How broad is the line between atheist and agnostic? My impression has been that "unknown" falls more under agnostic. Am I mistaken?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Arguments for or against god
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
How broad is the line between atheist and agnostic? My impression has been that "unknown" falls more under agnostic. Am I mistaken?
Neutral Name
Active Member
Thanks for such a nice comment
I don't mind being picked on if it is called for or helps with understanding.
I was under the impression that you didn't know.
I would say that none are the inerrent word of God. But then again I am not a Christian but I knew that when I was one (If JW's are considered Christian).
I know some things but I don't know a lot of things. I am trying to see what makes sense.
Neutral Name
Active Member
You are my new good friend, Leroy. You get what I am saying.
Neutral Name
Active Member
Bravo! My thoughts exactly.
Neutral Name
Active Member
Yes, yes, yes!
Neutral Name
Active Member
One way to answer it, is this question: How come there is something and not nothing? Answer: Because there is. Anything beyond that is speculation.
Does that mean that we can never discover what caused anything? We have discovered some answers. I think that we just have a few more to discover. With time, much more will be answered.
We Never Know
No Slack
I think agnosticism is its unknowable.
Here is the definition. You are correct.
"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."
Curious George
Veteran Member
No i understand just fine. But i don't think that exclaiming about the way things are overcomes the presumption that the entity about which you have created a story is anymore likely. You are very much asserting after the fact that the way things exist is a result of intelligent design because of the way things are. This is begging the question. It adds nothing inductively or deductively to the conversation.
Sure it could have. And if your grandma had balls she would be your grandpa. Only it (the universe) didn't and she, (your grandma) doesn't. Tell me how this is any different than a person seeing lightning for the first time and trying to explain it by saying "gods!"
The universe is the way that it is. The constants are what they are. A consequence of this is that our life evolved. Nothing more, nothing less.
No it is not. You could say the same for any ordered combination.
Chimp DNA is testable, human DNA is testable. How these fit together, compare and contrast within all of the other testable DNA is answered by scientific hypotheses. This is very different than manufacturing a story in order to explain why things are as they are. One is testable, relates to other our scientific data and builds on our understanding, the other is fanciful thinking aimed at rationalizing more fanciful thinking.
You are missing the point. Literally any pattern of an ordered sequence of that magnitude is the same. As time has existed so this long. If you roll dice a million times you will get an ordered sequence of a million rolls. While the odds of you getting any one roll is infinitesimally unlikely, the odds that you get one of those infinitesimally unlikely sequences is guaranteed.
Paarsurrey, this question of yours is difficult to parse, since it has three negative words close to each other and uses very abstract subjects to boot.
Maybe you can rewrite this with a bit more context, and perhaps some form of example or illustration? I don't think that I can attempt to answer it otherwise. I am just not sure of what you ask.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Have you ever asked yourself how God could die in the first place?
If you meant they require a God who could raise Jesus from the dead you might want to ask yourself why that matters so much.
A body is just a body, and all bodies die eventually and remain dead.
So what is the significance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus even if it happened?
dfnj
Well-Known Member
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Don't ask a skeptic. The short answer is as long as humans remains humans it will be unknown. IFF God exists, then God Knows.
74x12
Well-Known Member
God made the argument balanced so that people can deny Him if they choose. But, God has not hidden Himself. However, He has made it so that anyone who wants to know Him will need to seek Him by faith. Then He will be revealed to them personally.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
I don't concern myself with this. I simply believe in the version of God, that I believe in it. As for souls, Heaven and so on, I don't know. I don't need to believe in that, but I wouldn't rule it out and I accept those who believe in it. As for what I believe happens, when a human dies, I don't know and I can personally accept that we die, Heaven/Hell or reincarnation.
Neutral Name
Active Member
I really believe that science will one day prove God. Science has begun to understand dimensions. When science can access the other dimensions, God will be found. We are simply quite primitive at the moment no matter how technologically advanced we think we are.
Srivijaya
Active Member
There is no real consensus amongst believers as to a definition of god. So when someone is arguing for or against, then they are arguing about their definition. At the lowest level, some people have their version of god in their pockets. This 'god' conveniently agrees with their own views - though they claim they are following his commandments. It is, ironically, quite idolatrous.
Elsewhere, I've seen some followers of the desert fathers drawing the line at samhadi. They say that deeper meditation returns a being to the voidness god created us out of. Misguided, but interesting, if you consider the implications of that for a moment. Genesis, also, is an amazing document when viewed from a different angle. Certainly one of my favorite reads, and I'm not remotely Christian.
I guess, you set up your straw man and knock him/her down.
Last edited:
leroy
Well-Known Member
In my experience in forums, agnostic seems to mean: an atheist that whants to avoid the burden proof.
Not really. I tend to presume that those here will have their views regardless of what others say. Those who are secure in their religious beliefs will likely not even stalk these forums, and I'm not here to be converted or convert others.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Entropy is also testable, we can show that a state of low entropy is statistically less probable than a state of high entropy.
Imagine a young earth creationist claiming, "hey the genetic markers in the human DNA in those specific locations is as unlikely as any other pattern with genetic markers I'm any other locations"
Obviously the impressive thing is not that we have an improbable pattern of genetic markers, the amazing thing is that we have an improbable pattern that matches the chimp genome.
We could have had any other pattern of genetic markers, but the fact that of all the possible patterns we happened to have the one that matches the chimp genome is what makes it impressive. And cries for an explanation......., one can not simply say it happened by chance matching the chimp genome is as unlikely as any other pattern
Or take for example these sentences, how do you know that I am not just a baby typing random keys in a key board? After all this combination of letters is as unlikely as any other random set of letters. ... Once again the impressive thing is not that this combination of letters is unlikely, the impressive thing is that of all the possible combinations of words and letters, this sentence happens to be a coherent combination of letters with meaningful words and sentences...... A baby typing random letters would produce something as unlikely as these sentences, he would produce a meaningless set of letters (high entropy) but he wouldn't type a coherent set of meaningful words and sentences. (Low entropy)
The same is true with entropy, the impressive thing is not that we have an improbable configuration of atoms and energy... The impressive thing is that of all the possible configurations we happened to have a low entropy configuration. (Being high entropy much much more likely)
...
A random set of 6000 dice would have something close to 1,000 dice facing 6 (high entropy) this is the most probable configuration and what we would expect to see if dice were randomly thrown.
If you find 6000 dice all facing 6 (low entropy) you would know that it was not a product of chance.... Sure this configuration is as improbable as any other specific configuration, but the fact that "all facing 6" has low entropy cries for an explanation.