Does "agnosticism" imply a special degree of uncertainty?

9-10ths_Penguin said:

When I see theists push back against someone calling themselves an atheist as opposed to an agnostic, they tend to bring up objections that would apply to empirical knowledge generally, not just to gods: things like the limitations of us as imperfect human beings, the idea that induction can't ever yield a perfectly certain conclusion, etc.

However, in other contexts, I see theists trying to make hay out of the "uncertainty" of agnosticism as if it's some sort of deeper doubt than just the everyday doubt around any sort of empirically-obtained knowledge... as if there's significantly more uncertainty, or a different sort of uncertainty, to declaring God non-existent than there is to, say, declaring a species extinct.

So a question, mostly for theists: how do you interpret "agnostic"? Do you presume an agnostic's attitude toward your god(s) is like the one we have toward extinct species (e.g. "I'd say we've pretty well ruled out that there are any passenger pigeons left, but I remember when they caught a live coelacanth after they were declared extinct, so call me only 99.9% sure... but that guy claiming to have a live passenger pigeon is definitely a crank") or do you presume that it's something else (e.g. "while we can't say for sure, I think there's real merit to those theists' claims about God that we shouldn't be quick to dismiss")?

Poll above, feel free to discuss below.

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9-10ths_Penguin said:

So a question, mostly for theists: how do you interpret "agnostic"?

Click to expand...

9-10ths_Penguin said:

When I see theists push back against someone calling themselves an atheist as opposed to an agnostic, they tend to bring up objections that would apply to empirical knowledge generally, not just to gods: things like the limitations of us as imperfect human beings, the idea that induction can't ever yield a perfectly certain conclusion, etc.

However, in other contexts, I see theists trying to make hay out of the "uncertainty" of agnosticism as if it's some sort of deeper doubt than just the everyday doubt around any sort of empirically-obtained knowledge... as if there's significantly more uncertainty, or a different sort of uncertainty, to declaring God non-existent than there is to, say, declaring a species extinct.

So a question, mostly for theists: how do you interpret "agnostic"? Do you presume an agnostic's attitude toward your god(s) is like the one we have toward extinct species (e.g. "I'd say we've pretty well ruled out that there are any passenger pigeons left, but I remember when they caught a live coelacanth after they were declared extinct, so call me only 99.9% sure... but that guy claiming to have a live passenger pigeon is definitely a crank") or do you presume that it's something else (e.g. "while we can't say for sure, I think there's real merit to those theists' claims about God that we shouldn't be quick to dismiss")?

Poll above, feel free to discuss below.

Click to expand...

Twilight Hue said:

I think agnosticism implies there is a possibility of there being a god against no possibility at all.

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9-10ths_Penguin said:

When I see theists push back against someone calling themselves an atheist as opposed to an agnostic, they tend to bring up objections that would apply to empirical knowledge generally, not just to gods: things like the limitations of us as imperfect human beings, the idea that induction can't ever yield a perfectly certain conclusion, etc.

However, in other contexts, I see theists trying to make hay out of the "uncertainty" of agnosticism as if it's some sort of deeper doubt than just the everyday doubt around any sort of empirically-obtained knowledge... as if there's significantly more uncertainty, or a different sort of uncertainty, to declaring God non-existent than there is to, say, declaring a species extinct.

So a question, mostly for theists: how do you interpret "agnostic"? Do you presume an agnostic's attitude toward your god(s) is like the one we have toward extinct species (e.g. "I'd say we've pretty well ruled out that there are any passenger pigeons left, but I remember when they caught a live coelacanth after they were declared extinct, so call me only 99.9% sure... but that guy claiming to have a live passenger pigeon is definitely a crank") or do you presume that it's something else (e.g. "while we can't say for sure, I think there's real merit to those theists' claims about God that we shouldn't be quick to dismiss")?

Poll above, feel free to discuss below.

Click to expand...

9-10ths_Penguin said:

When I see theists push back against someone calling themselves an atheist as opposed to an agnostic, they tend to bring up objections that would apply to empirical knowledge generally, not just to gods: things like the limitations of us as imperfect human beings, the idea that induction can't ever yield a perfectly certain conclusion, etc.

However, in other contexts, I see theists trying to make hay out of the "uncertainty" of agnosticism as if it's some sort of deeper doubt than just the everyday doubt around any sort of empirically-obtained knowledge... as if there's significantly more uncertainty, or a different sort of uncertainty, to declaring God non-existent than there is to, say, declaring a species extinct.

So a question, mostly for theists: how do you interpret "agnostic"? Do you presume an agnostic's attitude toward your god(s) is like the one we have toward extinct species (e.g. "I'd say we've pretty well ruled out that there are any passenger pigeons left, but I remember when they caught a live coelacanth after they were declared extinct, so call me only 99.9% sure... but that guy claiming to have a live passenger pigeon is definitely a crank") or do you presume that it's something else (e.g. "while we can't say for sure, I think there's real merit to those theists' claims about God that we shouldn't be quick to dismiss")?

Poll above, feel free to discuss below.

Click to expand...

Nimos said:

I think a lot of people misunderstand the use of agnosticism a bit.

An atheist in their purest form is simply a lack of belief in God(s).

Its opposite is obviously that of a theist.

Agnosticism is related to knowledge.

So you can be an agnostic atheist. This means that your overall view is that God(s) don't exist, but that we can never know for certain, this is also called soft atheism, likewise, you have gnostic atheism or hard atheism, which is that one is convinced that there is no god and that we can know or eventually prove it.

Both positions are covered by the term atheism.

Equally, you can be a gnostic and agnostic theist, obviously opposite of that of an atheist's view regarding these.

So to put it simply:

Atheism/theist is ones overall view regarding the question about the existence of God(s)

Gnostic/Agnostic is a person's view in regards to the knowledge about this topic.

If someone refers to themselves as purely agnostic, at least in my opinion, they would be agnostic theists, because atheism per definition does not support the existence of God(s), regardless of whether one thinks we can know about it or not with certainty.

Atheism and theism are like true and false statements, they can't both be true at the same time.

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