Theism, Agnosticism, & Atheism: Which Is Logically The Weakest?

[metis]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

 

[Skwim]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

A few corrections, if I may.

While theism is a belief in the existence of a god or gods, it's especially a belief in a creator(s) of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a relation with his creatures. And, atheism isn't a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

Because theism makes assertions of fact, it demands the most confirmational evidence, which neither of the other two do. So, as for which is the logically weakest, by default the burden of proof would make theism the easy winner.


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[beenherebeforeagain]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

To begin, there is a logical disjunct in the way you have stated them; the first and last being 'beliefs' but the middle being a 'knowing.'

As a skeptic (in the original sense), I doubt the ability of humans to have knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of deities...all that humans can do is to, without knowledge, choose to believe or disbelieve...or choose withhold judgement.

 

[Augustus]

Which is logically the weakest and why?

They are just beliefs, so it depends on the reason you hold them. Claiming to know would be different.

In general, agnosticism is the most defensible logically though.

 

[lukethethird]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

Whatever, your terms are lame.

 

[Tiberius]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

First of all, I'd propose that we could talk about something else rather than God, since we are having a discussion about believing in a thing, not necessarily religious faith. Bertrand Russel used the example of a teapot in orbit near Mars, and that will suffice. I think that will make it easier to have a discussion about believing things and why we believe them without introducing religious faith into the mix. So, I'll use the teapot.

Secondly, I disagree with your definitions. I find the following diagram much closer to how I would phrase things.

With this, I would be somewhere in the bottom right section. I lack belief in God, and I'm very confident of my position, but I wouldn't say 100% confident.

As such, it seems to me that agnostic atheism is a fairly strong position. It doesn't accept anything for which there is little to no reliable evidence, yet it does not rule it out. It remains open to the possibility, but it would require some pretty strong evidence to be convinced.

Going back to the earlier teapot analogy, I'm sure you aren't going around saying, "I absolutely INSIST that there is no teapot near Mars! I am absolutely convinced that such a thing is utterly impossible!!!" Such a position is analogous to what would be held by a gnostic atheist. The far more rational thing to say would be, "I don't believe that there is a teapot near Mars, since there's no explanation that I've been told of that holds up to scrutiny. However, I can't deny that there could be some explanation that I'm unaware of, and so I can't claim for certain that the teapot doesn't exist." That is the position of the agnostic atheist.

To continue the analogy, the gnostic theist would claim that there can't be any doubt at all that the teapot is there, it absolutely MUST be there, and anyone who can't see that is a fool. This is clearly a ridiculous position. And the agnostic theist would claim that even though there is no indisputable proof, it is clearly more likely that the teapot is there than not, so we should believe that the teapot is there, even without sufficient evidence.

However, assuming that you disagree with my criticisms of your definitions, I still don't see how atheism is the weakest in your original argument. If you are claiming that it is weakest because it is making an argument of certain knowledge, then theism must be just as weak.

 

[LuisDantas]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

Intriguing.

At first glance it looks like a quite close dispute, because no concept derived from god-ideas has much of an affinity for rational logic. But a more prolongued look shows considerable nuance.

If one must choose among those, the reasonable choice is actually ignosticism - the polite attitude of pointing out that it is not at all clear what people mean when they mention a deity.

Without that surprisingly often neglected yet badly needed measure, the whole matter is essentially meaningless and hopelessly self-serving.

If we nonetheless need to restrain ourselves to analyzing the relative logical merits of those three traditional stances, then agnosticism is of course supreme, if utterly boring. That is no minor flaw, because there is little reason for even having god-concepts if they are not in some sense engaging and motivational.

Theism is decisively inferior to agnosticism from a logical perspective, because it is inherently at least a bit schizophrenic. It amounts to declaring that there is something that should be called a deity (ultimately for arbitrary reasons, because those are the only rational reasons that apply to deity existence matters) only to immediately inflict the shadow of odd doubt over the actual existence of that "something". It is really a stance of deliberate, self-inflicted, utterly unnecessary and unproductive confusion.

Atheism... atheism is really just economically sound. It amounts to a refusal to waste attention and other resources on ideas that are defined as having dubious existence to begin with.

Therefore, it seems to me that of the three, theism is by far the less rational. Mainly because the very idea is to put reason aside in order to favor aesthetical satisfaction. It is actually a significant degeneration of theism to propose that it should bother with reason or rationality; that is just not the role that it was meant to fulfill.

Atheism is considerably more rational, just barely losing to agnosticism... but it is also considerably easier to use in a practical sense, and avoids the wasteful aspects of both agnosticism and theism.

 

[sayak83]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

All seem to be at par with each other. Agnostic Atheism is the default apriori position based on epistemic simplicity alone.

 

[siti]

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.

To assess the "logical weakness" of these we would presumably have to convert them into statements would we?

So theism equates to the statement "a deity/deities exist" - yes?

The agnostic position equates to the statement "it is not possible to know whether a deity/deities exist"

And atheism probably isn't reducible to that kind of statement at all - perhaps only something like "there is a lack of compelling evidence for the existence of a deity/deities"

Stated that way, atheism is clearly true (at least presently), the agnostic statement is arguably true - at least we have - after millennia of philosophical effort - not found any proof of the existence of deities and theism is logically indefensible since we have no evidence to prove it.

So I declare theism the hands-down winner in the logical weakness stakes.

 

[George-ananda]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

Being a believer in:

Nondualism: a belief that One Consciousness is Real

I would say each of the above are logically about equally strong and weak.

 

[We Never Know]

First of all, I'd propose that we could talk about something else rather than God, since we are having a discussion about believing in a thing, not necessarily religious faith. Bertrand Russel used the example of a teapot in orbit near Mars, and that will suffice. I think that will make it easier to have a discussion about believing things and why we believe them without introducing religious faith into the mix. So, I'll use the teapot.

Secondly, I disagree with your definitions. I find the following diagram much closer to how I would phrase things.

With this, I would be somewhere in the bottom right section. I lack belief in God, and I'm very confident of my position, but I wouldn't say 100% confident.

As such, it seems to me that agnostic atheism is a fairly strong position. It doesn't accept anything for which there is little to no reliable evidence, yet it does not rule it out. It remains open to the possibility, but it would require some pretty strong evidence to be convinced.

Going back to the earlier teapot analogy, I'm sure you aren't going around saying, "I absolutely INSIST that there is no teapot near Mars! I am absolutely convinced that such a thing is utterly impossible!!!" Such a position is analogous to what would be held by a gnostic atheist. The far more rational thing to say would be, "I don't believe that there is a teapot near Mars, since there's no explanation that I've been told of that holds up to scrutiny. However, I can't deny that there could be some explanation that I'm unaware of, and so I can't claim for certain that the teapot doesn't exist." That is the position of the agnostic atheist.

To continue the analogy, the gnostic theist would claim that there can't be any doubt at all that the teapot is there, it absolutely MUST be there, and anyone who can't see that is a fool. This is clearly a ridiculous position. And the agnostic theist would claim that even though there is no indisputable proof, it is clearly more likely that the teapot is there than not, so we should believe that the teapot is there, even without sufficient evidence.

However, assuming that you disagree with my criticisms of your definitions, I still don't see how atheism is the weakest in your original argument. If you are claiming that it is weakest because it is making an argument of certain knowledge, then theism must be just as weak.

I like the chart. You say you fall in the bottom right. May I ask what keeps you from being 100% sure? Also this is for you @Subduction Zone

If you are like me nd go by evidence you should be 100% sure
- the flood never happened
- we evolved from apes
- the universe is 13+by old
- earth is 4+ billion years old
- the universe came from a singularity
- life arose naturally

So what keeps you from being 100% about god not existing?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.

Your definition of atheism is wrong.
And agnosticism doesn't belong on that list as it is about knowledge instead of beliefs.

Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

Considering the definitions you have written down (and not the actual definitions of these words), I'ld say that both theism and atheism are equally illogical, since they both establish beliefs that can't be supported with evidence.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

Maybe you should play nice and not start your post with gigantic strawmen that has been correct to many times to count already.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I like the chart. You say you fall in the bottom right. May I ask what keeps you from being 100% sure?

For me, it is simply the logical impossibility of proving that an unfalsifiable entity does not exist.
To be certain, you require not just supporting evidence, you require demonstrable proof.
And since gods are unfalsiable, that is impossible.
And even if they were falsifiable, is ever logically possible to prove that something does NOT exist?

I'm also agnostic about the easter bunny.
I'm as certain as can be that it doesn't exist, but we can never prove that. So strictly speaking, yes, I'm agnostic about the easter bunny.

I'll go ahead and assume that these are also the reasons why Tiberius doesn't express 100% certainty regarding the inexistance of gods.

If you are like me nd go by evidence you should be 100% sure
- the flood never happened
- we evolved from apes
- the universe is 13+by old
- earth is 4+ billion years old
- the universe came from a singularity
- life arose naturally

I wouldn't express 100% certainty on all these points.
But let's say for the sake of argument that all those points are idd demonstrable fact. Let's assume they are all certain.

Then that doesn't mean that there are no gods. At all.
It would disprove some interpretations and some gods wich are conflicted by these facts, sure. But even then.... Let's take the flood. All the evidence says it didn't happen. But god is an all powerfull, all knowing being (supposedly). That means he can do anything. One of the things he thus can do, is make all evidence disappear.

So to demonstrate that the bible flood never occured, does not actually mean that it never occured.
Because the bible allows for magic. And when you allow for magic - then literally nothing is impossible. Because, well..... magic.

There is zero reason to think magic exists. There is zero reason to think such a being exists.
But it can't be demonstrated false.

So what keeps you from being 100% about god not existing?

The same thing that keeps me from being 100% certain that there isn't an extra dimensional undetectable 7-headed dragon standing behind me, ready to rip me apart.

 

[PureX]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

Atheism is the weakest, logically, because not only is it baseless, it's also useless. Theism is baseless, too, but at least it can be useful. Agnosticism is based on honesty, and remains open-minded, even if it is still useless, in the moment.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

The most logical position when it comes to any view, not just those above, is the position that provides supporting evidence. Any position held that contains no evidence is blind faith. I see little to no logic in blind faith.

 

[Jumi]

The most logical position when it comes to any view, not just those above, is the position that provides supporting evidence. Any position held that contains no evidence is blind faith. I see little to no logic in blind faith.

I'd rather not claim most logical for any view, if it's internally consistent it's logical whether it's right or wrong. For a human, blind faith is actually the only way to have an internally consistent logical view to it, because the more complex one's view is the more errors get introduced.

 

[HonestJoe]

Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

Logic isn’t in the conclusion, it’s in how you reach it. If I conclude it’s raining because I’m standing outside so can see and feel the rain, that is logical. If I conclude it’s raining because the Magic Space Pixies™ told me in a dream it would rain today, that isn’t logical, even if it is actually raining.

 

[Jumi]

While theism is a belief in the existence of a god or gods, it's especially a belief in a creator(s) of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a relation with his creatures.

So how would you categorize theists that don't believe in creators of the universe or intervening gods?

And, atheism isn't a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

At it's most simplest that is true, but there are also active atheists along with the passive ones.

Because theism makes assertions of fact, it demands the most confirmational evidence, which neither of the other two do. So, as for which is the logically weakest, by default the burden of proof would make theism the easy winner.

If your assumptions earlier were true, your conclusion would also be true.

 

[Jumi]

If I conclude it’s raining because I’m standing outside so can see and feel the rain, that is logical. If I conclude it’s raining because the Magic Space Pixies™ told me in a dream it would rain today, that isn’t logical, even if it is actually raining.

That would rather be a clash of worldviews. In your own worldview space pixies don't exist so if you concluded magical space pixies told you that in a dream it would be an illogical addition. Not everything we see and feel exists either.

 

[sealchan]

I pose the question of the title, and then I'll have to wait for your responses until Saturday as I'm outta town tomorrow. First, to define terms:

Theism: a belief that there is at least one deity.

Agnosticism: not knowing if there's a deity or deities.

Atheism: a belief there are no deities.


Which is logically the weakest and why? I say it's the latter by far.

See yas Saturday, so play nice now.

I'd have to say theism is logically weak because it posits that something exists by virtue, primarily, of countless stories and dreams and visions of that something existing, but for which no logically-consistent physical manifestation can be demonstrated. But at the same time, so much evidence of this sort does exist that atheism is weak as it much ignore all this evidence. Agnosticism positions itself in the safer, though not constructive, middle ground.

My own view is that deity is an objective artifact of human psychology which may be unique to human psychology. To know that we will need to meet another linguistically communicative species and compare notes.

Within the realm of human psychology and it's related cultural and natural systems, there is something significant going on in terms of a perception and experience of an other intelligence or force beyond that which we identify as our conscious self.

As such I place myself as a Christian who has faith in faith as a means to effect adaptation psychological change. I do not hold to a physically literal reading of my faiths sacred scriptures.

I believe in the power of story in tune with science to lead us as a people to ever greater heights of meaningful and expansive experience.

Perhaps, my view is that of "artism", that a deity is a useful and powerful co-construction of human culture and consciousness with the unconscious nature of the psyche and the objective nature of physical reality. Like an artist before a canvas who has only some idea of what they are about to produce, the image taking shape as they work is a product not just of their intent and skill but an openness to something other than that. That is my type of belief and deity. It is something which requires the subjective commitment of the knower and an openness to the experience of a reality beyond the purely visible. Deity becomes visible on the canvas of the mind with an efficaciousnees strong enough to assauge the knowers deepest fears.