"What do you mean "lip profession?"
The profession of the lips, the declared profession of faith in this case.
Re: agnosticism = the knowability of God, maybe that is the current definition but it is erratic because:
- the debate about the knowability of God won't exist without the person giving the views lip service — SnoringKitten
What l'm trying to say is: the person's lip service is as important to the definition of -ism, as the -ism-per-se definition. So, you have Atheism the system (= the -ism per se), and you have the lip-profession of Atheism of the Atheist.
Consider this though: we don't know if God exists / does not exist. These are unfalsifiable beliefs.
So therefore what remains is what the person professes, the definition pivots on that only.
"I don't know what you're trying to say with this "lip" stuff. If you mean that "this is what atheists and agnostics actually profess", then you're just wrong. Atheists overwhelmingly do not claim to have proof no god's exist, and overwhelmingly do not claim to posses the positive belief that no possible gods could exist. Many people do misuse the term agnosticism to refer to some kind of fence-sitting position, but that definition is a complete departure from how it is used in philosophical literature."
You have not read the OP, please read the OP. I am arguing for a
redefining. Whatever the previous definitions were, and whosoever was that much of a grand authority to have thought up of them, l care not.
If you think it is pertinent to reply with a restatement of the old definitions that l am arguing against, then you have not grasped the OP.
You say that Atheism = not KNOWING there is no God but thinking there is no God. Okay as l've said earlier in the replies: OK let's have it that
Atheism = lip profession that "I have looked at the arguments for/against, and for NOW, l BELIEVE there to be no God".
As for Agnosticism NOT being fencesitting, then what is it? A belief that a person doesn't know either way? Seriously do you even consider this? It is the time-honoured basis of Theism / Atheism. Why deny for Theists the scientific confession that we don't know God exists / does not exist for a fact, and turn it into a cargo cult called Agnosticism and when someone comes to point out how illegit it is as a separate belief, you respond "ahhh but you don't get it, ahhh" well how about answering the objections to it in the OP? Those objections destroy Agnosticism.
I put it to you that the destruction of "Agnosticism" which l am proposing, leaves Atheism barenaked as a frail position, because previously Agnosticism had served as the basic truth of unfalsifiability of God/No-God, & Atheism chirps in by saying "give me proof, all i ask is that".
No, the unfalisifiability of God/No-God was the basis of Atheism & Theism
before the newfangled term Agnosticism sashayed in.
So now that the confession that we do not KNOW God exists / does not exist has been restored as the universal basis for both Atheism AND Theism, what does Atheism have left to cling to?
What evidence is there against God existing, compared to an endless stream of evidence FOR God existing? Maybe relegate that to another thread where it'd be more pertinent, a thread wherein if you bring up Neo-Darwinian evolution you will fail, just saying (maybe folks'll offer me a truce, likely at the start of the thread -
"pssst ... you can believe in Neo-Darwinian Evo AND be religious, you know?").
To continue: Agnosticism is illegitimate & is done away with in my overhaul of the terminology. Agnosticism claims that a person doesn't know. Well golly, for millennia, we haven't known, that was the basis of
belief. See my OP.
Why object when l claim Atheists claim to KNOW there is no God, when previously Agnosticism had been used to delegitimise Theism as if Theists claimed to KNOW there was a God, and you were fine with that because it gave a way to misrepresent and discredit Theism?
Also why does JornDoe (see below) add another axis, about the knowability of God, when either way, Atheism & Theism do not differ on this matter? They differ in the DEBATE about the existence of God, a debate which folks seem to run like mad from.
My redefinitions bring the debate back.
"The simplest and most elegant definitions for theism and atheism are as follows:
Theist: Someone who believes in god
Atheist: Someone who lacks belief in god (a.k.a non-theists)"
Atheism as the LACK of belief in God is a new-fangled redefinition of Atheism, when Atheism kept losing in debates, it is not the traditional definition of Atheism. How's that for redefining.
So, it was decided that Atheism says and does nothing, hence need not appear in court, it has no case to answer.
A lack of belief in God, if it were a negatively existing thing, would be best represented by a zero, or a complete silence. Yet, Atheists cluster around the axis of theological debates and philosophy, how strange.
Atheism literally defines itself in respect to God. It has a policy on God. It is on the plane of the debate about the existence of God, not, say, anything to do with the timber / food canning industry. You may note that timber and machinery and cans have an absence of belief in God and you are defining matters arbitrarily if you think they are excluded from your new-fangled "Atheism as lack of" definition.
Also: I wonder what you call the belief that God does not exist?
Also: you define Theist as someone who believes in God. However, as l've stated in the OP (did you read the OP fully?) faith wavers, and if we carve out a noun for every fluctuation in thought within one person, and throw into the works the spanner of Agnosticism which is totally illegit, then we end up with a carnival of chimaeric terms, each tracing their illegitimacy to the illegit term "Agnosticism" in one way or another.
Add to the chaos: now that we've given our inner feelings a noun, a station, these inner feelings become inviolable and cut off from debate. There is also a gradual subliminal teasing away from Theism into doubt enshrined (Atheism). Agnosticism was ever just a tool for Atheism, but it's an illegit term. Agnosticism is deleted.
My redefinitions:
* Simplify the terms
* Open up the debate
* Delete Agnosticism because it's completely illegit and a subverise tool to take doubt as a halfway house and eventually enshrine it as Atheism, which when exposed to debate tends to wilt away, so, the next measure is denial: l don't need to say nothing, l said nothing, l know of nothing because ... Atheism is
a lack of belief
"you know, theism is the name of this game.
If theists didn't promote and obsess about Amun-Ra Zeus Vishnu Yahweh Asherah Allah Vedas Bible Quran etc, then there wouldn't be much to talk about here.
Leave it to theists to come up with all kinds of diversions (occasionally to avoid the onus probandi). :)
But, if we're talking belief disbelief doubt absence thereof etc, then we could perhaps come up with more general classifications.
This need not be about theism, but more about whatever attitudes (and absence thereof) towards propositions claims statements postulates etc."
Hello, this relates to my OP how?
"The more general the label the less it reveals, the more it misleads/confuses, and the less useful as a label it becomes (why have a 50 page argument about whether or not "babies are atheists" (they are ;) ) when we could just say exactly what we mean and get to the root of disagreements quickly?).
We do have an endless series of labels which denote various positions pertaining to these matters. Problem is they get so specific that less people are aware of them, and hashing the scope of their definitions takes just as long as stating your position without the use of labels in the first place. Here are some examples
Ignosticism
Apatheism
Practical atheism
Indifferentism
Non-theism
Theological noncognitivism
Ietsism
ignoramus et ignorabimus (hard agnosticism)
Possibilianism
Implicit atheism
Explicit atheism
Negative atheism
Positive atheism
And the list goes on (especially if we include every variation on theism)"
You realise that is what my OP solves, right?
And no, what misleads / confuses, is when different zones are mixed up. The back end arguments (Reasoning / Debate) are conflated with the lip profession (Conclusion), all given one composite noun.
You are Ruritanian. Maybe you are a Ruritanian with neo-liberal economic tendencies who supports the Orange party. But your nationality is Ruritanian. This is a generalisation. This makes things simpler, by segregating the reasoning from the conclusion. Or would you have specific passport categories for each Ruritanian?
In the same vein:
No longer are you an Agnostic Theist because you are an Agnostic Theist.
Conclusion is no longer conflated with the Reasoning and thereby ringfenced as your personal identity, inviolable, undebatable.
You are now a Theist by lip profession, and you have the following crisis in faith: A means B therefore surely C could also mean D?
So the debate is open.
As for your diagram, my redefinitions do away with all that.
The lip profession is either: Atheist or Theist.
The debate is there to prove itself. The debate is now alive with everything to play for. Who would sincerely put nouns on these stances whilst standing off from actually debating them? I would guess someone that always loses these debates (Atheists). Is God unknowable or knowable? Prove it via facts or reasoning. Instead of giving it names and colours and making it look like a pie, that's not even debate.
Btw, why add this other axis, about the
knowability of God, to this context, when either way,
Atheism & Theism do not differ on this matter? They differ in the DEBATE about the existence of God, a debate which folks seem to run like mad from.
[EDIT: Oh l get it, this is just another ploy to hide Agnosticism, smuggling it away from criticism (notice how Agnosticism doesn't raise its head above the parapets in your piechart, it is no longer an independent position, it can't be assailed, [b][i]but it still gets its own chimaeric nouns[/i][/b], woohoo!), so keeping it as a half way house toward Atheism, all the while forbidding debate because debate then attacks a person's self-identity which is a major no-no]