The Atheist Blogger

My definition of atheist is simply someone who says NO to the question "do you believe in God?" But I accept "I don't know" as an answer, and call that person an agnostic. An agnostic could be someone who doesn't have any or enough knowledge to make a choice (take any non human animal in the animal kingdom for example), or how about this example, do you think there is at least one coffee shop on a planet other than earth in the universe…."I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer to this type of question.

Hold on a second. If I ask someone, "do you believe in god?" and they answer, "I don't know" is that an allowable response? Look, either you believe in god (a theist) or you don't (atheist). When someone answers "I don't know if I believe" they are uttering nonsense. By default, we don't believe anything. Our mind is empty of beliefs (unless our minds are prewired for certain beliefs but, in this case, we DO believe them and KNOW it even if we don't know why we believe them). Eventually we start filling our minds with beliefs. If one never considered the existence of god, the answer should be, "I don't believe… yet."

This is why Lacy distinguishes between Knowledge and Belief. I can say, "I don't know" to your celestial coffee shop because I, literally, don't have knowledge about one (neither confirming nor denying its existence). However, I DO KNOW whether I believe such coffee shop exists and the answer to that is, "No" (though someone else may say "Yes" despite no knowledge about it). I am agnostic in the KNOWLEDGE about the shop but 'atheist' in my belief in it.

What about animals other than humans? It is pretty safe to say that they have no opinion about God. Except my dog might think I'm God:)
I do think we are born with a susceptibility to accept supernatural explanations. This evolved in us as our ancestors would have gone crazy explaining lightning and of course death without accepting a higher power. It was probably a positive for quite some time in the human evolutionary process to accept a higher. We might not be here, if they didn't accept them.
I still think I don't know is an acceptable answer, as many people believe at times than don't than do and so on. I think agnosticism has to do with accepting God as a possibility. Atheist generally live their lives without do this.

Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, ghosts, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove.

Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of belief in the nonexistence of a god or gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.

In my opinion, everyone is an agnostic. None of use have knowledge of God's existence. Those who believe they have knowledge of God(s) either don't grasp the point or are deluded … at the same time those who assert there is no God are making a significantly weaker claim.

I'll explain, theism makes a specific positive assertion. That assertion is; "God(s) exist." Atheism varies from the absence of a theistic assertion to the negative assertion that no God (s) exist.

The difference between positive and negative assertions is subtle, but important. A positive assertion is a claim that something exists, or is true. A negative assertion is a claim that something does not exist, or is not true. In principle, only positive assertions are used in proofs and only positive assertions can be proven.

This may appear overly pedantic, but I'm not the only one ;-)

In any event, I liked Laci's video. However, negative assertions do not carry the same burden as positive assertions.

Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, ghosts, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove.

Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of belief in the nonexistence of a god or gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.

In my opinion, everyone is an agnostic. None of use have knowledge of God's existence. Those who believe they have knowledge of God(s) either don't grasp the point or are deluded … at the same time those who assert there is no God are making a significantly weaker claim.

I'll explain, theism makes a specific positive assertion. That assertion is; "God(s) exist." Atheism varies from the absence of a theistic assertion to the negative assertion that no God (s) exist.

The difference between positive and negative assertions is subtle, but important. A positive assertion is a claim that something exists, or is true. A negative assertion is a claim that something does not exist, or is not true. In principle, only positive assertions are used in proofs and only positive assertions can be proven.

This may appear overly pedantic, but I'm not the only one ;-)

In any event, I liked Laci's video. However, negative assertions do not carry the same burden as positive assertions.

Are you still live?

I'm probably missing something here, but agnosticism doesn't really make sense to me. To me, God falls in the same category as everything else I have no compelling reason or proof to believe in, such as fairies and giant Gurbldpopos living on the surface of Garnilord IV. (The well explained version of this would be Russell's Teapot).

If there is absolutely no proof that would even suggest the possibility of a god, then why do you declare yourself agnostic in respect to this question? If you randomly make up some idea, you would have as much proof for it's existance as there is proof of God's existance (specifically, no proof). But it would be crazy to declare yourself agnostic to this random thing you just made up.

So how can anyone say agnosticism is a serious option? Why is the concept of god getting a special treatment?

But there are fundaments for String theory and the Higgs boson. They are not just random claims, they are ideas borne from reasoning. Furthermore, not even their proponents claim them to be absolute truths, they just put the forwards as good candidate explanations. It is expected they will be proven or disproven by empirical proof pretty soon… God is just a made up explanation to a bunch of stuff people don't understand, albeit one with a LOT of momentum.

I interpret agnosticism as the absence of knowledge of a particular truth claim. Absolute knowledge is not needed to step out ouf the agnostic position … but some knowleldge is.

I do agree that theists use special pleading with regards to God and agnositcism. In my opinion, the God claim is unkowable and hence we are all agnostic regarding it. By my definition, we are not agnostic by choice, but by fact.

What I beleive, regarding the God claim, is a different matter. With regards to beleif, I am an atheist.

You’re all missing the point.

Cute. Atheist.

Getting ready for town I found $100 strangely in my wallet . I drove in , was picked up speeding and fined $100! This was since I'd accepted that all humans will finally enjoy endless life thanks only to 'Jesus' so I take it to be angelic endorsement .