Gurdur

I would be really happy to do a formal debate with you on this one.

My own position is that we cannot know for absolutely sure that no gods exist, and therefore the decision to be theist or atheist is a pragmatic one (ideally, if you ignore having Fred Phelps or Madelyn Murrey O'Hair as parents) based on weighing evidence and feelings (and feelings constitute evidence of a sort), as well as logic, coherence, cogency, and ethics.

The decision to call oneself an agnostic is a pragmatic decision that places emphasis on the inability to have absolute knowledge, while the decision to call oneself a theist or atheist is either
1) a mistaken idea one can have certain knowledge in this field
2) or a decision to stress one's pragmatic presumption on whether one thinks a god exxists or not

'Course, other reasons for calling oneself whatever exist, like just wanting to piss some group or people off, but I'm ignoring all those other reasons as being not terribly meaningful in the end.
Actually, I'm having a vacuous evening tonight, so I have no deep thoughts to offer.
But I would like to do a formal debate on this, if we can agree to some sort of proposition to be debated, and if we can agree to keep posts on it relatively short and snappy in time.
Thaks in advance for your consideration.

Boomeister

I'm agnostic. I would agree with the statement that "the jury is still out." I consider myself an agnostic but will often argue the atheistic side or the theistic side, in order to try to get a better understanding myself. Confusion is not necessarily a bad thing to deal with. When you're confused, it just means you haven't enough information to make a decision yet. I'm looking for something, grasping at straws to get me off this fence. I don't have enough evidence either way. There's times when I think "there can't be a gawd" then there's other times when I think "there must be a God."
I think an agnostic can contribute to discussions...not in answering "yes, there is a God" or "no, there isn't" but in asking the questions to get people to think or at least to get themselves thinking. At times I like being agnostic, because I'm not much for labels myself. I like the unknown (not talking about the afterlife here), I like mystery and suspense, I like wondering. However, at times it can be annoying. I find myself agreeing with my theistic friends one day and then thinking they are absolutely nuts another day. Same with my atheist friends, although I have less of them in my life, unfortunately. Of course I don't tell them I think they're nuts. Perhaps, I'm nuts because I can't seem to make heads or tails of any of this.


Boomeister

fishbulb

Isn't it true that we cannot know for certain whether or not anything exists? It is misleading to couple agnosticism specifically with god when it is actually a general ontological principle: anyone who claims to be agnostic when asked if he believes in god should also claim agnosticism when asked if he believes in Coca Cola or in elves, since the same principle applies. This would seem to make raising agnosticism in response to a specific entity at best useless and at worst deliberately evasive. Belief is a scale which ranges from conviction that something is true to conviction that something is false. Agnosticism simply cautions us to remember that the ends of the scales should be described in terms of strong convictions and not absolute certainties.

Gurdur

I already addressed this in my post when I wrote,
The decision to call oneself an agnostic is a pragmatic decision that places emphasis on the inability to have absolute knowledge, while the decision to call oneself a theist or atheist is either
1) a mistaken idea one can have certain knowledge in this field
2) or a decision to stress one's pragmatic presumption on whether one thinks a god exists or not

Thus, you can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist; the decision whether to call yourself an atheist, theist or agnostic (or other) usually rests on exactly what you want to lay emphasis on,
i.e. lack of absolute knowledge or your assumption regarding gods.

Thus "misleading" does not apply; people have all sorts of reasons for self-labelling, and no single Grand Labelling Approved Schemata exists.

Not true.
Despite the clichéd arguments made often, belief (or disbelief) in gods has very different practical and epistemological characteristics to belief or disbelief in Santa, elves, Timbuctoo or Coca-Cola.
Such different belief possibilities cannot be made equivalent, and often fall into completely different categories as well, which makes false equivalences a category mistake as well
(e.g. being agnostic on Timbuctoo is to be agnostic regarding a naturalist, geographical possibility; a god is often not reckoned as a naturalist entity, though classical theism would moot so, and is not a single geographical entity)
____________

So:
Yes.
Not my own position --- I am an atheist -- but overt agnosticism is quite a functionally valid answer.

DaMan121

Im agnostic and I believe that "the jury will never come back with a verdict". While it may seem as a cop-out of sorts, like Gurdur said, its still valid. Whether it adds anything to the EoG debate is moot, imo, since that debate can never be won.... unless ofcourse the almighty creator decided to reveal himself to all of us, but even then there are problems.. is he THE creator? And why would we believe him/her/it, are there are other gods? etc etc.

Rustharold

The fac that Joe Smith from 5000 BC knew nothing about the planet Pluto, does not mean there is nothing for Joe Smith to know. It simply means Joe smith is not qualified to make a decision due to his lack of ability. Therefore he should just admit that he dosn't know one way or the other, rather than claiming some godlike insight by saying "no"! Pluto does not exist.

Howard

If someone came up to Joe and told him that Pluto wants Joe to worship him or he’d send Joe to everlasting torment, I guarantee you Joe would say, “Tell me a little more about this Pluto thing and give me some evidence to support your claim.�?

Based on what the guy said, Joe would likely make a determination to believe or not believe That’s what humans do. We form all sorts of beliefs and disbeliefs based on the claims presented to us… whether or not we have actual knowledge of them. And, I might add, self-professed agnostics are just as dubious about theists claims as atheists are.

IMO, the philosophical differences between atheists and agnostics is insignificant in comparison to the philosophical differences between agnostics and theists.

lpetrich

Could weak atheism be interpreted as a variant of agnosticism?

Weak atheism is lack of belief in a god, something like "I don't claim to know for sure whether there is one or not, but I have no positive reason to think that there is, so I'll act as if there isn't one."

Strong atheism, by comparison, is being sure that there are no such beings.

Stew

In the case of a god concept where a characteristic of the god is defined as being infinite in nature, any finite amount of knowledge regarding the god remains infintesimally small.

SO... just how much knowledge is required for a justified belief? At what point does it become reasonable to say that we know something about something? Kinda depends on what it is that you think you know something about, doesn't it?

For instance it should require a fairly trivial amount of knowledge to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. We might not ever really have absolute knowledge regarding the solubility of tootsie pops, the dissolving power of saliva, the "lick-intensity-factor" of this tongue versus that tongue, but after-all, this is a fairly silly question. Is it reasonable that given a finite amount of tootsie pops, nevermind a few variables, that a justified belief can be obtained. I would think so. A bit of study of the issue could rationalize a belief in however many licks it is, that it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. We have some information, some knowledge, some reasons on which to base the belief. A rational proposal.

Contrast this with deciding on EoG. Do we have some information? Argueable (as this forum attests to quite well), and quite possibly irrelevant when the characteristics of the "G" are infinite. At best, all arguments aside, we could have an infintesimal knowledge regarding the god concept in question. In the face of infinite charecteristics then, what justification, what reason for even finalizing an identity for the god concept much less establishing if it actually exists as anything other than a concept? Throw in other charecteristics of the god concept; it exists outside of time, outside the universe, acts in mysterious ways, possesses invisible pinkness, etc. Our level of knowledge regarding this concept grows scant. We have only the tiniest of fractions of the potential knowledge, we have very little in the way of reasons on which to base a belief. Maybe the information is forthcoming, maybe the information eludes our understanding. Maybe countless other issues stand between us and the information. Not many reasons then to base the belief on, the rational position is to suspend judgement.

Does this throw an agnostic into the atheistic venue? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Soul Invictus

I'd like to thank you for your comments on this discussion. Very thought provoking. I'd like to make you all aware that I will be taking a small break from IIDB until probably Sunday. I am the best man in a wedding tomorrow, and I'm going out with the groom tonight, so I haven't been able to read/reply to the responses as of late.

Gurdur,

I noticed your offer to debate. I'd be willing to accept. I'm going to have to reread the posts and come up with a position and terms and conditions for the exchange. I guess you're trying to give me my first debate loss, huh
Ohhh boy!

See you all soon!