Jesus?

edit: oh yikes new page c,c

There's a difference between certainty and knowledge. Certainty comes in degrees, knowledge does not.

I can be wrong about whether I have knowledge or not; having knowledge is different from being certain that I am infallible.

How about this one for a mind bender though?: I am certain, as do I know, that I am fallible.

Four thousand years of human history, learned through many vehicles and filtered into us our entire life, combine to give that statement the power that it has.

That's what I get from it anyway.

That I know to be false. And you must accept it as false unless you take a hardline and say that only things we can know entirely a priori truths.

Yeah, I'll give it a re-watch at lunch time.

I guess what I want to end up getting at is that I'm always a little gun shy when it comes to people who claim to be agnostic as a religious position. My experience in american society is those people are usually Christians who believe in the cristian construct of a deity, but don't enjoy practicing the ceremony of the religion. As such, they claim to be agnostic thereby removing themselves from the practice, but will not claim that there is no deity, for fear of consequences from the Christian God.

It's really not much different from any Christian denomination now that I think about it. Cut out the rules and practices you don't like, keep the ones you do, call it a new type of Christian. Except you are doing it by yourself and not recruiting followers so "agnostic" and people will leave you alone.

Conversely, if someone claims they are interested in spirituality but wholeheartedly believe written and practiced religion to be mistaken, that's a conviction I suppose I could respect.

My main complaint. Santa Claus, the Invisible Pink Unicorn and Flying Spaghetti Monster analogies are well received, but I wonder if their commonplace nature is diminishing their demonstrative property, since people will more easily dismiss a concept they're already familiar with than one they have to think critically about.

I prefer the following: There's an invisible, intangible floating toaster located just above everyone's head. It's there from the moment you're born to the moment you die. What's worse is that I'm the only human being on the planet that can see everyone's toaster.

Now. Do you believe me? Or how about this: could you say with certainty that I'm bullshitting? Because If I wasn't me, I could say with certainty that I'm bullshitting.

And I wouldn't add "there's a chance I'm wrong". No, I'd just say I'm bullshitting and be done with it.

With regard to "god", there seems to be this code as if it's somehow acceptable, in this particular instance, to have insane beliefs. Santa Claus? You're *** nuts. God? Ok, you can have that one.

Why the disparity? As I believe it's only because we so desperately want to explain this whole mess. When someone says they believe or don't believe in god, I most often ask them to define god because it seems the question or debate has become so cliche that we've forgotten the very definition of terms.

Agnostics in general come in 2 camps:

1) They either believe that they can't know if there is a god
2) They believe that they individually don't know there is a god

Neither of those absolutely requires a stance on spirituality, and 1) might preclude a stance.

2) requires a certain level of apathy though.

You might like Russel's teapot.

I will take a hard-line on that, sure. Doesn't mean I'm implying that it's required for any form of knowledge; only absolute knowledge. In the same way that we can rule something scientifically improbable/impossible, we can say something is true... but that still means it could be partially true, or erroneous entirely. It could also be true under certain conditions but false under others.

The idea was derived from it, though I like mine better.

Knowledge is by definition an absolute.

Most basically it is true, justified, belief. Truth and belief are obviously binaries. We may fight over where justification lies, but at the end of the day it is a binary too, something is either justified or it isn't. If an idea passes these three tests it is knowledge (not really, but that's getting into deeper levels of epistemology). If it fails any of these tests, it isn't knowledge.'

You are perfectly welcome to require justification of knowledge to be absolute proof, but you then must accept that knowledge is limited to a priori evidence only.

I'm actually glad I helped derail this off an religious debate lol

the term "professional atheist" reminds me of "televangelist"

I have never heard that term before this evening.

Not even the four horsemen go around saying "I'm a professional atheist".

It's "I'm a neuroscientist" or "I'm an evolutionary biologist" or "I drink scotch."

Maybe I made it up, maybe i read it somewhere, but I think there is a difference between someone who makes it their business to focus almost exclusively on religious debate, versus other areas of philosophy and dare I say it? theology.

I think it's impossible to describe such people as theologians, and I am hesitant to call them philosophers.

Basically an activist?

That's probably a better description.

None of them focus on it, though... None of them make it a point to revolve their lives around atheism.

Dawkins focuses on evolution biology and is oftentimes asked to debate, and oftentimes his opinion on these things.

Hitchens was a journalist. Now he's just dead.

Sam Harris studies neuroscience.

NDT studies star stuff and stuff.

Dennet puts out paper after paper and researches countless hours on how the human mind works.

Not even the head of American Atheists is doing it in the name of atheism; he's fighting for Constitutional rights.

I think you're painting a strawman.

I think more accurately you're comparing an atheist to an antitheist.

If you go to debates, and write books on the subject, and are considered an expert on a subject, you could be said to focus on that subject.

Experts are not required to focus exclusively on any particular field.

And I'm pretty sure I've heard Hitchens say something along the lines of "mission rid the world of religion." at some point or another.

Strawman would require me making a point. My point was nothing beyond the fact that there are people who do spend significantly more time on this subject than the average atheist.

QFFT

"Fighting for Atheism" in the US in many cases boils down to a struggle for various topics individuals feel are besieged by religious forces from simple discussion on the topic of religion right up the line to issues like homosexuality, blurred church/state lines or reproductive rights.

What the hell would a pure fight for atheism be anyway? A personality cult? The desire to create a new theism? The right to be left alone? Apatheism?

This nonsense stems from religious people's need to label atheism as a system of belief.

It is incomprehensible to many that a person could lack an organized belief structure.

you fall in nicely with NDT then

I fall in nicely with no one.

This is knowledge.

But you have to be labeled! It is the human way.

Back on topic, I think this version is more exciting and viable than the current belief.

A man born of two legendary leaders, who in turn becomes even more legendary where people still worship him 2,000 years later.

I never understood how people thought they could be "agnostic". I think the problem comes from people using the wrong definition of atheism. Atheism isn't necessarily an assertion that there are no gods. That's what is called positive atheism. I'm a negative atheist or a weak atheist because I just have no belief.

then the word itself shouldn't even exist, very few people assert that claim, and the propaganda claiming that is what that word means is to further strengthen religion by discounting atheists from their logical viewpoint.

We define all sorts of things regardless if it's necessary or not.

I don't know many atheists that claim there is no god; furthermore, do people not realize that such claims gives you the burden of proof as well?

lol god doesn't exist, and if jesus did; he certainly didn't exist in the time frame given by christianity.

/end thread