Agnostic VS Atheist

[Rhizomatic]

To be honest I don't see much of a difference in the core understanding of atheism and pantheism. Pantheists say nature = god and god = nature.
To me that's just semantics as long as one does not add unsupported features to this god/nature thingie and I have no use for it.
But each to his own and if people want to be pantheists, then feel free.
In this respect I guess my view is somewhat similar to that of Dawkins.

As someone who often identifies as a pantheist I might shed some light on that. I should, though, first preface my comments by saying that pantheism is extraordinarily diverse, and how one pantheist describes his/her pantheism is not at all generalizeable to all pantheists. Which isn't that much different from other forms of theism.

I do not say that god is nature. I say that god is Everything. I think that there's quite a bit to be said for the socio-political goals of simply re-defining the word god to reflect the natural universe, but serious pantheist philosophy almost always does much more than this. God has specific properties, namely divinity and unity, that we do not normally attribute to Everything. We tend to perceive "everything" as just being an all-inclusive set: all things. It's a collection of individual objects which, if we lack belief in gods (atheism), we generally take to be without the qualities of divinity or sacrality. To say that everything is not a collection of objects, but a singular unity (Everything), is then an invocation of non-dualism or monism, an ontological assertion with profound metaphysical and ethical consequences. One might readily note that non-dualism and monism often occur without reference to pantheism, but the pantheist makes the second move of attributing godliness to Everything. To say that something is god, in the context of traditionally-dominant Euro-American theisms, is to define it as the fundamental source of divinity/ sacrality in the world. By saying that Everything is god, one not only makes a series of claims that radically depart from the ontology of our mundane, phenomenal experience, but also establishes a hierarchy of values readily-translatable into ethical guidelines and moral imperatives.

Stating that the fundamental ontological reality is one of inseparable unity in a singular subject (if such a term can even be applied at this point) as contrasted to our mundane experience of independent objects and asserting that this unified understanding of Everything is the core source of one's sense of divine or sacred value doesn't seem to leave a single aspect of existence unchanged.


Something that I hardly find reducible to "sexed-up atheism". As is his general habit, in an attempt to reduce religion to one thing that he can easily oppose, Dawkins misses the point by a wide margin.

 

[jarofthoughts]

As someone who often identifies as a pantheist I might shed some light on that. I should, though, first preface my comments by saying that pantheism is extraordinarily diverse, and how one pantheist describes his/her pantheism is not at all generalizeable to all pantheists. Which isn't that much different from other forms of theism.

I do not say that god is nature. I say that god is Everything. I think that there's quite a bit to be said for the socio-political goals of simply re-defining the word god to reflect the natural universe, but serious pantheist philosophy almost always does much more than this. God has specific properties, namely divinity and unity, that we do not normally attribute to Everything. We tend to perceive "everything" as just being an all-inclusive set: all things. It's a collection of individual objects which, if we lack belief in gods (atheism), we generally take to be without the qualities of divinity or sacrality. To say that everything is not a collection of objects, but a singular unity (Everything), is then an invocation of non-dualism or monism, an ontological assertion with profound metaphysical and ethical consequences. One might readily note that non-dualism and monism often occur without reference to pantheism, but the pantheist makes the second move of attributing godliness to Everything. To say that something is god, in the context of traditionally-dominant Euro-American theisms, is to define it as the fundamental source of divinity/ sacrality in the world. By saying that Everything is god, one not only makes a series of claims that radically depart from the ontology of our mundane, phenomenal experience, but also establishes a hierarchy of values readily-translatable into ethical guidelines and moral imperatives.

Stating that the fundamental ontological reality is one of inseparable unity in a singular subject (if such a term can even be applied at this point) as contrasted to our mundane experience of independent objects and asserting that this unified understanding of Everything is the core source of one's sense of divine or sacred value doesn't seem to leave a single aspect of existence unchanged.


Something that I hardly find reducible to "sexed-up atheism". As is his general habit, in an attempt to reduce religion to one thing that he can easily oppose, Dawkins misses the point by a wide margin.

Ok, since you took the time to write all that, I guess it’s only polite of me to follow that up somewhat. When I said that Pantheists say god = nature I was of course going by the dictionary definition of the word, but I recognize that different Pantheists might have very different views on this. By ‘nature’ I take it to mean ‘the natural world and all that entails’ which means that we are, I suppose, in agreement on the ‘everything’ count. We can of course continue discussing what ‘everything’ means in this context, but first I have some questions regarding what you wrote.

When you say that god has ‘divinity’ and ‘unity’, what does that mean?
What are the actual implications of that, according to you?
Divinity, again according to the dictionary, only refers back to god, which means that it’s just another way of saying that god is god, or godlike, which doesn’t get us very far. If by ‘unity’ you mean that everything is connected, then that is a fact recognized by both particle physicists and cosmologists alike.

Same thing with ‘sacrality’. Sacrality just means something that is sacred or holy and I don’t see how viewing the universe in such a manner changes anything, neither for us nor the universe.
So what practical implications, if any, does this have?

Metaphysics is, as I understand it, a branch of philosophy that seeks to find answers to the so called ‘fundamental questions’ of existence, only, so far the answers have been somewhat lacking.
So my question then is; what are the ethical consequences of all this?
What is the hierarchy of values readily-translatable into ethical guidelines and moral imperatives?
What guidelines?
What moral imperatives?

In short; what does your god do that my universe does not?

 

[Rhizomatic]

Sorry for the long time before a response; I have a tendency to forget about this forum...

Some operational definitions:
Divinity is, in this instance, interchangeable with sacrality. Sacrality, at least to some perspectives, could be considered the unique, identifying element of religion. The sacred, roughly defined, is something apart from our mundane phenomenal experiences (mystical states of consciousness or being and supernatural entities immediately jump to mind) that is nonetheless distinctively important to our thought, conduct, attitudes, and general well-being. As I'm using the terms divinity can be thought of sacrality that pertains to a god.

Unity can initially be thought of as looking at X as one thing and not as a collection of things, though that tends to project a bit of distorting human bias on it. It might be better to think of it in terms of non-dualism or monism. If we describe something as unified, then while we might distinguish individual parts more or less arbitrarily, the distinction between these parts is not independence or separation.

It's difficult to discuss the practical implications of divinity and unity separately, because the implications of pantheism as I understand it are primarily rooted in how the terms modify each other when they are both ascribed to the universe. When I describe the universe as a unified object (god), that immediately makes an ontological assertion of non-dualism. Some consequences of this include erasing the idea of individual people and thus the possibility of free will in a meaningful sense, and thus the subsequent elimination of individual responsibility--there is no individual to be responsible. Just a constantly-changing slice of a constantly-fluctuating Everything.

The assertion of god as the unified universe also has implications on divinity. First, it is a subjective matter. God is a perspective, rooted in and born of human faculties. The sacred becomes a way of looking at things that affects the observer instead of an objective property that an observer engages with. Returning to the distinction between mundane/ the sacred and the impact of unity on the possibility of things like free will, you can begin to assemble ethical guidelines/ moral imperatives. While we may usefully perceive people as enduring individuals with properties in our interactions with them, if we root our sense of the sacred in a perspective of the world where such individuality vanishes, then the logical ethical implications shift one away from reacting against a person's actions and towards attempting to positively affect others. It's not, "you're being an *******, I'm going to be rude to you or ignore you", it's "there is a lot of pain and frustration here; what can I do to help alleviate it?"

Now, obviously one could accomplish most of this without appealing to pantheism. A certain deep exploration of the implications of accepting non-dualism would lead to the same ontological and ethical assertions. What it doesn't quite grasp are the subjective implications of the sacred. The sacred isn't just a principle of the universe like non-dualism, it is an awe-inspiring alternative to our mundane phenomenal experiences. It isn't something that someone simply contemplates, but rather is a transcendent, sublime, emotional experience.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but I couldn't extract much in the way of practical meaning from that, except that you think that there is an emotional advantage connected to pantheism.

Could you perhaps answer these two questions with as much clarity as you can:

1. What exactly is the hierarchy of values readily-translatable into ethical guidelines and moral imperatives?


2. What exactly does your god do that my universe does not?

 

[Intrigued]

This short piece is written to deal with the argument stating, often quite vocally, that Atheists are just as bad as Theists who claim with certainty that there is a god. This, they assess, is because it is impossible to prove the non-existence of God, and an Atheist who made such an absolute claim would indeed be out of his or her depth. Therefore, some argue, the only viable position is to be an Agnostic. In the minds of some people there is a degree ranging from Atheist to Agnostic to Theist. On both sides of the fence, this sort of argumentation stems from a misunderstanding of what the words actually mean.

Great post.

Atheism is just as arrogant as theism. I class myself as an Agnostic theist.

 

[Rhizomatic]

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but I couldn't extract much in the way of practical meaning from that, except that you think that there is an emotional advantage connected to pantheism.

While I would hardly limit the practical implications of pantheism to that, I am also hesitant to downplay the emotional connotations of a god like you seem to be doing. That's a very large exception.

1. What exactly is the hierarchy of values readily-translatable into ethical guidelines and moral imperatives?

The hierarchy of values is the standard formula in Western theistic religion: God > not God. When God is an ontological perspectives of all things as a unified whole, then the value hierarchy becomes something like suchness > individual objects.

Ethical guidelines and moral imperatives that might follow from this (readily-translateable does not mean identically translatable, by which I mean that while pantheism easily produces values it does not necessarily produce the same values in different people, even coming from the same understanding of a pantheistic god) include not holding individuals responsible for their actions, not developing positive or negative opinions about individuals and/or acting based on these opinions, and responding to traits that you find unpleasant in other individuals by helping them overcome the context that creates them.

2. What exactly does your god do that my universe does not?

I'd have to know more about your universe to answer that more specifically than I have. Does your universe follow an ontology that allows separate objects? People with free wills? Inherent values? Inherent morality? Specific delineation for subjective values and subjective morality? The potential for mystical, transcendent experience?

The form of this question also raises a slight flag for me. Pantheism isn't just a statement about my universe. It might even be fair to say that what pantheism has to say about the universe is secondary. Pantheism is very much about me, what I attribute to the universe, how I relate to it. It's not my universe vs. yours, but me in my universe vs. you in yours. Pantheism is a subjective statement; it doesn't work from an objective perspective.

 

[jarofthoughts]

While I would hardly limit the practical implications of pantheism to that, I am also hesitant to downplay the emotional connotations of a god like you seem to be doing. That's a very large exception.

Well, considering that I do not think there is any reason to believe in a god no matter what shape or form it might be, and that I think that emotions are electrochemical processes that take place in our brains, I expect that might be why I downplay it.

The hierarchy of values is the standard formula in Western theistic religion: God > not God. When God is an ontological perspectives of all things as a unified whole, then the value hierarchy becomes something like suchness > individual objects.

I have some sympathy for Buddhism, even dabbled with it for a while, and I don't really have a problem with that outlook, but I see no reason to call that outlook "god".

Ethical guidelines and moral imperatives that might follow from this (readily-translateable does not mean identically translatable, by which I mean that while pantheism easily produces values it does not necessarily produce the same values in different people, even coming from the same understanding of a pantheistic god) include not holding individuals responsible for their actions, not developing positive or negative opinions about individuals and/or acting based on these opinions, and responding to traits that you find unpleasant in other individuals by helping them overcome the context that creates them.

Well, I do hold individuals responsible for their actions, if for nothing else then that even if you look at them from a deterministic/behaviouristic angle, the negative feedback is still valid.
I don't see why we shouldn't develop positive and/or negative opinions about people and act on that notion. I do however try to temper that reaction with as much objectivity and rationality as I can.
As for helping people overcome their faults, I am a teacher. But I am also aware that trying to teach an unwilling pupils is an exercise in futility, and seeing as people's egos tend to get in the way, it appears a sledgehammer is in order if one is to get anywhere with most people, particularly adults.

I'd have to know more about your universe to answer that more specifically than I have. Does your universe follow an ontology that allows separate objects? People with free wills? Inherent values? Inherent morality? Specific delineation for subjective values and subjective morality? The potential for mystical, transcendent experience?

I'm not sure if this will answer your question but I follow the scientific basis of Cosmology that says that all things were once one and the same. Hence, everything is by definition connected.
I do not think there is such a thing as free will, at least not in the classical sense. I've explained my views on that subject more fully here: Random thoughts about Science and the World - Do we have free will?
Our morality is the result of our evolutionary and social exposure to the world over thousands and even millions of years. Since everyone is exposed to the world in a slightly diverging manner, the details are bound to differ somewhat from person to person. I'm not sure if it is correct to call that subjective morality though.
As for the mystical, transcendent experience, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that.

The form of this question also raises a slight flag for me. Pantheism isn't just a statement about my universe. It might even be fair to say that what pantheism has to say about the universe is secondary. Pantheism is very much about me, what I attribute to the universe, how I relate to it. It's not my universe vs. yours, but me in my universe vs. you in yours. Pantheism is a subjective statement; it doesn't work from an objective perspective.

I see. Then I assume your Pantheism has no value for me, and by that I do not mean that Pantheism itself has no value or that having a Pantheistic outlook has no value, but rather that since your Pantheistic outlook is completely subjective it has no transferable value.

 

[Rhizomatic]

Well, considering that I do not think there is any reason to believe in a god no matter what shape or form it might be, and that I think that emotions are electrochemical processes that take place in our brains, I expect that might be why I downplay it.

You deny a transcendent meaning to the world but downplay the physical properties that make actual meaning and value?

I have some sympathy for Buddhism, even dabbled with it for a while, and I don't really have a problem with that outlook, but I see no reason to call that outlook "god".

You see no reason for you, personally, to call that outlook "god", or you see no reason for any person of any ideology (who also does not believe in supernatural beings), in any social/ cultural/ religious context to call that outlook "god"?

Well, I do hold individuals responsible for their actions, if for nothing else then that even if you look at them from a deterministic/behaviouristic angle, the negative feedback is still valid.

There are a lot of instances where I share your sentiment, in perhaps not necessarily your particular choices in "negative feedback".

I don't see why we shouldn't develop positive and/or negative opinions about people and act on that notion. I do however try to temper that reaction with as much objectivity and rationality as I can.

It's not really an outlook that I expect or even desire other people to hold; I'm quite happily-subjective with my views.

IOur morality is the result of our evolutionary and social exposure to the world over thousands and even millions of years. Since everyone is exposed to the world in a slightly diverging manner, the details are bound to differ somewhat from person to person. I'm not sure if it is correct to call that subjective morality though.

How would you distinguish your view from subjective morality?

As for the mystical, transcendent experience, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that.

Wiki's intro gives a nice overview about the range of meanings I'm suggesting with mysticism.

I see. Then I assume your Pantheism has no value for me, and by that I do not mean that Pantheism itself has no value or that having a Pantheistic outlook has no value, but rather that since your Pantheistic outlook is completely subjective it has no transferable value.

Very much so. That's part of the significance of declaring god in terms of a perspective (the ontological perspective of non-dualism) - it's a way of defining god/ the sacred/ morality/ meaning as (inter)subjectively constructed while still infusing them with a distinctly-religious level of significance.

 

[jarofthoughts]

You deny a transcendent meaning to the world but downplay the physical properties that make actual meaning and value?

Could you elaborate somewhat on what you mean by that?

You see no reason for you, personally, to call that outlook "god", or you see no reason for any person of any ideology (who also does not believe in supernatural beings), in any social/ cultural/ religious context to call that outlook "god"?

Isn't a god by its very definition supernatural?

How would you distinguish your view from subjective morality?

My definition also incorporates a moral 'baseline' that is shared by humanity (and to some degree; all social mammals) and it is thus more than just subjective morality.

Wiki's intro gives a nice overview about the range of meanings I'm suggesting with mysticism.

I see. In that case I see no reason to think that such a mystical transcendent experience is, in any meaningful way, real.

Very much so. That's part of the significance of declaring god in terms of a perspective (the ontological perspective of non-dualism) - it's a way of defining god/ the sacred/ morality/ meaning as (inter)subjectively constructed while still infusing them with a distinctly-religious level of significance.

Duly noted.

What, if any, would you say are the practical implications for you as a person when comparing a Pantheistic VS a Materialistic view of the world?

 

[Rhizomatic]

Could you elaborate somewhat on what you mean by that?

Without some kind of objective, universal meaning embedded in reality (ie: God), what makes human experiences positive/ negative/ meaningful/ etc. is the emotional responses that we have from them. The fact that you can reduce emotions to neurological processes doesn't detract from the fact that good/ bad/ significance/ importance are matters of feeling.

Isn't a god by its very definition supernatural?

No.

My definition also incorporates a moral 'baseline' that is shared by humanity (and to some degree; all social mammals) and it is thus more than just subjective morality.

That strikes me more as a genearl subjectivity than an objective morality, but putting that aside, do you consider all humans (including people with severe mental problems such as sociopaths, paranoid schizophrenics in a state of psychosis, the severely mentally challenged, etc.) to adhere to this moral baseline? With or without exceptions, what morals do you think apply across all cultures in a meaningful way?

I see. In that case I see no reason to think that such a mystical transcendent experience is, in any meaningful way, real.

How can an experience not be real? If I take some acid and see the clouds form into bizarre figures that motion at me seductively, I had the experience of seeing them even if those figures aren't real. Or is your point that phenomenal reality is not meaningfully real?

What, if any, would you say are the practical implications for you as a person when comparing a Pantheistic VS a Materialistic view of the world?

I am a materialist and a pantheist; they're not really something to be compared/ contrasted.

 

[TheGodHypothesis]

This short piece is written to deal with the argument stating, often quite vocally, that Atheists are just as bad as Theists who claim with certainty that there is a god. This, they assess, is because it is impossible to prove the non-existence of God, and an Atheist who made such an absolute claim would indeed be out of his or her depth. Therefore, some argue, the only viable position is to be an Agnostic. In the minds of some people there is a degree ranging from Atheist to Agnostic to Theist. On both sides of the fence, this sort of argumentation stems from a misunderstanding of what the words actually mean.

Notice: I am using the Oxford Online English Dictionary for all word definitions.

The term “Atheism” is defined as “the belief that God does not exist”. Notice the word “belief”. That means that being an Atheist does not in any way indicate knowledge about the non-existence of god.

Likewise, the term “Theism” is defined as “belief in the existence of a god or gods, specifically of a creator who intervenes in the universe”. That last part of the sentence is important because it represents the dividing line between a Theist and a Deist. But like in the Atheism example, the active word is “belief”, not knowledge.

The word Gnostic comes from the Greek “gnostikos” and means “to know”, and likewise the connotation “Agnostic” means “not to know”. Therefore someone who considers themselves to be a Gnostic implies that they are absolutely certain about the subject at hand, while someone who uses the term Agnostic implies that they are not certain. This leads to the conclusion that no-one is “just” an Atheist or a Theist, and similarly that no-one is just an Agnostic or a Gnostic, at least in relation to this subject.

So, to sum up, one is either an Agnostic Atheist, a Gnostic Atheist, an Agnostic Theist or a Gnostic Theist. The first word implies the certainty with which you hold your position and the second implies the position itself. It’s as simple as that. Still, this position might change depending on which god one is talking about. Unless one was to find that a person believes in all gods everywhere (there are thousands of religions, some with thousands of gods), that person is an Atheist with regards to some, usually most, gods.

Just sayin'...

I disagree. As you read in my post, to "not know" is to imply that you consider the two hypotheses to be equally probable which is absolutely not the case. You are a rational skeptic (I assume) so the logical position is to live as if the proposition that God exists is irrational, not supported by any factual evidence. You don't put "A" in front of the wealth of silly superstitious nonsense that is present in the world do you? An A-Astrologist, and A- Water Dowser. You just disregard those hypotheses until someone produces evidence that would support them. You are putting religion in a higher category for some reason, one that labels the people that don't accept it as somehow lacking when it's the people who DO believe that are lacking; accepting something without any corroborative evidence other than their own emotions. I assume you diagreed with my post but you just put a link to your post so I'm not quite sure, maybe I got it wrong?

 

[Copernicus]

I disagree. As you read in my post, to "not know" is to imply that you consider the two hypotheses to be equally probable which is absolutely not the case. You are a rational skeptic (I assume) so the logical position is to live as if the proposition that God exists is irrational, not supported by any factual evidence. You don't put "A" in front of the wealth of silly superstitious nonsense that is present in the world do you? An A-Astrologist, and A- Water Dowser. You just disregard those hypotheses until someone produces evidence that would support them...

I agree with this observation. In general, arguments based on a word's history or internal structure are genetic fallacies. There is a productive "a-" prefix in English, but it only attaches to adjectives, not nouns. We typically use negative prefixes like "non-" and "anti-" productively with nouns. It has become more fashionable nowadays to add "-denier" to define a class of individuals who reject belief in something, e.g. holocaust-denier, science-denier, climate change-denier. We could invent a word like god-denier, but we already have the perfectly good word atheist. The word agnostic was originally coined to refer to someone who denied knowledge of ultimate reality, but it is more commonly used today to refer to someone cannot or will not take a stand on a belief.

You are putting religion in a higher category for some reason, one that labels the people that don't accept it as somehow lacking when it's the people who DO believe that are lacking; accepting something without any corroborative evidence other than their own emotions. I assume you diagreed with my post but you just put a link to your post so I'm not quite sure, maybe I got it wrong?

But the majority of people do believe in gods, and atheists are in the minority. Perhaps that is why some people want to make the label more inclusive. The word "atheist" is a useful term. It doesn't matter why they reject belief, but it does matter that they are having a socially significant impact. As for theists, you and I agree that there is no significant evidence to license belief in any gods, but theists tend to believe that there is and that they have met the burden of proof. Simply telling them that they haven't has limited effectiveness.

 

[Straw Dog]

Why is this a debate? Atheism vs. Agnosticism? These seem like two different positions to two different questions.

1) Do you believe in gods?
either A) I do believe or B) I do not believe (atheism).

2) Do you know if there are any gods?
either A) I do know or B) I do not know (agnosticism).

Atheism has to do with belief. Agnosticism has to do with knowledge. How can these positions be in such sharp contrast?

 

[jarofthoughts]

I disagree. As you read in my post, to "not know" is to imply that you consider the two hypotheses to be equally probable which is absolutely not the case.

I never said that not knowing meant considering the two hypotheses equally probable. That would be ridiculous.
Let's consider winning the lottery:
- One hypothesis could be that if I play the lottery I will win the jackpot.
- Another hypothesis could be that if I play the lottery I will -not- win the jackpot.
Either hypothesis is in theory possible to be correct, but until we test them and therefore gather some evidence we cannot know for sure which is correct.
That does not mean that one should consider both hypotheses to be equally probable.

You are a rational skeptic (I assume) so the logical position is to live as if the proposition that God exists is irrational, not supported by any factual evidence.

And that would be my stance exactly.

You don't put "A" in front of the wealth of silly superstitious nonsense that is present in the world do you? An A-Astrologist, and A- Water Dowser. You just disregard those hypotheses until someone produces evidence that would support them.

Neither dowsing nor astrology have much of an impact on a global scale.
Religion does.

You are putting religion in a higher category for some reason, one that labels the people that don't accept it as somehow lacking when it's the people who DO believe that are lacking; accepting something without any corroborative evidence other than their own emotions.

I admit I am not overly fond of the label myself, but in a world where some 90% of the people believe in some form of god, I do see a use for it.
As it is, it is not me who is putting religion in a 'higher' category, it is the rest of the world. And as a consequence, it appears that it is necessary to make the distinction between those who believe in gods and those who do not.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Why is this a debate? Atheism vs. Agnosticism? These seem like two different positions to two different questions.

1) Do you believe in gods?
either A) I do believe or B) I do not believe (atheism).

2) Do you know if there are any gods?
either A) I do know or B) I do not know (agnosticism).

Atheism has to do with belief. Agnosticism has to do with knowledge. How can these positions be in such sharp contrast?

That is pretty much what is stated in the OP.
The reason I wrote it was to counter the notion some people have that Agnosticism somehow is a median position between Atheism and Theism, which it most certainly is not.

 

[Straw Dog]

That is pretty much what is stated in the OP.
The reason I wrote it was to counter the notion some people have that Agnosticism somehow is a median position between Atheism and Theism, which it most certainly is not.

Oh I see. Forgive me for not over-viewing the entire thread. Yeah, I don't understand how there can be such confusion over this. Most agnostics would say that they don't know whether or not there isn't SOME KING OF GOD out there. Well, most people asserting god-belief have a very specific conception of god in mind, not a vague notion of some god-like entity. Most agnostics are atheists and most atheists are agnostics. It seems to go hand-and-hand for someone to not believe in gods yet not know whether or not there isn't some kind of loosely defined god-like entity in existence. It just probably wouldn't be anything like what religions propose.

 

[Witch9]

Goddess save us from arguments about definitions and semantics! Please!!

A theist is someone who believes that one or more gods exist.

An atheist is someone who believes that gods do not exist.

An agnostic realizes that humans do not know, for sure, whether there is/are (a) god(s) or not.

Thus, while an agnostic does not entertain a belief that (a) god(s) exist(s) but concedes that it/they might, this does not equate to entertaining a belief that there is no god; having a "belief" is not the same as "knowing" and is contrary to "not knowing".

 

[FlyingTeaPot]

Why is this a debate? Atheism vs. Agnosticism? These seem like two different positions to two different questions.

1) Do you believe in gods?
either A) I do believe or B) I do not believe (atheism).

2) Do you know if there are any gods?
either A) I do know or B) I do not know (agnosticism).

Atheism has to do with belief. Agnosticism has to do with knowledge. How can these positions be in such sharp contrast?

agreed. have a frubal on me.

 

[Copernicus]

Goddess save us from arguments about definitions and semantics! Please!!

A theist is someone who believes that one or more gods exist.

An atheist is someone who believes that gods do not exist.

An agnostic realizes that humans do not know, for sure, whether there is/are (a) god(s) or not.

Thus, while an agnostic does not entertain a belief that (a) god(s) exist(s) but concedes that it/they might, this does not equate to entertaining a belief that there is no god; having a "belief" is not the same as "knowing" and is contrary to "not knowing".

It seems that your Goddess was unable to stop you from providing an argument about definitions. You can't count on deities for anything.

But your definitions are good, so I won't quibble with them.

 

[Witch9]

It seems that your Goddess was unable to stop you from providing an argument about definitions.

She was unable to stop me from posting my definitions, but (so far) there's been no argument, depending upon how you define "argue".