I think people will find this discussion interesting.

You do link atheism with absolute knowledge because you conclude it rules out possibility of a diety being true; which it does not.

Where did I say that? Show me the precise sentence where I linked atheism to absolute knowledge. I have never done so and I never will. Atheism isn’t anything to do with knowledge, it is to do with the belief that God exists. Atheism says “I do not believe that”.

Agnosticism is the philosophy that links to knowledge. Whether you use it for absolute or relative knowledge, it still relates to it.

My point is that you give equal creedence to all propositions regardless of warrant for them. We live in a finite system, which is ruled by finite probability. Not everything is true because if it were then we would be in an infinite system.

However, because not everything is true, we live in a finite system. You can argue other universes and other nonsense, but our perceived system and reality are finite. Thusly, we have the ability to speculate on given odds that a proposition is so far off of being true that it most likely will never happen and can be assumed as such and used as relative information.

There is no such thing as absolute knowledge as much so as there is no such thing as true randomness or choice.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose our own definitions - they exist as a means of communication, and tend to be incredibly blurred. By the author’s definition, I’m an agnostic atheist

You are correct, we do not get to choose our own definitions. I haven’t chosen mine, but I have gone along with the definition according to the vast majority of sources.

I started out thinking agnosticism was a stupid “I don’t know” solution to the question about God. I was poised to write an article on agnosticism and why sitting on the fence makes no sense to me. In order to proceed, I looking up the word “agnosticism” is a dictionary, and was astounded that the definition was not one of “I don’t know” but a legitimate philosophical view that I agreed with. I looked it up in other dictionaries, and apart from the changing of a few words, the meanings were the same. There were no dictionaries that defined agnosticism as a non-committal.

The fact that most people think of it as “I don’t know” does not make it any more true than the fact that most people consider the children’s song “Ring a ring o’ Roses” to be about the Great Plague of London. Just as that interpretation of the song doesn’t hold and is regarded as baseless by folklore scholars, the definition of agnosticism as a position of “I don’t know” is also baseless.

How is that different from you hypothesising a God? Whats the difference between imagining, with no prior evidence, that a one horned horse exists and imagining, with no prior evidence, that a deist style God exists

A good question, and one that relates back to my argument against Skepdude’s statistical analysis. We have the data for unicorns, we know what they are meant to look like, what attributes they have, etc. We have never observed one though, so they are so far disproven. With the God idea, there are may ideas on what it looks like, what attributes it has, etc; but the main event that is placed on God is the start of everything. We can ignore all the things about it’s appearance and supposed attributes because like the unicorn, we have not seen them. However, we know that everything exists, and that there was a beginning to our observable universe. We do not know what caused the universe, nor if there exists the multiverse, and what caused that. God is still a valid hypothesis for these events, however small the probability, and whether you believe in God or not.

While it is the original meaning coined by Huxley it seems a fairly unjustified one. Its actually taking a stronger position than the “agnostic atheist” one above, since it seems to explicitly *rule out* the possibility of an interventionist God.

I don’t quite see how it rules out that possibility. If there were an interventionist God, the evidence for such might not be seen as such. In fact, how can we prove that everything about the natural universe is being directly controlled? What we call natural could simply be the intervention of the supernatural. Agnosticism sees this problem as impossible to resolve, and so ignores it.

Wikipedia I feel sums up the current state of agnosticism quite well:

Demographic research services normally list agnostics in the same category as atheists and non-religious people, using ‘agnostic’ in the sense of ‘noncommittal’. However, this can be misleading given the existence of agnostic theists who identify themselves as both agnostics in the original sense and followers of a particular religion.

@chbrules

This is a warped view of atheism. You clearly understand that atheism simply is that of no belief in diety, yet you continue as though it is some sort of faith professing absolute knowledge.

I would never link atheism with knowledge. Atheism being a disbelief or lack of belief has nothing to do with knowledge, as beliefs do not require knowledge. An atheist professing absolute knowledge would be a gnostic atheist, and there are some that I have met. I am not one of these atheists.

Further, you give equal creedence to the case that there may or may not be diety. This is a false proposition. In science we understand something is not unless shown to be otherwise. At what point do you decide that we should give equal creedence to all claims?

In science yes, in philosophy no. Agnosticism should never be linked to science because it has nothing valid to offer science. Agnosticism is a purely philosophical view, and should be held as one.

Your argument is simply a misinterpretation of the definition of atheism. An agnostic is an atheist who is not willing to accept reality, rather all possibility.

I challenge you to find me a dictionary definition (one which has been published as a proper book) that has this definition of agnosticism.

The challenge is of course ridiculous because of the existence of agnostic theists, so your claim of agnostics being atheists is contradicted immediately. I’d still love to see a definition of agnosticism which includes the words “not willing to accept reality” though.

Further, you give equal creedence to the case that there may or may not be diety. This is a false proposition. In science we understand something is not unless shown to be otherwise. At what point do you decide that we should give equal creedence to all claims?

You argue outside the realm of realitive knowledge and suggest that because we are not omnipotent, we must only say that there always will be the oft chance of diety being true. However, the atheist posits the same, yet it affirms the scientific principles that portray to us what is and what isn’t acceptable as truth in realativity.

Your argument is simply a misinterpretation of the definition of atheism. An agnostic is an atheist who is not willing to accept reality, rather all possibility.

>Your definition is wrong though

Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose our own definitions - they exist as a means of communication, and tend to be incredibly blurred. By the author’s definition, I’m an agnostic atheist - I believe God has incredibly low possibility for existance, and for that reason disbelieve in it. However, the definition a lot of people go by seems to be: “How do you answer the question ‘Do you believe in God’?”, with “No” being atheist, “I don’t know” agnostic and “Yes” theist. I end up having to explain my position explicitly anyway, especially since people seem to immediately jump from “disbelief” to “know without a shadow of a doubt” (but only for God, rather than fairies / unicorns etc). If we could universalise a good set of consistent definitions it would be great, but the end effect of giving your own “correct” definition is usually to just muddy the waters further. To paraphrase: Thats the wonderful thing about definitions, there are so many to choose from.

>Given that we know the origin of fairies, unicorns, and Santa Claus in literature, we do not need to be agnostic about them. They have been proven to be false, at least in the context of their definitions.

I don’t agree with this. For Santa, OK, we can take proof from the fact that no presents turn up, but this seems to be saying we have disproved unicorns and fairies because they originate in folklore and literature. But that’s just another way of saying “someone made them up”. How is that different from you hypothesising a God? Whats the difference between imagining, with no prior evidence, that a one horned horse exists and imagining, with no prior evidence, that a deist style God exists - does the probability change depending on whether we decide to write it down in a book of fables or a book of philosophy? I think both fairies and God are at the same level of possibility: low enough make disbelief the right position, but not “disproven”.

>Agnosticism isn’t about making some claim a legitimate claim, but rather saying “the claim is impossible to prove or disprove, therefore we should stop wastimg time trying to do so”.

I think this is a different definition again, one inconsistent with what is said above. While it is the original meaning coined by Huxley it seems a fairly unjustified one. Its actually taking a stronger position than the “agnostic atheist” one above, since it seems to explicitly *rule out* the possibility of an interventionist God. Actual intervention would provide us evidence in favour of the existance, so the only way to say that its *impossible* to prove is to know this will never happen. From the above text, I don’t think this is what you mean by agnosticism, but it illustrates the difficulty with definitions in this area - there are so many slightly different ones that people usually need to sit down and spell out exactly what they mean (which all too often turns into an argument about what the correct definition is, rather than substantive discussion)

I am also convinced that when it comes to what really matters in the long run, love, peace, compassion, etc., all of us are almost entirely on the same page regardless of our perspective on religion, gods, etc.

I firmly believe that we should stop wasting time trying to “prove” or “disprove” God.

I’m right there with you. The only reason it’s still relevant to me in any way is the fact that there are still others out there who are using their belief as an excuse to discriminate against others.

So someone is hard atheist - good for him. I do wish he’d stop trying to force his belief system upon me.