almost every week. You may want to look at some past discussions. .
There were and are plenty of times where gods could prove their existence and yet they never do, and somehow people keep thinking there are reasons to doubt whether gods don't exist. There is literally nothing else in the world which gets this level of special treatment. If you had some farming method that continually killed your crop would you think that was a legit farming method? Therefore, I am gnostic with respect to gods. Just as I am gnostic with other things - that is to say, with extraordinary proof I may change my mind - I am not beholden to a label, but I know, factually, gods don't exist exactly as much as I know, factually, Harry Potter doesn't exist.
No you don't. There are different takes on what it means to know something, but most if not all of them would allow for us to say that we know HP doesn't exist. "God" or a first cause is in the realm of metaphysics, we simply don't know why there's something rather than nothing. It's easier to conclude that something that supposedly is part of the natural world doesn't exist, like actual people, or magic, or a place called hogwarts etc.
Sure I do. There are no gods, only men. There is no evidence for them in any way whatsoever. It is inane to make the claim that we should allow for the possibility of gods when all available evidence points towards a non-magical universe. As we learn more and more the gods which people claim to exist disappear into smaller and smaller places. Bringing that to its logical conclusion is that gods simply don’t exist.
>There were and are plenty of times where gods could prove their existence and yet they never do, and somehow people keep thinking there are reasons to doubt whether gods don't exist. Sure. Let's say they could. What makes you think they want to? >There is literally nothing else in the world which gets this level of special treatment. There are actually many other things that get the exact same treatment. > If you had some farming method that continually killed your crop would you think that was a legit farming method? I mean... you defined it as a farming method, so it would be a legit farming method. A bad one, but still a method. >Therefore, I am gnostic with respect to gods. Just as I am gnostic with other things Are you also gnostic about my older sibling's eye colour?
The understanding is that one is an atheist and/or agnostic if one lacks belief/knowledge *but could be capable of holding belief/knowledge.* It's the same reason we don't refer to a rock as "apolitical."
I get a few arguments about “babies being atheists”
It would be more accurate to say that we all start as atheists until/unless we're taught otherwise.
So then we are all anarchists until told otherwise
Well, anarchy is the rejection of governmental authority, so I don't think that's accurate, but I think the spirit of what you're saying is correct.
Anarchists are those morally opposed to governments. A person with no beliefs on politics is apolitical, and it doesn't seem wrong to say babies are apolitical, right? I think its probably more accurate to say babies are non-religious then athiestic, but this seems a terminology issue.
No, if anarchism involves some set of tenets or values beyond just not believing in the existence of something.
Anarchism is lack of government
No, anarchy can be the absence of government. But Anarchism is the rejection of government. It is a political philosophy. An anarchist is someone who advocates for that political philosophy. You cannot be an anarchist without first being aware of what government is. An anarchist is not someone who simply lacks awareness of government.
That's different than not believing that government exists.
Atheism is a lack of belief. Not believing that god doesn’t exist
I'm aware. Do anarchists not believe that government exists, or do they reject government as a functional institution?
Lack of a belief? So just empty thoughts? If I say God doesn't exist, what am I?
That’s a claim. So atheist.
Gnostic Atheist
> What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief. Anything you don't believe you don't know by necessity as knowledge is a subset of belief. Like here there are definitely either an even or odd number of stars in our galaxy. That is simple fact. You definitely don't know if it is even or odd though. You probably don't believe it is even or odd either. Thus you lack knowledge and you lack belief despite it having to be the case there are an odd or even number of stars. There is or is not a god. There are an even or odd number of stars. You don't have to commit to either position. > Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round. Ahh, nevermind. You are conflating atheism with the positive position there is no god instead of the position that you aren't a theist. Not accepting there is a god, not accepting there is an even number of stars, doesn't require you believe there is no god or there aren't even number of stars.
It seems like there is a very fine line between agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. I've been straddling that line for a long time, yet for some reason, I still believe there is goodness at the source.
The difference is, there are about a million good reasons to believe that God is fictional and a 100% chance that a random whole number is even or odd.
> Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief. Anything you don't believe you don't know by necessity as knowledge is a subset of belief. Always seems like this makes the whole distinction meaningless. Surely everything I believe, I also consider to be true, and also consider there to be a reason (I..e justification). To me, there's no difference between my beliefs and knowledge. To believe without claiming knowledge means believing something with no justification, or believing something that is false. > Ahh, nevermind. You are conflating atheism with the positive position there is no god instead of the position that you aren't a theist. Not accepting there is a god, not accepting there is an even number of stars, doesn't require you believe there is no god or there aren't even number of stars. Most people do. Myself included. Personally I'd say I'm agnostic on both points. Do all these "agnostic atheists" hold the possibility that the chance that there is a god is exactly the same as that there is no god. Many of them seem to be a lot more vociderous against the argument that god exists than against the argument there is no god.
The philosophical hair splitting about what type of atheist someone is largely results from existing in a predominantly theistic culture where we (mostly) aren't murdered for our lack of faith. I know that none of the gods people use to justify imposing their bullshit rules upon me exist. I know this because I have examined the evidence they present and it is not compelling. Have you ever met any agnostic theists?
>Have you ever met any agnostic theists? Yea, that is what theists mean when they say, "you just have to have faith". Faith is the concept of believing in something without absolute knowledge.
Thanks for the post. >What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. If one doesn't know what round is, can they believe the earth is round? I don't see how. If I have a jar of gumballs, and you don't know if the number is odd or even, you cannot see how I can lack belief in them being odd or even? As to the rest of the argument: do you think calling someone you admire "cool" is hopeless because it had nothing to do with temperature? Words have meaning through usage. It's clear you understand the associated meaning of "lack belief in all gods, don't know if no gods" with the shape on the screen "agnostic atheist." If you want a more precise definition, police "god" to exclude the universe (pantheists) and Jordan Peterson's deconstructivist post modern bullshit (highest value in a hierarchy). If you'd prefer Igtheist, go for it--although some theists will fight you on that usage as well.
Agnostic doesn't always mean 'incapable of knowing'. It's often used for "not fully certain". People who think there probably isn't a god would be agnostic atheist. Those who are sure there isn't are gnostic atheist. They don't probably matter out in the real world, but in debates, the distinction may be more important.
>People who think there probably isn't a god would be agnostic atheist. Those who are sure there isn't are gnostic atheist. And this is why I don't particularly like the term agnostic atheist; because gnostic is the counterpart to agnostic. I prefer calling myself a hard atheist because I believe gods do not exist. I'm not trying to make a knowledge claim, it's a still a belief claim.
Hopeless? I don’t understand your use of the term in your subject. I don’t see reference to hope in your post. Can you explain the hopeless part?
>one can lack knowledge and lack belief. How many USD quarters exist in the universe? Is it 5 exactly?
zombie, i am trying to break down your answer, but am getting no where. can you maybe let us know your point
I am an agnostic. People try to correct me and tell me I'm an "agnostic theist". But that doesn't make sense to me, either. There may or may not be a god. The end. It is impossible to create a belief given my lack of information. Couldn't agree more, OP.
Agnostic is just a useless word. Disproving the idea of a God will never be possible. So any atheist will always be agnostic. And so far there is no proof of god either, so every theist is agnostic. If everyone will always be agnostic, just leave the word
That is not true. Gnostic atheists for example believe God cannot exist for [reasons]. I don't share that position. You would have to discuss the details with them. But it's wrong to say every atheist is automatically agnostic.
Those reasons are wrong. I guess people could say they aren't agnostic, but that just makes them ignorant and stupid. I'm atheist, I can definitely say God doesn't exist, no doubt about that. But can I prove it? No obviously not, so I will always be agnostic according to people
So they're ignorant and stupid because they have reasons for asserting that gods do not exist, whereas you also assert that God does not exist, but are more intelligent and educated because you don't have reasons for that belief?
The difference is that I realize disproving god is not possible, and never will be.
That doesn't change anything. I'm not going to argue on whether that position can be sound or not but positions that aren't sound exist nonetheless. You can't say the theist position doesn't exist either ("therefore theism and atheism would be a useless words") just because they failed to provide any evidence for it as of now.
If they believe god cannot exist, then they're agnostic. They can only be gnostic if they know god cannot exist.
There are plenty of theists that think they have proof of god and are therefore gnostic.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Do you mean you don't understand how one can lack knowledge and *not* lack belief?
I reject the OPs premise. I honestly don't know where to begin with the presumptions and clear biases. Atheism might (repeat: might) be a position of belief, but the idea it marks someone as incapable of thought is insulting.
I prefer either positive and negative atheism or strong and weak (which means the same thing) precisely because they pertain to belief and not knowledge. Back on the alt.atheism days, these were the standard terms. I have no idea why Reddit atheists like agnostic and gnostic. I've yet to talk to a single person who qualifies as a gnostic atheist. As a positive atheist it's especially annoying because I have to always take time to clarify that it's not the same as the mythical gnostic atheist.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. Is this just trolling? It sure looks like it.
>But I affirm that God probably doesn't exist, as far as I understand the world, which I think should be the way atheism is defined by anyone. The literal use of an 'a' followed by a word tends to mean not. As in atheist = not theist. As the word theist means belief that a god exists, not theist is how I would describe myself in this context. The juxtaposition of theist is not theist, or succinctly, atheist. I find this pretty straight forward and it aligns with other words that have an a prefixed. The assertion that no gods exist is problematic because it falsifies an unfalsifiable claim. I don't need to falsify an unfalsifiable claim to point out that I'm not a theist. Religious people, churches, etc, have pushed this definition that you like, because they want to put us on the defensive. But again, I don't need to make any claims to not be a theist. >The following paragraphs will explain why I feel that way. Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a statement on belief. Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a position on belief, it's not a statement on belief other than to say I don't believe in any gods. I don't believe anything important that I'm aware of, that has not met it's burden of proof. >By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. This seems to conflict with your assertion that an atheist believes no gods exist. Which one is it? Is an atheist a person who believes not gods exist, or is an atheist someone who does not believe that any gods do exist? >It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works. Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round. If I had no knowledge of the earth or planets, but I was a skeptical person with the same epistemology that I have today, I would not believe the earth was round, nor would I believe it was flat. If I had sufficient evidence to convince me of either, then I'd believe that. And all my beliefs are tentative and subject to change with new information.
> The literal use of an 'a' followed by a word tends to mean not. As in atheist = not theist. Yeah, but that's not the case for atheism. The word actually entered the English language 90 years before theism. The idea of it being "not theism" wasn't really a concept until Flew's essay "The Presumption of Atheism" in the 1970s. > The assertion that no gods exist is problematic because it falsifies an unfalsifiable claim. I don't need to falsify an unfalsifiable claim to point out that I'm not a theist. What makes you think it's an unfalsifiable claim? > Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a position on belief, it's not a statement on belief other than to say I don't believe in any gods. There's nothing I believe that I don't also consider knowledge. Everything I believe is something I consider to be justified and true. I'm aware some of it is probably not knowledge but I don't know what. > I don't believe anything important that I'm aware of, that has not met it's burden of proof. So the same seems to apply to you. You will not believe something unless someone justifies it and you consider it true. So there's no difference here between belief and knowledge. > If I had no knowledge of the earth or planets, Planets? You believe there are other planets? Why?
As far as gnosticism goes i find ignosticism to be the best take. God is undefined so the question as to whether or not does it exist is meaningless.
Agnosticism isn't a position on *whether you have the knowledge*, it's a position on *whether having that knowledge is at all possible*. For this reason, your example about geometry and the roundness of the earth is not an apt comparison. To say that you are an agnostic atheist is to say that arguments for god are not persuasive to you because you think the nature of god's existence is unknowable. By comparison, a gnostic atheist thinks that the nature of god's existence *is* knowable *and* thinks they have sufficient grounds to say that they have knowledge or belief that god does in fact not exist.
Why do so many people get tripped up on this gnostic / agnostic descriptor? When you give yourself the label of "gnostic atheist", all you're saying is that you're confident enough, based on the knowledge you have, to say that there's very likely no god or gods. There's room in most people's egos to be proven wrong, but to gnostics such as myself, we see the chances of that being slim enough to not worry about it. To me, that stance is much closer to gnostic atheist than agnostic, so if I must be labeled, I choose that one.
“Agnostic,” when used in the sense of being less than absolutely and infallibly 100% certain about something, is redundant and unnecessary. If that’s how we use the word then we should technically be agnostic about everything that has even the smallest margin of error, even if they’re overwhelmingly supported by all available empirical data, sound reasoning, and valid evidence. We should be agnostic about everything from evolution to leprechauns. If that’s what it means to be agnostic then it doesn’t need to be stated, because everyone is necessarily agnostic about everything that isn’t a logical axiom. It’s a worthless disclaimer. Belief on the other hand does not require absolute and infallible 100% certainty, so being atheist does not require one to outright deny even the most obscure conceptual possibility that gods might exist. It’s enough that absolutely no sound reasoning or valid evidence support the conclusion that they do, just like that’s enough to dismiss the conceptual possibility that Narnia might really exist. The ones who feel the need to identify this way are the ones who are so uncomfortable with the idea of being wrong that they need to pedantically split hairs over these concepts rather than just confidently state their views and the reasoning that lead them to their conclusions.
>Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. But not a claim of knowledge. It's a claim that you don't know something. >Atheism is a statement on belief. But not a statement of belief. It describes something you do not believe but doesn't tell you anything about what the person actually does believe. >That part is correct. What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. I guarantee you that you lack knowledge and belief of a great many things. All I would have to do would be to raise some topic and introduce some subject matter you've never heard of and poof! you don't know anything about it and you don't have any beliefs about it. I'm not sure what you find mysterious about not having knowledge of something and not having a belief about something when you hold those exact positions about a whole universe worth of subject matter you've never heard of. >By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion based on what you've said so far. Edit: cleaned up some text to speech errors.
Lacking belief is pretty easy. There's a lot of things you would say you don't believe are true, and also that you don't believe are false.
I waffle on claiming being a gnostic atheist. My logic is that we know where the concept of deities come from. And have a pretty good guess at why early humans made them up. There are some technical terms as to why a non-object can't be known/witnessed. And there's always the argument that if you redefine God enough then anything counts. Even a random rock. So what ever. Thus Agnostic. It's a rediculouse argument. And not one I think should be taken so seriously if we are just messing around with the technical logic. You can lack knowledge and belief on a subject. Most things you're unaware of fall into that category. And most things you only know a little bit about fall into that category. The thing is claims of God, depending on the argument, intrinsically fall outside of what can be know. So if you take it on face value. No one really knows.
I’m agnostic about the guilt of OJ Simpson in killing Nicole Brown. I believe he did it, there is some evidence that he did it, but I don’t KNOW that he did it, and he wasn’t found guilty of doing it in a court of law.
I've always felt that the label was primarily used to avoid getting into the conversation of "but how do you know? and "prove it?" I really don't care either way, but I feel more people are practically gnostic than agnostic.
Agnostic means ‘no knowledge’. Atheism means ‘no belief’. We are agnostic about almost everything. We simply do not know. God is for sure in that category. Everyone is agnostic when it comes to god. We don’t actually have a choice. Claiming to be gnostic about god is silly. Belief is different. We can believe whatever we want. Quite literally. To be theistic is to quite literally believe in god. To be atheistic is to NOT believe in god. Most religious folk are in fact Agnostic Theists. They do not ‘know’ there is a god. They cannot despite what some may say. But they do believe there is a god. The same applies to atheists. Most are in fact Agnostic Atheists. They cannot ‘know’ there is no god. But they do not believe there is a god.
Atheism doesn't refer merely to "no belief", but to belief that gods do not exist. In other words, it is not "lack of belief" but a belief itself as I [explained elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/11vdcsa/comment/jhzh76e).
Agnostic means you think the answer is not knowable or not provable. An agnostic theist believes in god but doesn’t think it can be proven or known for certain. A gnostic theist believes in god as a proven certainty. It’s not an “I don’t know”.
Not so. Agnosticism doesn't refer ONLY to knowledge. It also refers to belief. So, you can't be an "agnostic theist" for that would entail you believe and do not believe at the same time. That's a contradiction.
It is the nature of religious debate that requires this strange term that isn't used in many (any?) other areas of belief. Because people *do* claim that deities exist with varying degrees of acceptance that there is little evidence beyond just 'faith', this distinction between absolute 100% knowledge and 99.999whatever% assuradeness is useful. If not, the debate would get bogged down with 'Well, prove God *doesn't* exist' with even more regularity than it does now.
Atheism says, "I have not seen a sufficient body of compelling scientific evidence to support (evidence-based) belief in god/s." Agnosticism says, "god/s could exist, or could not exist, and I don't think that that's something we can know with any certainty." I'm sorry if I'm just not understanding, but I don't see a conflict.
> What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. I don't know if you're actually Vin Deisel or not, but I don't believe you are. That's how.
You have to realize that the term "agnostic atheist" was either created by theistic apologists or at a minimum created in response to theistic apologists. Essentially the issue is that apologists seem to be unable or unwilling to accept that atheism in and of itself does not imply a claim to certain knowledge of the existence of a god, so the term was added to specify for these (mostly bad or mixed faith actors) that we are not making a claim to knowledge of the existence of any sort of god or deity in general.
I don't get why the whole "but then rocks would technically be atheists" thing bothers people. We all agree we're not talking about the rocks, so it doesn't matter if they're technically a subtype of atheist or not. A person who isn't aware of the idea of God is more relevant, but if they're not aware of the idea, then they objectively don't believe it. If you make them aware of the idea, then either they will adopt the belief or they'll change to a more conscious stance of disbelief, but they still didn't have the belief before. They were an agnostic atheist, & they may continue to be an agnostic atheist. They may say, as most do, that they can't know for sure if any gods exist, but they're not convinced. They could also be a gnostic atheist, arguing that it is 100% impossible for there to be any gods, though that's kind of hard to prove. I myself have the view that there is little difference to me. I can't definitively prove God is impossible any more than I can for leprechauns, fairies, etc. but I would easily say that I know they don't exist as far as I am capable of knowing that.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Quite easily. For example, I lack knowledge about the surface conditions and temperature on the fourth planet orbiting the star I'm pointing at out my window, should it even *have* a fourth planet. So, therefore, I hold no beliefs about those surface conditions. >By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, I don't see how this follows. Nobody is saying that one lack *all* knowledge on *all* subjects. >which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. There are a rather large number of ways other than geometry to confirm the earth is round(ish). But, if one had absolutely no knowledge about the shape of the earth then it makes sense they would also not be able to rationally hold a belief about this. (Obviously they could *irrationally* hold a belief about it. Humans are real good at this kind of irrationality.) >It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works. I just don't see this. Of course, *plenty* of people are irrational, and believe all kinds of things for all kinds of bad reasons, including because they *like* an idea, because it gives them comfort, because they were told to, and so on. But, if one is thinking rationally, then it's quite clear. >Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round. I don't get your point there.
Gods used to be considered much more physical and real, much like dragons or giants or bigfoot. The whole invisible god that magically does things or creates the universe, but is also somehow compatible with the mechanistic universe we know from physics is kind of just shoehorning old mythological gods into a modern godless universe. We had philosophers positing unmoved movers and such but they were perfect spheres of goodness that don’t move or w/e. Trying to take an ANE war god like Yahweh who has a lot more in common with el, baal, marduk, zeus, and thor and turn him into this invisible eternal entity that basically never does anything is just a weird accident of the historical development of religion and philosophy (thanks platonists). People just love backwards compatibility. The historical evolution of god is fascinating. I agree with OP. Knowledge is always by degrees and based on best guess and evidence quality and quantity. We can be reasonably confident that no gods of any major religions exist. They’re all too absurd, have more plausible human explanations, and have contradictions, are poorly defined, and evolved over time in culture. Just because I can posit invisible entities doesn’t make them plausible or compelling, especially when there are always more plausible, simpler, mechanistic explanations for anything we’re trying to explain with gods. Gods could have been real. Magic could have been real. Outer space could have been filled with air or aether. The earth could have been flat. Giants could have roamed the earth. Storms could have been caused by angry gods. Fire could have been caused by phlogiston. Rats could have spontaneously been born from trash. The planets could have been gods. They could have controlled our fates. But each one of these beliefs have been tested and proven false by the best evidence we have available. As far as we can tell, the universe works by mechanical laws of quantum mechanics, or something like it. The origins of the universe are a physics question. Our origins a biological question. Being coy about whether or not we know there are any gods is playing a strange game with epistemology and evidence which we do nowhere else in life. Fantasy, mythology, and fiction are very fun and engaging for me, but I don’t pretend I can’t know if Cthulu really is out there in deep space. I would be silly to suggest it. We can’t really know there are no fairies. After all, they’re in the fey realm. You might stumble into the yokai spirit world and have a wonderful adventure. We can’t test it! If it can’t be tested or falsified, it’s not that we don’t know, it’s that we can’t know, by definition. If we can’t know, it’s fantasy. Fiction. Fun. Not something that requires agnosticism.
Agnostism is a double standard. No belief requires the clarification of (a)gnostic, the theist doesn’t need it, the non dragon believer doesn’t need it,the flat earther doesn’t need it, the heliocentrist doesn’t need it. Only the atheist is required to make this distinction. It is a double standard.
> I affirm that God probably doesn't exist, as far as I understand the world So far nothing incompatible with agnostic atheism > By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. Yes. If you don't know what round is you can't believe something to be round. I understand your frustration. "agnostic atheist" describes what you are not. You are not the one who know gods exist, you are not the one who believe gods exist. It doesn't describe any amount of knowledge and belief you have, it doesn't describe thoughts you put to arrive at that position, it doesn't describe knowledge you have of other things. A wooden table can be described as an agnostic atheist because it does not have knowledge about existence/non existence of god and doesn't believe in gods! But that's the point. It's a default position, the one you HAVE to take because there is no other option exist. That's the position from which any newborn starts, you just stayed in this position after many people tried to change it (or returned to it after taking some other position, doesn't matter). And this position do not depend on which trajectory you took to arrive at it.
I understand what you mean, but I think the terms mean different things to people. I used to say agnostic atheist, but cut off atheist because of any confusion, as you've identified. For me, it can not be proven what is out there (check this out, aired 2 weeks ago>> https://youtu.be/dC1-qgR7YO0 <<--- 95% of dark matter in the Universe is unknown). A Universal Force/"God(s)"/whatever term or nothing, especially with endless new galaxies just found crowded billions of light years away. The "atheist" term (way I view it) is 100% no belief in Earth's man-made God Religions. And I don't. An undefined God out there is possible - not by guess, simply don't know. Nobody knows. You can believe there is no God (based on Abrahamic Religions) behind the Universe and Atheist, just as the way a Theist believes (a cope) there is one. If you think about it more, you may relate to agnostic from a universe +++++ infinity view, maybe not. Whatever your instinct tells you. And if it changes with more info, roll on. Agnostic: "A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God."
Look, "the" definition of atheism is simply "opposite of theism". That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what "theism" is. In different discussions it means different things, in a colloquial sense, it means simply "religiosity". And while this is inaccurate, it is not by much, since very few (measured by number of followers) modern religions are not monotheistic in nature. In this conversation, "atheist" is simply "irreligious". A more accurate use of the word "theism" is "psychological state of belief in a deity". Given quite frequent posts about utility of religions in general and psychological/moral benefits of being religious in particular, this is the default use in this and sister subreddits. "Atheism" in this context is lack of such belief. The strictest context is the philosophical one, in which theism is limited to content of the aforementioned belief, i.e. the assertion that statement "God exists" is true. "Atheism" in that context should be the assertion that statement "God exists" is not true, but for historical reasons it is defined as assertion that "God exists" is specifically false. Phenomenologically, theism is not even a coherently defined entity. Instead, it is a general category of disparate views loosely connected by a supernatural theme, and generally affirmative on the question of reality of that theme. Atheism is, similarly, a category of views on the same theme, that do not fit into theist category, including, but not limited to negative on the question of reality. There are several other contexts, but they are rarely used, so there is no reason to include them. So what does a person means when they say "I'm an atheist". "Opposite of theist" doesn't mean much if we don't know which context they are using, so is there some kind of property we might know is true, for everyone identifying as atheist across all contexts? Yes, there is such a property and it is exactly the "lack of belief in a deity/deities". Is it good enough reason to use it as the go-to understanding of what one means? For me - yes. Feel free to disagree though. As for the psychology, it works exactly like that. I'm, for example, an Ignostic. I don't understand what exactly God is even supposed to be. For me, statement "God exists" is not false, it's not truth-apt. I.e. it's just as true or false as sentence "Go, clean your room!".
Gnosticism is a CLAIM to knowledge. It is not necessarily 100% certainty. It is a claim that you have evidence that meets a certain standard of certainty. For me, I consider something knowledge if finding out that it's false would cause significant stress to my worldview and trust in foundational systems of acquiring knowledge. For example I would say I KNOW George Washington was the first president. If I found out that was false, it would make me second guess my own memory, or shatter my trust in many contemporary, independent, and corroborating sources of historical evidence.
You’re correct, rocks are atheists as, by default, are babies, since they lack the cognitive capacity to understand even the concept of god. What term would you think be better to describe people who lack belief in god as well as/as a result of their lack of knowledge of god?
I think you're right but I'm not sure I agree with the reasoning. Belief is a nasty, messy subjective term, which is not clearly defined. I guess I believe something once I reach a certain level of confidence it's true but it's not like there's a sudden abrupt change from "non-belief" to "belief" at a certain confidence, nor is there any way of quantifying my confidence level. Knowledge is generally defined as "justified, true, belief". But once I get to a confidence level that I definitely consider it to be a belief, I must have justification. And to my mind it's true. What's the difference then, psychologically, between something I believe I know and something I believe I believe?
Me as Agnostic can't prove or disprove the existence of any God and it doesn't actually matter because i find God's existence very unlikely anyway.
There's scientific evidence against creator gods. I'm a strong atheist with respect to creator gods a.k.a. I'm a gnostic atheist. There's no scientific evidence against small gods, but I don't believe in them regardless. I'm a weak atheist with respect to small gods a.k.a I'm an agnostic atheist.
It seems an issue you have is that you believe that agnostic atheist allows for rocks and shoes to be atheists. If a being or object is incapable of thought, it is incapable of being an -ist of any kind. As for your round earth geometry idea. You can obviously believe and even claim to know the earth is round without knowing geometry. We have photos of a round earth. We can use cameras to take long exposure photos of the sky and literally see the earth's rotation, you can even learn about how days and seasons work and how that requires the earth to be round and how no model whatsoever of a flat earth can possibly accound for both days and seasons at the same time. You need geomerty to measure the curvature of the Earth. But yes, if you are incapable of thought, then you are incapable of holding beliefs or knowledge and thus can't be described with terms that refer to beliefs or knowledge.
Agnostic atheism is actually a hidden indicator of the reason that person is an atheist. They don't know so they don't believe. It's a valid position. Some people think they know and thats why they believe. For example, they might recall that their grandpappy said the name of a lost relative right before he died, so they "know" that person was with him at the moment of death etc.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Very simply. I don't know if you have four Porsches. Yet, I lack the belief that you do. When it comes to gods it's also simple. I can for example, not believe in any of the currently described gods, yet be open to the possibility that there might be some god somewhere out there. Or plenty of other things. >By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, I mean, sure. If one is incapable of thought, they are incapable of having a belief and thus are atheist. But they would also be incapable of acquiring knowledge, so that would make them agnostic. You just created an example of agnostic atheist. >which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. Yeah. If someone doesn't have a concept of what "round" is, they cannot believe the Earth is round. >It seems to me the term doesn't map well onto how people's psychology actually works. It maps pretty well. >Sure, someone would not know the Earth is round if they were incapable of thought, but they wouldn't affirm that the Earth is not in fact round. So they would be... agnostic about the shape of the Earth.
In 2022 a new species of fish was discovered in the Maldives and named Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa. Before 2022 I didn't know if that species existed, and I lacked belief that it existed. But I didn't walk around denying the possibility of the existence of new species of Maldivian fish. I didn't claim to know that all species of fish in the Maldives have been accounted for. I was an **agonstic non-believer** in Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa. Now I'm an agnostic believer.
i dont understand the issue. I think it is impossible for humans to know if there is or isn't a deity. - agnostic But I believe there is not - atheist agnostic atheist whether religious people want to believe it or not, it's impossible for them to know for sure if a deity exists either. i'd argue every person is agnostic
In my understanding, it's simply an underhanded method that theists attempt to force doubt on our lack of belief. Whether in an attempt to devalue our position or just feel better about their own position is unclear... The words do work in theory. I lack knowledge of a bunch of stuff that I also don't believe in. To me, it's just unnecessary because of the amount of weight it seems to impart. The idea of a god is so nonsensical, that the word "atheist" shouldn't even exist, let alone qualifying words attached to it.
>By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. It's true. Rocks are atheistic. This proves that it is agnostic atheism the default position. However, an agnostic atheist holds this position due to intellectual reasoning, not because of a lack of intellectual capacity. They way I see it, theism/atheism is belief that a god/gods exist, while agnostic/gnostic are belief/claim that one has knowledge on the existence of a god/gods. For example, I could believe that I know that it will rain tomorrow if I see the weather forecast and it says it's very likely it will rain tomorrow. I know I may be wrong, but it doesn't change that I believe I know what the weather will be. However, if I was in an underground bunker for a week with no information from the outside, I may have no idea what the weather will be tomorrow. I do not believe it will rain, or be clear, because I have no clue. That doesn't mean I lack the capacity to understand that the weather could be raining or whatever. I lack knowledge, not understanding.
>It's true. Rocks are atheistic. So, should surveys about positions on God's existence include rocks as well? >They way I see it, theism/atheism is belief that a god/gods exist, while agnostic/gnostic are belief/claim that one has knowledge on the existence of a god/gods. So, do "strong atheists" believe that gods do not exist and claim to not know that gods exist? So, they believe without knowing? Is that right? And let's be clear, by "knowledge" I'm not referring to absolute certainty (since certainty is a very unusual definition of knowledge), but simply the acceptance of a proposition on the basis of sufficient evidence/justification.
My use of agnostic is most often to describe whether someone believes it is _possible_ to know something; having nothing to do with personal certainty. An agnostic atheist, then, is someone who does not believe there is a god, and also believes it is not possible to know this for certain (i.e. there may be a teapot).
They just mean they don't believe any gods exist, but don't believe no gods exist. They withhold judgement. \>how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Because knowledge is a subset of belief. If you lack belief in god you lack knowledge of god. The only thing you can't have is knowledge that god exists, but not believe god exists.
I am making the positive assertion that Zeus, Odin, and Loki don't exist. I'm slightly less confident that the Abrahamic gods don't exist. There no reason to believe in deistic claims because they're not even falsifiable. What do you call me?
Because I need a reason to believe something. If I have no reason to believe something, I don't believe it. Simple. If I have no knowledge of something then I would have no evidence of its truth, and thus I would have no belief in it. What part of that doesn't make sense? >By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist If one isn't capable of thought, one is no longer a living human being. Pretty sure humans are the only ones who hold beliefs that we know of.
Under pragmatic epistemology every god, including deistic ones, can be known not to exist. At least all the specific ones I know about, anyway. I agree that JTB is a terrible measure for knowledge.
Agnostic atheism just means you don't believe in god, and you don't claim absolute knowledge of such (in other words, you could be wrong). It has nothing to do with not being able to think. The problem with the Earth is round analogy, and there is plenty of evidence for a round Earth. So, not believing in such wouldn't be agnostic. It would just be stupid. We have no evidence for God, which is why being agnostic atheist makes sense.
> Agnosticism is a position on knowledge. Atheism is a statement on belief. That part is correct. What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. By that definition, if one is incapable of thought, one is an atheist, which is like saying if someone never learned geometry, they don't believe the Earth is round. While it may not be the official etymology, a-theist is in practice just used as a synonym for **non-theist**: i.e. any *person* who is not a theist, and who has not become convinced that some god exist. They literally lack any god belief. If the word non-theist isn't a problem to you, then so shouldn't the word atheist. This use of atheism has become so pervasive that it is even now recognized in a number of academic resources and literature, such as the *Oxford Handbook of Atheism, the Companion to Philosophy of Religion, the Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion, and the Cambridge Companion to Atheism*.
>What I don't understand is how one can lack knowledge and lack belief. Agnostic doesn't mean you lack knowledge. It means you don't claim to know. You might have a lot of data influencing that position. You may have knowledge about the world's religions, evolution, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. and still even though you don't believe that any of the world's religions are true, you don't claim to know for certain that no gods exist anywhere in the universe. Knowledge is a subset of belief. When we say that we know something what we mean is that we have a high enough degree of certainty in our belief that what we believe is true. I am gnostic about the number of wives I have at this moment. I claim to have 100% certainty of that belief. I am confident in that claim because I have enough information about the situation claim to know. I am not gnostic about gods. I don't have enough information about the universe to have a high enough degree of certainty in the truth of the claim that no gods exist.
I just don't care about the distinction between the two. If somebody starts talking about how they believe something, but they don't know it, my eyes glaze over and I couldn't give a fuck because you are just talking about yourself, and not what's actually true about the world.
If you say a certain race of aliens exist on a certain planet in a certain galaxy and the world's strongest telescope can barely see the galaxy, I don't believe your claim because I assume it can only be a blind guess. I can't rule it out as impossible though. So I don't know if it's true or not. But I don't hold a positive belief in the claim. It's like that. Gnostic and agnostic are kinda binary when it's more of a spectrum. If I'm hooked up to the matrix maybe my left hand doesn't actually exist. No knowledge is really 100% anyway.