It is a myth that logical positivists denied the existence of unobservable entities. I'm traveling now. Tomorrow I'll be home and give the exact quotation.
For the moment: the existence of theoretical entities is guaranteed by the criterion of verification. If the theory is verified, the elements it contains are also verified.

"The practical reason why atheism should be simply "lacks belief in god(s)" is because it is the tidiest pairing with the word theist, and describes the most non-theists in practice"


"Non-theist" fulfills the same function and has an additional advantage: it does not interfere with the academic and traditional meanings of atheism and agnosticism. I think this is a very good reason to respect them.

Can you make a case as to why the latter should hold more weight?

No, if you offer a compelling reason to adopt non-academic terminology. It can happen.

There are many people on the Internet who feel threatened if they are called agnostic rather than atheist. As if names have power over ideas. I don't mind being called by a name or another as long as they respect what I say.

I don't think it's very serious to start a discussion about our respective academic grades. I think the sources that have been cited on both sides are expressive enough.

"Like I said, I'm not arguing about your particular position"...

You accused me of giving support to a psychologist definition. Now you don't seem willing to maintain that. I don't understand your game. Maybe you're not clear what the author calls "psychologism."

The ends justify the means: without an end a means would be a mere instrument without value .
But ends do not justify means that corrupt them.

The problem is to determine when the latter occurs. It is not always easy. That is, states of emergency confronting an exceptional situation.

The variety of philosophical positions is infinite. This is a problem for the inexperienced: they give all of them the same importance. A good encyclopedia article provides guidance: it points out the main trend and notes some secondary ones. The SEPh article at least marks the main one, but you don't seem to have noticed it.

The problem we are discussing is not whether Einstein or Sagan were pantheists but how they used the concepts of atheism and agnosticism.

Frank gave a good sample of scientists who considered atheism as denial that God exists and agnosticism as abstaining from judgment. You have provided only a partial quote from Wiki. It is clear where the scales are tipped.

I don't think Wikipedia is a model of academic knowledge.

It is not a question here of chewing concepts but of digesting them. I'm afraid you have a digestive problem with the concepts of metaphysical, psychological and epistemological. Why do you think I defend a psychological concept of agnosticism? Let's see if you can answer or avoid the answer.

It's not that I don't want to understand you, it's just that I don't get it. The only words you quote from Kenny are these:

"I do not myself know of any argument for the existence of God which I find convincing; in all of them I think I can find flaws. Equally, I do not know of any argument against the existence of God which is totally convincing; in the arguments I know against the existence of God I can equally find flaws. So that my own position on the existence of God is agnostic."

I fully subscribe to the meaning of agnostic here. Why do you think otherwise?

I want to talk about knowledge (of God). The only way to do so is through the propositions that enunciate it: I affirm or I deny. Or I abstain. Do you know an alternative to these three? I do not.

Your vocabulary has a serious problem: you don't know how to call a long list of philosophers who call themselves agnostics and defend abstention from judgment. Starting with the one who invented the term: Thomas Huxley. It's a serious flaw..

"That whats taught by the experts, if by experts you mean philosophical academia".


Says you. The Stanford encyclopedia article we saw says otherwise. So does The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article. These two are academic online references.

"Agnosticism is the philosophical view that neither affirms that God exists nor affirms that God does not exist. On the other hand, atheism is the view that God does not exist". (http://www.iep.utm.edu/skept-th/).

Sorry, I'm not using a psychological concept of agnosticism, but an epistemological one.
I don't think Anthony Kenny is a philosopher very representative of today's academic world. Anyway, his concept of agnosticism seems similar to the one I use: neither theism nor atheism, abstention.

It is not.

Your classification is confusing. Besides, I'm not interested because you include beliefs. Beliefs are subjective. I'm interested in propositions. What do you call a person who neither claims nor denies that God exists? I don't see it on your list. But it's a very relevant concept since it was coined by Th. Huxley.

My classification is simpler:
They claim that God exists = theists
Non-theists:
Deny that God exists =atheists
Neither deny nor affirm= agnostics

This endless discussion would have a solution: do not discuss names but ideas. There are basically two of them:
Is there proof of the existence of God?
Can I believe in something without proof?

Names are a secondary problem. Only of convenience.

I'm sorry to say: The confusion doesn't come from the names. Neither does it come from theists. It comes from the definition of atheism in terms of beliefs.
If you define the atheist as one who denies that God exists and the agnostic as one who neither denies nor affirms, the confusion is over.
Furthermore, this is the most common use among experts.
Two reasons to adopt this terminology.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
For the SEofPh article the main sense of atheism is not a belief, but an affirmation or proposition:

"Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).

This definition has the added virtue of making atheism a direct answer to one of the most important metaphysical questions in philosophy of religion, namely, “Is there a God?” "

Agnosticism is not a complement to atheism, but a contrary position:

"But it was Huxley’s application of this principle to theistic and atheistic belief that ultimately had the greatest influence on the meaning of the term. He argued that, since neither of those beliefs is adequately supported by evidence, we ought to suspend judgment on the issue of whether or not there is a God."

If anyone wants to use the words atheist and agnostic in a different way than I do, that's fine with me. Even if I don't understand why he does it. All I ask is that he tells me when he does it and that he doesn't stop me from doing the same.

"Well, according to the ancient Greeks, Frankie's doxic noncommital - "lack of belief" in g/G - is ἄθεος (atheos), or in contemporary parlance: atheism."


The word atheism meant something else in Greece and Rome: irreligiousness to the gods of the polis. One who believed in a strange god was an atheist. But we're talking about the 21st century.

I'm using those words in their usual sense. You'll find them in any dictionary. If you have a problem with them we can discuss it. Do you have any reason to suppose that I can't handle them?

According to the author of the text, agnosticism is opposed to atheism and theism on epistemological grounds: lack of evidence. That is the meaning I give to the word. I don't know where you see the problem.

Theism: affirmation that god exists.
Atheism: denial that god exists.
Agnosticism: lack of evidence, then refrain of judgment.

By the way, the article has the defect of stopping at philosophically irrelevant and picturesque uses. To devote a few lines to skeptical religion, frankly...

The article you quote says several times that the term atheism is fine and generally used as Frank and I do. Same for agnosticism. It only discusses some marginal use like Flew - which we know how it ended.

The first three lines of the second meaning of Wiki are neutral.
Scientism is similar to positivism. Some well known scientists: Dawkins, S. Harris, De Waal, Th. Huxley...
Its greatest contradiction: it is a philosophical position that states that all philosophy is invalid.

The group of unbelievers includes atheists and agnostics. This is what is said among experts, including the one who coined the term "agnostic": Thomas Huxley. You think that's bad?

Why don't you believe in God? I think you have a reason: there is not any reason to believr in god.

"I think the definition of atheism “lacking belief in god” is the most sensible. This is accurate because all atheists lack a belief in god, it is the common denominator of the atheist category, and that makes it definitive of what an atheist is."


Atheism is a name. It's a word that people use to refer to kinds of things: There are people who claim that there is no god. There are people who believe that god exists. There are people who neither affirm nor deny. There are people who do not believe that god exists. The group of non-believers is broader than those who refrain from affirming or denying. These are facts. You have to give them names. It is a matter of mere convenience. They are useful fot communication or not.
If there are different uses, you will have to clarify them.

But the reason you give is not reasonable. You can distinguish the group of agnostics from atheists, as Frank does, within the more general group of unbelievers without problem.

..."these are very loose imprecise statements..."

They are imprecise if you cross two different concepts: to believe and to affirm.
In the academic world it is understood that an atheist is one who denies that god exists and an agnostic is one who neither denies nor affirms. The theist asserts that god exists.
It seems simple enough and clear enough.

The mess has been made by certain associations of atheists who claim that they have no beliefs and therefore should not justify their position. This is absurd. Believe it or not, affirm it or not, in a rational debate your position must be reasoned.

Moral unanimity is almost non-existent and therefore useless for solving moral problems.
Because it is enough for someone to say "no" for the rule to be called into question.

Spelling mistake. I know she is a woman.

I think you've read another article.
Anscombe raises the problem of abandoning the classic heteronomous morality: the theist. And he explicitly rejects the autonomous ethics for excelence: the Kantian one.
The issue is not that people say it's moral, but what philosophers say it's moral. The Anglo-Saxons and Aristotle.

No need to hear voices. The moral dilemma involves different internal instances (motives). Plato spoke of sensations and intellect. Passions and reason, etc. The instance that resolves is internal. Putting it outside is an illusion. It is the problem of using a legal concept (justice) to solve a moral problem. Or political (community). Morality is the consensus of autonomous (wo)men.
Or do you believe in the unity of the moral subject?

I don't see that the principle of autonomy implies that of moral truth. I mentioned Sartre, who is more radical than Kant. Neither does Hume, who is mentioned in the article. Kant's moral truth is of another order than empirical truth. They cannot be confused in the same bag.

The reference to Wittgenstein seems to me unjustified. At what specific point?

I still believe that the purpose of the article is to get God through. I don't like.

The argument against Kant is absurdly conformist. Nothing and no one can prevent the moral subject from evaluating the decisions of the majority. I repeat: Ibsen: The Enemy of the People.

"I think that's what Anscombe is saying here though. 'Ought' doesn't make any sense without laws. Something just is 'unjust' because of the definition of 'just' which is provided by society's use of the word".

So, what role does she leave to dissidents?
Do you know An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen?

Anscombe avoids talking about Kant. However, she refers at length to other less relevant philosophers. One explanation: Kant is a strong obstacle to her starting point: morality cannot be autonomous.

Here too Sartre is interesting: the important thing is not that God does not exist. Although God exists one must decide which command is divine. Therefore one is alone with his freedom.

I'm sorry: I'm still traveling and my comments suffer. They are short and written with tablet.
In Anscombe's article you quoted I see no reference to Wittgentein or to private languages. The author dispenses the self-legislating power of the Self in four lines: p. 11, 2nd column, lines 15-19. "That legislation(...)is not legislation".
This is not an argument. In my previous comment I gave an example that disproves this assertion.
.

Anscombe's argument has nothing to do with private languages. It is only a presuasive use of the word "legislate". See p. 11. She uses a single sentence: It is absurd.
Sorry for the brevity. I'm traveling

obligation, which makes no sense in the absence of a lawgiver which or who imposes it...
Banno

What about the autonomy of reason?
Anscomb says it is absurd to think that I can legislate on myself. This is a substantialist prejudice. Man's reason can legislate on his passions. For example.