Jesus?

Also, I've got to point out that most atheists are also agnostics. I don't think I know more than 1-2 atheists that are gnostic.

If you didn't know, gnostic and agnostic describe if you'd say you know for sure, while theist and atheist describe what you 'believe' (or not).

For example, I am an agnostic atheist. I do not believe there are any gods, but I cannot know for sure.

There are some pretty cool things we as a species come up with.

if i write a book where the first chapter SPECIFICALLY STATES that everything in the book is the inspired word of god, does that make it true?

O I know it happens, so does racial BS, Idk what I was trying to say. maybe just that it isn't the norm for people to come unglued about it these days.

There are a few houses/gatherings around here where I knew to keep my mouth shut because at the very least, it would involve more than one person getting in my face and fighting level furious over the statement. I mean I'm not atheist any longer, I'm agnostic, but even that wouldn't be good enough. Nothing short of absolute faith would be good enough.

If you haven't ever been around a place like that, then just consider yourself lucky.

I'm not acting as if it's a one way street though, atheists can be just as bad as the people they are constantly fighting.

I hope you're talking of those that actually identify with the term, I know very few who claim they are gnostic, and of course nobody can be truly gnostic, currently.

I kind of find that calling oneself agnostic is redundant, but then again a Prof and I had a disagreement over the terms when he claimed he was Agnostic and I asked him after class if he used the traditional use for it, or by the actual meaning of the words, he didn't comprehend that theism/atheism had to do with beliefs and gnosticism/agnosticism had to deal with knowledge, that and he was an arrogant *** who hates technology... (sorry ranting a bit).

well then what if you don't take a side because you are agnostic.

i believe that i don't know which is actually correct so i find it pointless to lean one way or the other.

nobody knows...

atheism/theism doesn't deal in knowledge though.

Hmmm...I was tinkering with something as far as Akhenaten, Ramses II, Moses, Abraham, and the time-span of the Hittite reign and Dorian invasion, but I think it might require a little more time and a thorough refresher before I can fully wrap my head around what exactly it is that popped into my brain thanks to this thread. I don't even know if I could put it into something remotely understandable to anyone else at this point.

/ponders

it does though, connotatively. at its root, yes a-theist simply means not theist. but as neil degrasse tyson points out, we don't have a word for non-golfers. its makes little to no sense to even argue about it.

atheist has taken on the meaning that one takes the position that there is no god or gods. you can have varying degrees of certainty, but in general an atheist takes on a strong enough point to claim to know there is no god. If you require absolute proof to know something, we would say we know nothing.

game just loaded, ill further my point later.

interesting video..sort of reminds me of a conversation i overheard at work between a very religious guy and the other not so religious but obviously knew more about what he was talking about...i cant remember exactly what religion he was but he was going on how hes more open minded because he believes in something so powerful that others do not..anyhow the guy asked "so u know ancient religions were around long before ur modern religion was" "people worshiped hercules,zeus, etc etc" religous guy says ,"well they werent real." (sorry for grammar errors im lazy :P)

Well, that's just flat out wrong.

In general an atheist takes on a strong enough point to claim to know that no credible evidence has been presented to show that god does exist.

The second part of your statement is so loaded, its hard to know where to begin. How bout this religion, first present a single shred of credible, testable, and repeatable evidence of the supernatural and we'll go from there.

When people start philosophizing about what knowledge is and if you can ever truly know anything, that's about the point when my eyes start to glaze over.

I believe if we're all at the same table, we arrived there by making a lot of the same assumptions, such as rejecting the null hypothesis of solipsism for starters. If you then tell me nothing can truly be known, I'd in turn ask why you're even bothering telling me such wisdom.

Perhaps nothing can be said in certainty at some level, but I can't qualify everything I say with a footnote that there is some inherent possibility that I am wrong. And I regard the existence of god(s) in the same manner. In so much as I can make a statement, any statement, I would say that there is no such entity or entities, and the only lingering doubt I have of the validity of said statement is caused indirectly by the belief that anything is possible.

Of course, in a reality where anything is possible, anything is possible itself is a fallacious statement since there would then have to be a case where anything is not possible for the set of anything to be fully inclusive.

There, I've done it. I'm an old man and I've said a crazy thing.

This is pretty much what I was trying to type, but I think you put it more eloquently than I ever would have. I have a hard time identifying with agnosticism because I just can't accept the "we just can't know" ideology. If there exists zero proof of something, you are allowed to say that thing does not exist. It's done all the time but there's this weird exception for the existence of god.

People say "we just can't know" because while their logical side says, "yeah, this is all ***", their fearful side says "well maybe it could be true..."

They basically don't have the courage to actually make a decision based on knowledge and facts.

That's not it at all..

For me it's this.

Any being capable of creating everything, hell creating it's own self depending on how you look at things, to me, seems well beyond the scope of our puny understanding. We could continue to evolve for millions or billions of years and grow even smarter, discover even more knowledge, and I doubt we'd be any closer to being able to understand, much less prove or disprove, an all powerful deity.

I don't look at people crazy when they tell me we may never know what actually lies inside a black hole, where all that information goes once it's inside, nor do I call into question their courage.

EDIT: Actually there's a scene in Voyager that fits this perfectly. It goes something like this.. (I am heavily paraphrasing)

Janeway: Maestro, could you ever teach a Robin mathematics?

Leonardo Da Vinci: No

Why not?

Because my brain would be too small

And no matter how hard you tried, you would fail?

<Name of a great mathematician> could sit on a branch next to me and try to teach me til he fell over from exhaustion and I would be none the wiser.


You know what courage really is? Having the courage to admit that there are some things you could never, and just would never, be able to understand. Human's get too caught up in being 'the top dog'.. It goes to our head as a species. They seem to think they can figure out anything.. That every answer is out there just waiting for us to discover it. That we can discover everything because everything follows a basic law somewhere, somehow.

You my friend know little about the atheist movement. The disdain with which top atheists treat religion can be nothing short of absolute disbelief. Don't hide behind "I will treat religion as an absolute joke, but when my it's called into question whether I can have absolute knowledge on the subject I will concede and say I can't know absolutely anything."

Extraordinary knowledge requires extraordinary proof. Ordinary knowledge requires ordinary proof.



If this isn't evidence of a claim of knowledge that god doesn't exist, I don't know what is.

And these aren't the so called "professional atheists".

If that's what lets you sleep at night, sure, you can make that assumption.

Agnosticism, to me, is the same as the scientific method. It is the choice to suspend belief. Dismiss anything without credible proof, but acknowledges that there are boundless possibilities to the universe. I dismiss all current religions because none have credible proof, and the specificity of their nature, and the amount of contradictions weighted against them, make them a scientific impossibility. That doesn't mean there is no "god" or "gods", by conventional knowledge, or otherwise, and it doesn't mean there aren't beings that transcend our existence. It rules out what it rules out, and nothing more.

@Eugene: Even Dawkins considers himself a 6 on the 1-7 Theist/Atheist scale. Gnostic-Atheism is rare and irrational.

This is the main reason I brought it here to be discussed. This is very interesting to me, and everyone I personally know is in some way religious.

You cannot rationalize with people who let their emotions take over the conversation and just let the wool fall over their eyes. mnkk is an example, I would love to really discuss such topics with people who believe words written by kings and men.

Yes the idea is possibly hogwash, but in my opinion, there is enough evidence to merit a discussion.

I am not atheist. I do not believe we came from one cell organism's since a one cell organism is more efficient than a multi-cell organism, such evolution makes no sense.

However, I am not willing to blindly follow some books written by humans who claim anyone who doesn't believe the same as you should be persecuted.

I do not know what religious category this would fall under lol.

Basic epistemology is not that difficult of a subject. In any event, this isn't too far off my point anyway.

Hell is a banned word, unfortunately. Or on second thought, maybe not. I coulda swore I got an lolpic removed for it before.

Absolutism is irrational in most situations. You don't need absolute proof to have knowledge. Whether he'd admit to it or not, I think Dawkins would be a gnostic-atheist in the strict sense of the word.

Yeah, uh, evolution doesn't work that way.

It's not necessarily about efficiency. Evolution states that there's a change. Natural selection states that those changes with a higher propensity towards survival for that organism are more likely to influence the progression of evolution. Because it survives more easily, it breeds more easily and spreads more easily.

That's a huge, huge tl;dr, but yeah. Sometimes efficiency just doesn't do enough, but having two extra legs does.


He'd be gnostic loosely. He's 99% certain that there's nothing there, but knows that as a human being his knowledge of the universe isn't infinite and that he's also capable of error. That acknowledgment, no matter what, keeps him agnostic.

I can't remember the "no word for non-golfer" speech exactly, but I remember not being sold on it at the time. At least not on that clever point. I'll have to watch it again before I put my foot in my mouth though.

Regarding "there is no way to know anything", it's an interesting tool for diffusing a discussion. I'd be surprised if you actually believe that and "behave" in a way consistent with that belief, as opposed to just wielding it in an argument to create a logically unassailable position. As a fun exercise, can you say with any conviction that Santa clause does not actually exist? Or that dinosaurs don't exist today?

suspension of disbelief is for movies and plays

If that's your stance, then it's really pointless to have this discussion. You either have knowledge or you don't.

If you hold knowledge to a level that you must have absolute proof of your knowledge to have knowledge then you have just washed away the entirety of science, and we're just pitting scientific belief against theological belief.

Knowledge is an absolute, but knowledge doesn't require absolute proof of all alternative possibilities being false.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

it only holds if you hold the term atheist to its absolute literal definition.

You can never be absolutely certain of anything. You can, however, deem something have such a high probability of being factual that you accept it as fact.

There is a difference. I can say that I'm pretty sure it's a fact that I'm typing with a keyboard, but I can not say it with 100% certainty. I may be in a mental ward imagining all this.

Right, but to retain its status, knowledge must consider all new possibilities, and persevere. Only by knowing every possibility, and ruling them out, can you say that it is the ultimate truth. You must have absolute proof to have absolute knowledge.

I'm sure if you pressed this line of questioning with those you regard as "professional atheists," they would all clarify their stance to be something along the lines of "I do not believe in any form of historical, or modern, religion, and am extremely skeptical of the idea of faith."