:lol:
Ill be here all week, dont forget to tip your waitress. Lol

Children are predisposed to believe in Santa Claus so I would have to agree with you. Santa Claus is essentially a lower case g god.

Did S change his name to Frank somewhere along the line? :chin:

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...

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?

"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.

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.

DingoJones
1.5k
↪Frank Apisa

Cretin I hadnt used yet, but you just earned it. Only a cretin tries to glom their way into an exchange with someone else and use it to indirectly address...well me in this case.
Also, sport implies a contest. You are no contest. The only thing, ONLY thing you have going on is a skull so thick you dont get tired of being punched in the head.
Do you know the reason you are making short responses now you dishonest stooge? Want me to tell you? — DingoJones

You are still raging like an out-of-control two year-old!

When you finally hit the "post comment" button do you drop to the floor and kick your heels against the carpet?

You have no idea of how much I am enjoying a guy like you throwing a childish tantrum while calling me the names you have been.

Thanks are due...consider this thanks given.

↪Artemis 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... — David Mo

PRECISELY!

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... — David Mo

Well, as much as I'm sure you have more knowledge on the matter than the SEP :lol: .....you're still just not reading carefully.

Perhaps a little background info would help: The difference between the positions rests on the philosophical definition of knowledge, JTB, justfied true belief.

The terms a/theist merely denote belief. A/gnosticism denotes to which extent you believe these positions to be justified.

So, the theist says "I believe in such and such God," but his a/gnosticism will determine whether he admits it is just faith-based belief or claims his belief is founded on rational justification.

A/gnosticism is therefore not an expression of belief or lack thereof per se. It is an expression of the conditions of JTB. Two different things.

Your welcome, but the true gift im bestowing upon you is enlightenment, youre just to stupid to realise it. Im calling you names AND dismantling every wrong headed thing you barf onto your keyboard.
For example, despite claiming to be some kind of writer you are unable to articulate any actual humour in your responses. You are not clever, all you do is repeat the same thing (big surprise) about toddlers and tantrums which are two things Ive already said to you! :lol:
(Repeating my own quips back to me, but devoid of the same caliber).
Want another one? You are too engaged with the contents of your own ass to even realise that YOU are the joke, WE are all laughing at you dummy! Wise up.
I repeat, the ONLY thing you have going for you is sheer, stubborn stupidity. Eventually I will get bored of humiliating you, long before anything actually permeates its way past you nigh impenetrable baby mind.
You are like the character Wimp Lo, from the movie Kung Pow. He was purposely trained in martial arts backwards, so he thinks losing is winning. He gets kicked in the face, he gloats about his “face to foot style, howd you like it?” Or gets kicked in the nuts and falls on the ground “my nuts to shin style. I cannot stand, do you surrender?”
Thats you. Too hopelessly soft in the head to to realise when you should beg for mercy.
Youve lost on every front, if you had any shame at all you would shut the fuck up, but you cant, cuz you are just to obtuse.

Btw, what said! :smirk:

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

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. — David Mo

Read the OP. His trivial 'argument from etymology' only goes back to Middle French; I simply go deeper to Attic Greek to upend his shallow argument. And yours apparently.

DingoJones
1.5k
↪Frank Apisa

Your welcome, but the true gift im bestowing upon you is enlightenment, youre just to stupid to realise it. Im calling you names AND dismantling every wrong headed thing you barf onto your keyboard.
For example, despite claiming to be some kind of writer you are unable to articulate any actual humour in your responses. You are not clever, all you do is repeat the same thing (big surprise) about toddlers and tantrums which are two things Ive already said to you! :lol:
(Repeating my own quips back to me, but devoid of the same caliber).
Want another one? You are too engaged with the contents of your own ass to even realise that YOU are the joke, WE are all laughing at you dummy! Wise up.
I repeat, the ONLY thing you have going for you is sheer, stubborn stupidity. Eventually I will get bored of humiliating you, long before anything actually permeates its way past you nigh impenetrable baby mind.
You are like the character Wimp Lo, from the movie Kung Pow. He was purposely trained in martial arts backwards, so he thinks losing is winning. He gets kicked in the face, he gloats about his “face to foot style, howd you like it?” Or gets kicked in the nuts and falls on the ground “my nuts to shin style. I cannot stand, do you surrender?”
Thats you. Too hopelessly soft in the head to to realise when you should beg for mercy.
Youve lost on every front, if you had any shame at all you would shut the fuck up, but you cant, cuz you are just to obtuse. — DingoJones

A bit of advice in return, Dingo. If you are going to lecture me on my supposed stupidity, best not to have YOUR very first word be "your"...when you mean "you're." That is a truly amateur mistake...although I thank you once again for the laugh it elicited.

I hope you finally get over this juvenile temper tantrum. We still have things to discuss. Despite all your childish insults, I am willing to school you on this issue.

That's entirely counterintuitive to helping start a legitimate discussion within the context of religion.

Ey, stop flinging shit at each other.

I think God is a poor way to word creator or higher power. It's not, exactly, a dictionary word. It's in the dictionary but it's conflated with religion. It's not the most mature way to deal with intelligent design or other intelligence external to the universe questions. It works, poorly. Lot's of waste discussion emerges.(et a Frank and DingoJones)

The hearts of Christians are in the right place, the minds are not.

Could be. Do you think it would be more ethical to I lie and pretend I do not feel that way?

Spelling and grammar are not measures of intelligence, they are measures of ones mastery of grammar and spelling. You are an endless bucket of stupid. And, since you have the memory of a goldfish to match the wit of a goldfish ill remind you: I dont kare if I misspel thinggs, it iss a litmmus test to detect pedantik moronz.
I could go back and correct my own posts to 100% correct grammar and spelling. The difference between us is that you are stuck stupid. Not because of your admittingly low levels of comprehension, but because of your grossly misplaced arrogance.
(Quick, point out that I should have typed “admittedly”. Lol, what a joke)

Ey, stop flinging shit at each other. — Qwex

Whoa whoa whoa fella...HE is flinging shit. I on the other hand am flinging barrages of highly polished turds. Highly accurate, somehow sharp and deadly, polished, turds.


Anyway, I agree with you. There should be a distinction between god (which one?!) and a first cause, higher power etc, and if course there is (I just used the separate terms for some of them.) but people dont seem to pay much attention to them.
There is a lot of wasted discussion anytime people start referencing the dictionary in a conversation. Its an appeal to authority really, and its contentious. Its much better to reference how each participant is using the term, and addressing the differences to move forward with the understanding of what each person actually means.

:sweat: :lol: :rofl: Rounds of drinks for the whole joint! Funky bartender's grinning and foxy waitress gave up the digits. :yum: :party:

Sorry, I didn't see this thread before I started one.

I didn't think that thread should've been deleted, it was pretty obvious that it was just a metaphor which compared sin to diseases (it was not saying "people with diseases are evil", or something absurd which Banno claimed it did).

Gentlemen (at least I assume you both identify as male, apologies if I got that wrong :smile: )

Based on your posts you both appear to be reasonably intelligent articulate people. What we have here is a disagreement over how to define the word atheist. Now I'm sort of a kumbaya person, so let me attempt to resolve this peacefully. Let me address you individually.

To @Frank Apisa:
You're an agnostic no matter what Dingo says. Dingo is using the word atheist in the context of a very arcane classification system used by some philosophers to distinguish between various systems of thought regarding religion. Not only that, but I believe there are other arcane classification systems under which you would be agnostic. And no one outside a minuscule insular group of people would ever understand any of this.

I can relate to this on a personal level. I consider myself to be some variation of Ignostic. I have had conversations with folks on the forum who consider this to be a variation of atheism - if I recollect being an Ignostic means I'm a Weak Atheist. My response was that this is tarring me with too braod a brush and that the average person would not understand it.

So if someone on someone on some obscure discussion group prefers to label you as an atheist, big deal. Simply say you disagree and wave your agnostic freak flag on high.

To: @DingoJones::
I understand what you're saying. Your desire to be precise is admirable - please accept this as a sincere complement. The problem I have (and I believe Frank's as well) - is that the word atheist has a very clear (and different) meaning to, umm, 99.99999. . .% of the world's population: it means that you actively deny the existence of God (or any Gods). I'm a plain language guy and your usage contradicts the plain language meaning of the word.

I respectfully suggest that if you used the word non-theist instead of atheist, our differences would disappear.

If you disagree - and if Frank stubbornly insists on calling himself Agnostic? So what? You can continue to lobby for your definitions. Who knows? If you can win, say, 1% of the world's population over to your definitions, maybe I'll change my mind. :smile:

Well I didnt say Frank wasnt agnostic. He is. He is also an atheist.
Non-theist = atheist. There is no distinction between the two, save semantics necessitated by theist arguments that try and create a false equivalence between theism and atheism being beliefs.
Agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive.
Personally, I hold no particular loyalty to definitions, im happy to go with whats most sensible if its presented to me. Also, I dont care if 99.9999999% (whered you pull that number out if?) of people are getting it wrong. I care about what the best, most reasonable usage. If 99.99999% of people thought the earth was flat, Id still maintain its roundness (spherical, for Pedantic Frank) because thats the best, most reasonable position to hold.

:up: :clap: :100:

Frank is cut off though. Like that guy needs any more cognitive impairment.

*takes a bow*

I DO realise its a bit silly to argue over definitions, but when people do so through the filter of their belief or agenda it forces a response.
The confusion on this point is from certain theists, the ones that do not argue honestly and try and play little word games to inoculate their beliefs against basic reason. That comes from my anti-theism though, not my atheism.

When Huxley coined the term agnostic in 1869, his purpose was explicitly clear - he wanted a way to make explicit the difference in his thinking from atheism.

Your analogy to the world being round vs. flat looks to me to be a category error - as this is a statement about the physical universe which can be empirically verified. Definitions of words are ultimately arrived at via consensus - and can change over time. It appears that you and others are either trying to broaden the definition of atheism to incorporate agnosticism - OR - perhaps you are saying that Huxley's definition was somehow flawed and that - even working within the framework of his original definition - agnosticism is a type of atheism. As I've explained I think this is a mistake, since
(a) it goes against the commonly accepted usage of the words - in particular the definition of agnostic has broadened over time to mean being non-commital about something; and
(b) there are some simple alternatives which - at least to my plain language thinking - work equally well.

As to where I got 99.999 . . . %? I did a seat of the pants estimate. To start off with, how many people in the world study philosophy at this level? Difficult to say precisely, but we can make some educated guesses. I'm in the US. The American Philosophical Association website says they have "over 10,000 members". Let's say 10K. Likely there are theologians who also dabble in this stuff. Let's double that to 20K. Then there are students who are currently studying philosophy who may be familiar with this debate. Add another 20K. So now we have 40K people in the US who would follow this conversation and have an opinion - they might agree with you or not. So say 50% agree with your definitions and 50K don't. Back to 20K people in the US who would both understand this conversation and agree with you. To make the math easy I'll bump that up to 30K. Next there are 300M people in the US. So that means 1 in 10,000 Americans would understand this discussion and agree with you. So that's 99.999. I'm assuming this would extend world wide.

But maybe I'm wrong. It happens on a regular basis - just ask my wife. . .

So here's what you could do. Take a random poll of people in the street. Ask them this question: "If a person neither believes nor dis-believes in God, what word would you use to describe their beliefs? Agnostic or Atheist?" I have a high degree of confidence that the overwhelming majority would say Agnostic. You might then try a similar survey and add one more option into the mix. Ask them this question: "If a person neither believes nor dis-believes in God, what word would you use to describe their beliefs? Agnostic, Atheist, or Agnostic Atheist?" I have a high degree of confidence that the overwhelming majority would say "What the heck is an Agnostic Atheist?" :smile:

I've think I've said all I can say on this topic. I'll give you the last word if you want it.

Oh...ok. Thats too bad, almost seemed like this was the beginning of a discussion. Take care...

I DO realise its a bit silly to argue over definitions, but when people do so through the filter of their belief or agenda it forces a response. — DingoJones

Really? Someone being wrong on the Internet forces you to respond, even though you realize all along that you are being silly? That's pretty sad, not being able to exercise your agency and do what you think is right because of some idiot.

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."

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.