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.

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?

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:

Knowledge implies belief. The statement “I know P, but I don’t believe that P is true” is contradictory. To know P is, among other things, to believe that P is true, or to believe in P. (See the article on Moore’s paradox.)

In logical terms, K = knowledge and B = belief:

If K, then B.
~K.
Therefore, ~B.

That’s a non-sequitir.

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*?

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’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.