A Response To Skepdude
A recent few posts of mine have sparked a mini-debate between Skepdude and I, which has moved from the comments section of this site, to a post I made, and finally across to his response. Whilst reading our two opposing arguments I think it is clear to the casual observer that we are caught in a semantic argument. I doubt we disagree on the actual ideas both are presenting, merely the definitions lying at the heart of them. Indeed, Skepdude has acknowledged the possibility of God on numerous occasions, making him (by the definitions I go with) an agnostic atheist. Other points I fear we have both simply misunderstood one another on, something that is easily done in such online discussions. I will simply dissect his post and reply accordingly, trying to clear up as many things as I can, starting off with the minor problem of gender.
I am not sure if it should be she, it is not clear from the blog, so I’ll refer to the author as a he from this point on. My apologies if this turns out to be incorrect!
I am indeed a he. My name is at the bottom of every article and next to my comments: “Adrian Hayter”, but I understand the confusion. Adrienne is the female version of my name, and my long hair in the comment avatars doesn’t help matters.
As you can clearly see from his first paragraph he defined an atheist as someone who says :”I do not believe in God”. Yes he did follow that by saying that this is a generalization, and that “some” atheist say that they “know” or are “certain” there is no god. But that’s where he stopped. I did not accuse him of defining atheism as a belief. What I did do is to challenge his definition of an atheist and the choice of words he used in that definition. He uses a very extreme definition of atheism.
Well I would hardly call the definition “do not believe in God” a “very extreme” definition of atheism. In fact, it seems to be the one that most dictionaries I have looked in go with:
- disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. (Dictionary.com)
- Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. (American Heritage)
- The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being. (Websters)
Indeed, some atheists do say they “know” or are “certain” there is no god. When I wrote the standard definition (disbelief), I did not want to ignore those who take this definition further by saying they either know or are certain.
Richard Dawkins in his “God Delusion” talks about 7 levels (if my memory serves me right) of belief/disbelief and level 6 and 7 are occupied by atheists, with level 7 being the kind who “believes” or “knows” that there is no God. Not even RD who is an ardent atheist sees himself as belonging to category #7, because that category is jsut as dogmatic as the ardent, dogmatic Sky Daddy worshipers. The way the “Atheist Blogger” defined atheism in his entry suggest that atheist are of the category 7 kind. That is what I am challenging. I am not that sort of atheist. Richard Dawkins is not. Anyone with a little bit of integrity cannot accept to be labeled as such.
My point is simple. Accepting that the probability of God existing is really really, infinitesimaly small is by leaps and bounds not the same as saying that you know, or are certain, or believe he does not exist.
I do not see how my definition of atheists as people who say they do not believe in Gods means that I meant they believe there are no gods, or even that they know there are no Gods. Not believing in something doesn’t mean you believe in the opposite. I made that mistake in the past and have since rectified it in discussions. I am not a 7 either. I do not believe in Gods, and I would never say “I believe there are no gods” or “I know there are no gods”.
As for his last point, that accepting the probability of God existing not being the same as saying you know, or are certain, I am in total agreement. That was the entire point I made about agnostic atheism. If you are a 7, you claim to “know” that God does not exist, making you a form of gnostic atheist, “gnostic” used as the opposite of “agnostic”, not the Christian spirituality group. Gnosticism in this case is the view that you can know god.
Yes, as I said, my stance on god’s non-existence is of a statistical nature. Yes, I can’t claim to know that God does not exist, which is another way of saying that I don’t have the “knowledge” that god does not exist, specifically because non-existence is not a provable hypothesis. What does the fact that statistics itself is knowledge have to do with my lack of knowledge about gods non existence? That is a non sequitur. Just beacuse statistics is considered knowledge, and just becasue I reach a conclusion based on statistics, it does not follow that my conclusion itself can be considered knowledge. I can have perfect statistics but wrong premises, or an incomplete set of premises and my answer would be wrong, thus not knowledge, even though my statistics were impecable. I really do not see how he has addressed my point that I can’t claim to have knowledge of god’s nonexistence based on his answer.
My point on the statistics was that you claimed your statistical analysis was not based on belief or knowledge, but statistics is in itself that analysis of knowledge. In this case, you analyzed the knowledge you had, which included the fact that there is no verifiable evidence for God, and used this to produce a statistical probability.
Knowledge is a branch of belief? That doesn’t make any sense regardless how you define belief. Just what in god’s name does that even mean? How is knowledge a branch of belief? In what sense? I think the Atheist Blogger needs to elaborate on that point as he’s close to committing atheistic heresy.
Elaborate I will. In philosophy, Moore’s paradox explains the relation between knowledge and belief. Moore stated that to say “It is raining outside but I don’t believe it to be true” is a paradox. You cannot possibly know something and not believe it. In Epistemology, to know P is to believe P is true. In other words, knowledge implies belief. Perhaps I could have related this a tad better in my original article.
I find it hard to believe that such things are being writen by someone who claims to be an atheist. This is the sort of apologetic goal post moving tactics you’d expect from religious people who are too embarrased by their religion’s earthly claims and hide behind a God who is out of reach, can never be touched by reason, logic or science. In other words the old definition of God does not stand up to logical scrutiny, so let’s make up a new god which is impervious to reason. This is exactly what Carl Sagan was talking about when he gave the example of the invisible dragon, who breathes heatless fires and leaves no imprints on the flour on the floor. This attitude is pointless, useless and it leads nowhere. We can postulate anything, claim that it is out of the reach of reason, and bam we have ourselves something to be agnostic about. I’m sorry that just makes me giggle.
I agree, the attitude is ultimately pointless, useless, and leads nowhere. The purpose of agnosticism isn’t to lead anywhere though, but to confirm the possibility of a God. It isn’t agnostics that are moving the posts though, but the theists who claim such things. They are the ones who claim God to be outside our observable universe, on another plane of existence, or whatever else they have claimed about it. The agnostics are the ones who simply say, given the nature of such a being, it is impossible to prove or disprove it. You are quite correct, we could come up with something, put it outside reason, and be agnostic about it. The reason we do not do so is because there aren’t a massive number of people claiming something else like this. Another reason why God gets special treatment is because theists are claiming that it created everything, and on some occasions has a direct effect on what happens when we die. These are all things that affect people if they are true, and people are more likely to think about certain ideas if they have supposed affects on them than say, a giant iguana who lives between universes and doesn’t do anything.
Secondly, I don’t think Dawkins would be caught dead using the word “agnostic” to describe himself, but that is my opinion based on what I’ve heard him say and his writings and I may be shown wrong on that.
Possibly because in his book he uses the definition of “agnostic” as someone who “doesn’t know” if they believe in god or not. His scale of 1-7 puts agnosticism in position 4, which agnosic atheists such as myself disagree with. If you used the original definition (and current one used by dictionaries) the Dawkins would be an agnostic atheist. This is clearly evident by his rating of 6.9 on his scale. If a 7 is someone who says you can know there is no god, anything below would be someone who says you cannot know (until you reach the other end of the scale, with 1 being someone who claims you can know there is a God). Dawkins doesn’t seek to disprove God, because he understands this is impossible, but he still strongly disbelieves the notion that one exists. The question of belief in the existence of god and the actual existence of god are different questions. People often make the mistake of using agnosticism purely in terms of belief, when it should be in terms of the truth value of the claim.
Ok, so there goes an ad populum fallacy. The term makes sense to a lot of people huh? First of all, for all those people it makes sense to, we can probably find just as many that it does not, as such that argument holds no water. Secondly, it does not matter how many people it makes sense to, I can still criticize it. How can you claim that agnosticism is a stance which says “we can’t know” and atheism is a stance which says ” I know” and still use the two words together? That my friend is the definition of contradiction, an oxymoron. You can’t know while at the same time saying that you don’t know. Just explain to me how, based on your two definitions, this makes any sense at all? On the flip side how can anyone be an agnostic theist? So this person knows there is a God because he’s a theist, but at the same time he know’s he can’t really know if there is a God? Something’s gotta give, and it seems simple logic is what is giving here.
Firstly I wasn’t trying to prove any point about the definitions other than they mean something to some people, therefore there is reason to discuss them. I never implied that because a lot of people agree with them that they are therefore true. You simply said that the terms didn’t make sense to you, which is irrelevant. Not understanding something is no grounds to dismiss it.
I never said atheism is a stance that says “I know”, I said atheism is a stance that says “I disbelieve”. The stance that some atheists take is “I know”, which is a form of gnostic atheism: Disbelieving something and knowing it to be true or reckoning it can be proven.
Someone can be an agnostic theist by the simple fact that theism is a belief in god, not a position on “knowledge” of god. There are people who claim to know that god exists, or that god can be proven, making them gnostic theists, and people who claim to believe in god yet think the proof is impossible to obtain. Indeed something had to give, and it was your misunderstanding of the definitions of theism/atheism.
And why do you say that knowledge is different to belief when at the very beginning you said that knowledge is a branch of belief? Can you please explain that contradiction to me? If knowledge is in fact, as you claim, belief with facts than if anything belief is a subset of knowledge not the other way around.
The mere fact there is a branch surely explains there is a difference? What would be the purpose of the branch otherwise? H. sapiens branched off from an ancestor on the evolutionary tree, but we would hardly call them the same would we? In philosophy, the relation of knowledge and belief is clear.
“You cannot know something if you do not first believe it to be true.” You’ve gotta be kidding me right? So this is how you think the process of acquiring knowledge works? We first start with something we believe to be true and then find the facts to add on top of our belief to turn it into knowledge? You have it completely backwards my friend. Knowledge and facts lead to belief (trust not faith) that something is infact true, not the other way around. It seems you’re not talking about knowledge of the scientific kind when you use that word. Maybe we are having a semantics battle over here.
Indeed as you have probably deduced by now, I am talking about it in a purely philosophical sense. I would have thought that clear from the start when we were talking about things such as atheism, agnosticism, etc, but I apologize if that wasn’t made clear.
I think perhaps the entire discussion is a semantics battle.
The world was created by God is not a philosophical question, it is a scientific one. God performs miracles, raises the dead, walks on water are not philosophical issues but empirical ones. God’s existence is not a philosophical issue, it is an empirical issue unless you strip him of everything that’s ever been attributed to him, which seems to me that’s what you’re doing.
I always thought of science as the study of the natural world, so a supernatural god being wouldn’t even come close to being something to do with science. Philosophy on the other hand, is the study of problems to do with things like existence, knowledge, beauty, etc. The existence of God is a philosophical question.
Are you agnostic about ghosts? Are you agnostic about talking to the dead? Are you agnostic about UFOs? It seems to me the answers to those questions should be yes, yes, and yes. We just can’t know!
Again, as the answers should technically be yes, most people do not consider them important enough to acknowledge. In fact, UFO’s exist, we just don’t know what they are. Even if you meant aliens, I would not be agnostic about them either. The universe is only finitely sized, and if the aliens live within it, we can know about them.
I’ve just noticed the three links automatically generated below your post which explain agnostic atheism rather well, so I encourage you to read them, as well as anyone else interested in them[1][2][3].
I’m not sure what you want to in terms of this “debate”. I don’t think continually hopping between blogs is going to be good for anyone, and I think it is clear that we are simply running round each other with different dictionaries and interpretations. I tend to go with the definition Thomas Huxley came up with, you tend to go with the definition that has been hijacked and pushes agnosticism into the question of belief.
Yes, technically we could be agnostic about absolutely everything, but as you rightly pointed out this is intellectual suicide. The only reason we are agnostic about god is because of the status that has been thrust upon it, and the fact that if such a being existed it would have an impact. Agnosticism is useful in this case because it can unite theists with atheists over the issue. Instead of arguing over the existence of god, they can agree that such a being is unprovable and lay the issue to rest. Creationists and biblical literalists are the people who claim that god can be known through the Bible, or through reasoning, and they are the people who make the constant mistakes and illogical arguments.
I have received a lot of support for my original idea of having some kind of website which people could put their name down in support of original definitions, but I think given the amount of opposition who simply refused or could not understand the terms, I will have to abandon the project. I think the best way to argue agnostic atheism is to get people to simply look up the word as I did. Hopefully they will be surprised at how wrong the public interpretation was all these years.
- http://varkam.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/putting-the-misconception-to-bed-why-atheism-and-agnosticism-are-not-mutually-exclusive/ ↩
- http://agnosticatheist.wordpress.com/about/ ↩
- http://trevorburrus.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/in-the-beginning-was-the-word-separating-the-atheists-from-the-agnostics-rescuing-the-agnostics-from-the-theists/ ↩
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I haven’t been following your discussion with Skepdude, but I have to say that I agree with almost everything you’ve said here. Frankly, Skepdude, from the excerpts you’ve posted, seems to be rather ignorant of a few things that I assumed anyone arguing about these things would know.
But I still must quibble over your definition of atheism using the term “disbelieve”. In my opinion, there are only two things a person can be with respect to belief in a god: a theist or an atheist. If not a theist, then an atheist. Thus, people who have never even heard of the concept of a god would be atheists, yet they wouldn’t, technically, be able to affirm that they are indeed atheists. That is, they wouldn’t be able to say “I do not believe that a god exists”.
Would you call these people “atheists”, or would you reserve the labels “theist” and “atheist” only for those who already know of the concept of deity? In other words, would a newborn human qualify as an atheist, or must we wait to label it until it’s old enough to understand the concept of deity or until it actually has considered the existence of such an entity?
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 2:13 pm (GMT)
@Mark C.
I agree, I think the atheism that a baby has is different to the atheism that people who know the concept of god have. “Passive” atheism is a state of non-belief, in that he person has no beliefs, ergo they are atheists. “Active” atheism is also a state of non-belief, but one where the person has heard the claim, and rejected it.
That said, I’ve always gone with the definition of disbelief as “the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true”. In other words, I can disbelieve by refusing to believe, or by not being able to believe. To me, disbelief goes hand in hand with “not believing” something.
I think it is a semantics thing again. Depending on how you have defined “disbelief”, atheism can either be defined as disbelief or as non-belief, or indeed both.
Adrian Hayter
18 Sep 08 at 2:30 pm (GMT)
Mark,
Can you please elaborate on what you consider to be the points that I am ignorant about?
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 3:02 pm (GMT)
Atheist Blogger,
You keep throwing around the term “agnostic atheist”.
In your posts you have defined atheism as knowing there is no god.
In your posts you have also defined agnosticism as the positions that says “we can never know”.
I must object to your use of the two terms together. Based on your definitions that is an oxymoron. We can’t at the same time know there is no God and also accept that we can’t really know either way.
I am not arguing with you about how you should define agnostic, in which case you’re right we’d be simply having a semantics argument. I am taking your definitions and telling you why it does not make sense.
In the same way agnostic theist does not make sense.
If you want them to make sense then you ought to give you the “we can never know” definition of agnosticism and use a “we can never be 100% sure, as such we must allow the possibility” approach, which most sane, rational atheist agree to anyway without the need for a qualifying label before the word atheist anyway.
What confuses me is that in your posts you seem to go back and forth between the two definitions and that is also what I objected to in my entry (or what I should have anyway, I don’t quite remember if I did or not0
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 3:11 pm (GMT)
PS:
You are correct. I should have noticed that your name is Adrian and thus it is clear you’re a “he”. I missed that.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 3:11 pm (GMT)
I guess you are right that in most of this discussion we are having a semantics discussion, I’ll concede that point to you.
Nevertheless, speaking of definitions here’s the definition of agnostic from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable ; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2: a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something
I don’t think you’d agree to be defined as such, not anymore than I as an atheist would accept to be defined by their definition of atheist which is as such:
one who believes that there is no deity
I guess the bottom line is that I think atheism can’t hold a position of certainty, and that the scientific process and strict requirements are a necessary portion of atheism, lest it become a dogma. As such I find it unnecessary to add another label. It’s kind of saying “white Caucasian”, the white in front is not needed once you say Caucasian.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 3:30 pm (GMT)
No, I defined atheism as disbelieving in gods. I said that there are some atheists who say they “know” there is no god, and that these are gnostic atheists. Here is my full statement:
The gnostic atheist still disbelieves in god as much as any atheist, but simply argues a more gnostic position, counting his “knowledge” above the disbelief.
Perhaps I should make it easier:
Atheist - Person who disbelieves (does not believe) in gods.
Theist - Person who believes in at least one god.
Agnostic - Person who holds that God is unknown/unknowable.
Gnostic - Person who holds that God is known/knowable.
Agnostic Atheist - Person who disbelieves (does not believe) in gods and holds that gods are unknown/unknowable.
Agnostic Theist - Person who believes in at least one god and holds that gods are unknown/unknowable.
Gnostic Atheist - Person who disbelieves (does not believe) in gods and holds that god’s non-existence is known/knowable.
Gnostic Theist - Person who believes in at least one god and holds that god’s existence is known/knowable.
Adrian Hayter
18 Sep 08 at 3:48 pm (GMT)
True it seems I did misinterpret what you said about atheist “not believing”. You did not in fact say that they “believe god doesn’t exist”. You’ve got a good point there, I did come away with the impression that you meant the second thing, which is my mistake.
“Agnostic Atheist - Person who disbelieves (does not believe) in gods and holds that gods are unknown/unknowable.”
Still not buying this. If one accepts that something can’t be known, then on what basis does one disbelieve this something? If you hold the position that X cannot be know, then you should withhold your opinion. It still makes no sense to say agnostic atheist, the way you’ve defined it.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 4:03 pm (GMT)
Skepdude,
What I did do is to challenge his definition of an atheist and the choice of words he used in that definition. He uses a very extreme definition of atheism.
This is the first strange thing I spotted in the excerpts from your post. There is, linguistically as it relates to philosophy, a clear distinction between “does not hold belief X” and “holds a belief opposed to X”. The former is broader, seeking to make the issue an actual dichotomy based on the meaning of the terms, and I and many other atheists advocate using this definition. What is one, after all, if he/she is neither a theist, nor a not-theist?
I have never before seen someone claim that the broader definition, which Adrian is supporting (though worded differently than I would prefer), is an extreme one. I assumed you would be familiar with this definition, or at least the fact that it is well-supported (as it appears to me), so I concluded that perhaps you had not been acquainted with it or its level of support. Hence one reason why I used the term “ignorant” (not out of disrespect, though). Do you agree with his definition upon seeing him elaborate upon it? Did the word “disbelieve” throw you like it did me?
Not even RD who is an ardent atheist sees himself as belonging to category #7, because that category is jsut as dogmatic as the ardent, dogmatic Sky Daddy worshipers. The way the “Atheist Blogger” defined atheism in his entry suggest that atheist are of the category 7 kind.
Not when Adrian’s definition means something other than what you interpreted it to mean. Any number on the distribution that corresponds to lack of the belief that a deity exists would be classified as an atheistic point on the distribution.
Dawkins is reserving 7 for those who claim to know there is no god. Being a #7 type of atheist is actually just fine, given a proper definition of “god”. It need not be irrational. Dawkins, however, assumes that the presence of gods are testable. That need not be the case. Just because we can’t detect the Invisible Pink Unicorn doesn’t mean it might actually exist. If one’s concept of “god” is internally contradictory or meaningless, there is no way it could be tested for, because it definitely doesn’t exist.
… non-existence is not a provable hypothesis…
My rebuttal to this is mostly contained in the above paragraph, but I have something to add. If the existence of X implies that condition Y obtain, and we confirm that condition Y does not obtain, that means that X does not exist. This is just the logical contrapositive of the statement “X implies Y”, and it has the same truth value as said statement. Unless, of course, you subscribe to a different logical system. Non-existence is indeed a provable hypothesis by this reasoning, if we can look everywhere logically possible for condition Y. Usually when someone claims you can’t prove a negative, they are assuming that Y could obtain anywhere, when there’s also the possibility that it must obtain in smaller area which we could search exhaustively (i.e. it could be logically restricted to a knowable area).
Knowledge is a branch of belief? That doesn’t make any sense regardless how you define belief. Just what in god’s name does that even mean? How is knowledge a branch of belief? In what sense? I think the Atheist Blogger needs to elaborate on that point as he’s close to committing atheistic heresy.
Surely you have heard the “justified true belief” definition of knowledge? If we take “branch” to mean “subset”, then it is, in fact, true that knowledge is a branch of belief. If something is knowledge, then it is also a belief. That means that knowledge is a subset of belief. If something is a belief, it is not always the case that it is knowledge. That means that belief is not a subset of knowledge. Thus, it is easy to see that knowledge is a “branch” of belief.
How can you claim that agnosticism is a stance which says “we can’t know” and atheism is a stance which says ” I know” and still use the two words together?
He already explained this, but he never defined atheism as entailing a belief. Certain atheists claim to know. Others don’t make this claim. But all of them “don’t believe that there is a god”, which is the definition of atheism under discussion.
And why do you say that knowledge is different to belief when at the very beginning you said that knowledge is a branch of belief? Can you please explain that contradiction to me? If knowledge is in fact, as you claim, belief with facts than if anything belief is a subset of knowledge not the other way around.
He could have meant that knowledge and belief are not identical, which only means that they aren’t identical sets. It doesn’t imply anything else about their subset relationship. Please tell me if I’m misinterpreting what you’re getting at.
<You have it completely backwards my friend. Knowledge and facts lead to belief (trust not faith) that something is infact true, not the other way around.
If knowledge + facts ==> belief, and “facts” is a necessary part of the implication, then the knowledge can’t be knowledge of the same statement that the belief refers to. Thus, in a more detailed implication: “knowledge concerning X” + “facts” ==> “belief concerning Z”. Is this agreeable? If you have the knowledge that statement P is true, you don’t need additional facts to believe that P is true. That would mean that knowledge implies belief, which makes it a subset of belief.
The world was created by God is not a philosophical question, it is a scientific one. God performs miracles, raises the dead, walks on water are not philosophical issues but empirical ones. God’s existence is not a philosophical issue, it is an empirical issue unless you strip him of everything that’s ever been attributed to him, which seems to me that’s what you’re doing.
Philosophy is broader than science in that it can address more issues and in more ways. A god’s existence is not a scientific issue if the concept of “god” is internally contradictory or nonsensical. Such a concept could be dealt with philosophically, however. The specific issues you mention are more empirical than philosophical, but they could still be considered from a philosophical standpoint. However, don’t limit yourself to narrow conceptions of gods. We’re atheists with respect to more than just the Christian god, after all.
Are you agnostic about ghosts? Are you agnostic about talking to the dead? Are you agnostic about UFOs? It seems to me the answers to those questions should be yes, yes, and yes. We just can’t know!
Adrian’s point, as he’s made clear, is that these things have a fundamentally different nature than is ascribed to a certain class of gods (people aren’t agnostic about gods in general, but only about a specific class of them). This makes the terms “gnostic” and “agnostic” useful with respect to this issue.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 4:17 pm (GMT)
Skepdude,
If you hold the position that X cannot be know, then you should withhold your opinion. It still makes no sense to say agnostic atheist, the way you’ve defined it.
It makes perfect sense the way he’s defined it. If you have no belief that a god does exist, then you do have the option of withholding your opinion. His definition of atheism does not imply a belief in either direction. It looks like you’ve gone back to your misinterpretation of his definition of “atheism”.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 4:21 pm (GMT)
No Mark I have not gone back. I am not talking about belief.If you re-read the quote you used you will not see anything having to do with belief.
If one says it is not possible to know the truth value of X (agnostic), then one should not be allowed to have an opinion on that truth value as well (theist/atheist), not from a rational stand point anyway. You can simply choose one and be done with, but that would not be a decision guided by logic. Other things would have to come into play.
It’s like saying : “It can never be known if the earth is round, but I think it is”. If it can never be known that the earth is round, on what basis does one come to think that it is? The two positions are contradictory on a logical level.
What is wrong about what I just said?
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 4:30 pm (GMT)
What is wrong is that atheism does not imply “having an opinion on a truth value”! Atheism is not an opinion, belief, etc. by Adrian’s definition.
A person either has Belief X or he/she Doesn’t Have Belief X. Only the former implies having an opinion on a truth value. The latter implies no such thing.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 4:37 pm (GMT)
Just because something cannot be known doesn’t mean it’s truth value is automatically false. I hate to use examples other than God, but if you supposed that there was a pot of gold at the singularity of a black hole, we would argue that we cannot know, simply because of the nature of black holes. This does not affect the truth value of the claim, as it could indeed be true or false.
Whether we believe this claim is another question entirely. People are free to believe in singularity gold if they want to, just as people are free to disbelieve in it.
This is where we should highlight the difference between atheism and theism in terms of agnosticism. The agnostic theist will take his/her belief on faith. The agnostic atheist will reject theism based on his agnosticism. Indeed the agnostic atheist will hold that because the concept of God is unknowable, he should have no opinion on it’s existence, which is exactly what he does by being an atheist (not believing).
The agnostic theist simply takes this on faith, which as you rightly point out is not a rational position. However most atheists do not consider much of what theists believe to be rational anyway.
Adrian Hayter
18 Sep 08 at 4:37 pm (GMT)
In other words, having opinion “not X” is not the same as not having opinion X. Only the former is an opinion, but it is the latter that corresponds to atheism by Adrian’s definition.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 4:39 pm (GMT)
Mark says:
What is wrong is that atheism does not imply “having an opinion on a truth value”! Atheism is not an opinion, belief, etc. by Adrian’s definition.
A person either has Belief X or he/she Doesn’t Have Belief X. Only the former implies having an opinion on a truth value. The latter implies no such thing.
First, the existence of God has a truth value, in the sense that the answer is either yes or no. Atheism says no, with qualifiers as to our level of certainty, but it does say no. that’s what I don’t believe means. Why don’t you believe? Because you have come to the conclusion that within a small margin of error God does not exist. That is an opinion. I find it really absurd to say ” I don’t believe in X” but also claim that you’re not having a truth value as to the existence or not of X.
Secondly, an opinion can be of a positive sort (I believe in X) and also of a negative sort (I don’t believe in X). I really don’t understand why saying that you don’t believe in X is not having an opinion, unless you define opinion as something other than everyday life meaning, which we will not get into.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 5:15 pm (GMT)
Adrian says:
This is where we should highlight the difference between atheism and theism in terms of agnosticism. The agnostic theist will take his/her belief on faith. The agnostic atheist will reject theism based on his agnosticism. Indeed the agnostic atheist will hold that because the concept of God is unknowable, he should have no opinion on it’s existence, which is exactly what he does by being an atheist (not believing).
Skepdude: How does the attitude that “you can’t know” lead you to reject the unknowable? If you simply don’t know either way or another, then you have just as much reason to believe as you have to disbelieve. This sort of agnosticism takes you no where, it has nothing to offer. You can’t be serious to claim that your atheism comes from your agnosticism. It is illogical to say that “having no opinion on X is the same as rejecting X”. I don’t have an opinion on quantum theory (because I know nothing about it) but that is not the same as me rejecting it. They’re two different things. I really don’t see how you see them to be equivalent to each other. And yes, before Mark jumps in again, not believing in God is the same as rejecting the idea of his existence!
Adrian says:
The agnostic theist simply takes this on faith, which as you rightly point out is not a rational position. However most atheists do not consider much of what theists believe to be rational anyway.
Agreed, but rejecting something simply because you think it can’t be known does not sound like a very rational thing either. If God’s existence really can’t be know, because you’ve removed him completely from what we can know (evidence, and the rules of scientific inquiry), then you should be willing to give both options equal weight. In that sense they’re both equally probable (again solely because you’re taking evidence based science out of the picture). But then you’re right back to the point of the imaginary out of our universe fairies? Don’t you think they also deserve the same treatment as God the way you defined him?
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 5:26 pm (GMT)
Skepdude,
Did you not read the following portion of my second post?
“There is, linguistically as it relates to philosophy, a clear distinction between ‘does not hold belief X’ and ‘holds a belief opposed to X’. The former is broader, seeking to make the issue an actual dichotomy based on the meaning of the terms…”
Where meaning is most important, precision becomes more important. I am rejecting the everyday meaning of “I don’t believe” in favor of using more precise phrasing. Usually, “I don’t believe” means “I believe the opposite” or something similar, but when we’re talking about the meaning of theism and of the prefix “a-”, precision is very important.
I’m sure that Adrian also acknowledges that he’s using “I don’t believe” in a different way than English speakers use it in everyday situations. But the fact is that he’s defining “atheism” with his meaning of the phrase, which means that his definition of “atheism” does not imply holding an opinion one way or the other. This definition of atheism does not “say no”.
Please use Adrian’s (and my) definition consistently. If your problem is with the alteration of the meaning of the phrase “I don’t believe”, then just say so! If that’s the case, we don’t need to get into all this other stuff.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 5:26 pm (GMT)
Skepdude,
And yes, before Mark jumps in again, not believing in God is the same as rejecting the idea of his existence!
Not under the more precise phrasing we’re using. Using the more precise phrasing, what you just said amounts to “because I am not convinced that the Tooth Fairy exists, I believe it doesn’t exist.” That move is a non sequitur.
rejecting something simply because you think it can’t be known does not sound like a very rational thing either
I really don’t think he meant what you think he meant. I definitely wouldn’t use the word “reject”, but that’s because using it would lead to a misunderstanding such as this. In his usage (and you can correct me if I’m wrong, Adrian), “reject” simply means “does not agree that”, so that “I reject the statement ‘a god exists’” would mean “I do not agree that the statement ‘a god exists’” is true.” And of course, this does not amount to saying that said statement is false. One simply isn’t convinced that it’s true.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 5:34 pm (GMT)
Analogously, “I don’t know that P is true” does not mean “I know that P is false.”
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 5:37 pm (GMT)
Ok, so you’re going around changing the definition of every word to something more “precise”, but then all words loose meaning.
Yes you are right in saying that “Analogously, “I don’t know that P is true” does not mean “I know that P is false.””
Nevertheless what the two of you have been saying so far is “I can’t know if P is true or not, however I will take the position that P is false”. Now that is a non sequitur.
“because I am not convinced that the Tooth Fairy exists, I believe it doesn’t exist.” That move is a non sequitur. I don’t know where you’re getting your definition of non sequitur. I don’t know why that the above does not make sense to you. If you are not convinced X exists, YOU SHOULD tend to “believe” it doesn’t in fact exist.That’s simple logic. Why is that problematic with you? If you’re not convinced by something you tend not to believe in that something. If you go the other way around now that would be ridiculous. If you said “I am not convinced, but I still believe it” that would be really weird? I guess those would be the “agnostic Theists”.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 5:51 pm (GMT)
Skepdude,
Ok, so you’re going around changing the definition of every word to something more “precise”, but then all words loose meaning.
Don’t go down a slippery slope. If we started out with the mathematical definition of “set” and went to the ordinary usage, we lose a few items in our new categorization, but the term is still meaningful.
Nevertheless what the two of you have been saying so far is “I can’t know if P is true or not, however I will take the position that P is false”. Now that is a non sequitur.
WHERE have either of us said P is false because we can’t know what its truth value is?! We are saying that agnostic atheists CAN’T know the truth value, and that is why they are NOT THEISTS (i.e. that’s why they are atheists, because “atheist”=”not theist”)
I don’t know where you’re getting your definition of non sequitur. I don’t know why that the above does not make sense to you. If you are not convinced X exists, YOU SHOULD tend to “believe” it doesn’t in fact exist.That’s simple logic.
Assuming there actually is a normative element at play here, if someone claims that a cow exists at coordinates (x,y,z) in a pasture, and I have no evidence, I am not going to believe them. However, that does not make it logically acceptable to claim that the cow is at some other coordinates and NOT at (x,y,z). I would first have to have evidence that it is elsewhere. I have no evidence for either, and no argument making either a necessary truth. In this scenario, I would be an a-cow-at-(x,y,z)-ist, simply because I lack the belief that it IS at that spot.
Mark C.
18 Sep 08 at 6:27 pm (GMT)
No, what we are saying is “I can’t know if P is true or not, but I don’t believe P to be true”. The conclusion isn’t based on the premise that we cannot know P, but is drawn from various logical reasonings known to atheism.
The statement “I can’t know if P is true or not, therefore I don’t believe in P” would be non sequitur. None of us are saying that. The reasons we do not believe in gods do not stem out of our premise that we cannot know if gods exist or not.
Given that the god idea is one based not on evidence but on reasoning, I would believe in a god if someone could give a good enough reason for believing. So far, all reasons have been countered by atheist philosophers, and I find their arguments logical. That is why I do not believe in god.
Adrian Hayter
18 Sep 08 at 6:38 pm (GMT)
This is a good exercise in philosophical thinking.
I guess we must agree to disagree.
I do not see a logical way to maintain both positions, i.e. “I can’t know if P is true or not” and also “I don’t believe in P” because if you can’t know then how can you choose not to believe in P?
I guess that’s where we are different. I don’t see how these two positions are logically compatible. I don’t see how one person can hold both those positions. To me at some point either the first or the second will get ignored, and which one gets ignored would depend on the circumstances. At the sake of consistency.
That is precisely why I keep saying that agnosticism is a lazy way out, that says nothing about anything, it has nothing to contribute, just throw your hands up in the air and proclaim that you can never really know. Who knows, our universe may be just an atom in a bigger something. Who knows? We can’t know, so we must be agnostic about it. You yourself agreed to this that strictly speaking we should be agnostic about fairies and Santa, did you not? The only reason you write them of is because you find them ridiculous. The only reason you are agnostic about God is because lots of people believe in him. That’s an ad populum fallacy.
I did not pretend to change anyone’s mind. It looks like this is one of those disagreements that will have to remain just that..a disagreement.
Thanks for the exchange, it was quite interesting and challenging.
Skepdude
18 Sep 08 at 8:37 pm (GMT)
I will spend some time reading through the whole story another time, but I’d like to make a couple of points:
Please, let me make clear that I am an atheist, I’m not dropping in to troll around and start some sort of flame war. As best as I have been able to fathom, no one living or dead has been able to provide a shred of evidence in support of any God, therefore, God has as much likelihood of existing as unicorns. Now, on to my points.
- What is the justification for assuming God is supernatural?
As best as I can tell there are several ways to approach this:
1. Assume God is supernatural, simply because the notion seems imaginary (which it certainly is). In this case then the more “philosophical” approach to contemplating God(s) may be more applicable. But I find it very hard to accept this premise. If God is indeed as supernaturally detached as soe folks who like to use the word “metaphysical” say, then this God is of no consequence: no actual interaction of this God happens with the “real world” (invisible dragons) and therefore such a God is indistuishable from pure imagination, in which case, neither meaningful properties nor bounds can be applied to such a creature. In short: this creature is not worth intellectual expendature.
2. Assume God is, in fact, a natural entity. This would be taking various myths about interventionist Gods at more of a face value. Alternatively, even if the myths are baseless and we ignore them, at least it means that “what makes God tick” is, in fact, within the realm of discover-ability. More importantly, even if there is a shred of credibility on the myths then God can be known as an entity to be investigated scientifically.
- Outside of myths, what provides justification for assigning any properties, what-so-ever to God(s)?
If there is no extra-myth justification for assigning properties to God(s) then the myths should be taken at face value: all mythological Gods are interventionalist, and therefore interact with the observeable world, even if like “Dark Matter” in hard-to-test ways. Given this it would appear that God(s) are worthy of scientific study… just as soon as someone provides evidence for such entities.
Just sayin’
Jim Powers
18 Sep 08 at 9:33 pm (GMT)
Skepdude:
RE: agnosticism/”can’t really know”
I understand your point. Comprehensive proof of the nonexistence of God
would require an exhaustive search through all possible solution
spaces. We are fundamentally left with probabilistic claims about the
nonexistence of God: the existence of God has as much probability of
as the existence of any proposed entity suitably festooned with properties of
an outlandish nature.
However, I think that, in the case of God (and other classes of
entities that *literally* simply cannot happen), it is possible to go
further: the notions of God typically bantered about are intrinsically
and unavoidably self-contradictory, profoundly so. Given that, what
else would you require to “conclusively” demonstrate that God(s) does
not exist *absolutely*?
Jim Powers
18 Sep 08 at 9:52 pm (GMT)
I’m going to post on this myself, but with graphs and diagrams ;) On Skepdude’s remark:
It’s demonstrably true that you can both not know if P is true and also not believe P. Example:
Bert says he will be here before 3pm. I cannot possibly know that he will be here before 3pm. I have previous experiences with Bert, though, and he’s usually tardy. Therefore, I don’t believe he will be here before 3pm. In fact, I positively believe he won’t be here before 3pm.
P: Bert will be here before 3pm.
X: Belief that Bert will be here before 3pm (P is true).
Y: Belief that Bert will be here at or after 3pm (P is false).
I cannot possibly know that Bert will be here before 3pm or not. I can formulate a belief, though. In this case, I happened to base that belief on some evidence that he has been tardy several times before.
A good place you may want to start at is Wikipedia’s entry on Epistemology. You should find the following helpful:
In logical terms, K = knowledge and B = belief:
If K, then B.
~K.
Therefore, ~B.
That’s a non-sequitir.
DisComforting Ignorance
19 Sep 08 at 12:35 am (GMT)
Correct me if I’m wrong but Skepdude is coming at this issue from the point of view of an empiricist, not philosophy.
Is there anything particularly wrong with the following:
“To date, no evidence has been shown for the existence of God, but I do not believe that this lack of evidence is a conclusive refutation for the existence of God.”
Clearly, it is entirely possible to substitute various other entities in the place of God above and produce equally valid statements.
Seems to me that the semantic divide that I’ve seen here is merely related to two different, an ultimately disjoint, reasoning systems. It is possible to make “stronger” statements in Philosophy/Logic than one can make as an empiricist.
Where I think Skepdude is floundering is that agnosticism about God is only valid if some workable definition of what God is and its properties. The “common wisdom” view of such a being does seem to explicitly forbid such a thing to exist from a logical standpoint.
Jim Powers
19 Sep 08 at 1:33 am (GMT)