Wiploc

Persuasiometer remains at zero. If you have a mother in this universe, it matters not whether you would have a mother in another universe; and if there is a god in this universe, it matters not whether there would be gods in other universes.

As a separate topic, I will grant that we can't be 100% sure that gods do or don't exist. So you might think that 100% of us should call ourselves agnostics. Let me grant that claim for the sake of argument, and call that form of agnosticism "technical agnosticism."

Can you see why technical agnosticism is not a very useful category? Everybody should be in it! It does not distinguish the dogmatists from the freethinkers, the oppressors from the oppressed, the bad guys from the good, anybody from anybody else. Yes, one could use "agnostic" that way, but there are better, more useful ways. One might, for instance, use the word to distinguish those who don't have opinions about whether god exists from those who do. Nice, huh?

Let's take a run at this from another direction: Suppose I point out that there may be a lion in your closet that is about to burst out and kill you. Yes, you are probably a technical agnostic about the lion, since you know there's a possiblity that he's really in there. But you aren't going to scream or shoot thru the door or run away, because though you may be technical ag-lionist, you are definitely a practical a-lionist. Your practical a-lionism is more important than your technical ag-lionism. It's where you live.

Another thing you won't do, besides running away or shooting your closet: You won't try to decide whether there is a lion in your closet by the use of transuniversal pseudo-statistics. That wouldn't help at all.
crc

malpensante

to make a distinction between technical and practical agnosticism is what would make us fear inexistent monsters or ignore real dangers. while still being an agnostic about the closet lion, i can still act calmly, for even though i'm not 100% sure the lion's there, i know i am more than 50% sure the lion's not there.

not making social distinctions is not a shortcoming of the agnosticism label, rather, the agnosticism label's vintage is that it can create a sense of community, once all of us, already technical agnostics, become aware of what we are and act communally as practical agnostics. the label to distinguish those who have oppinions from those who don't, already exists: ignorants.

my transuniversal pseudo-statistical thought-experiment does suffer a flaw, and that's why i feel i can't defend it anymore: it assigns the value in an evenly distributed fashion, and that already pressupposes that there are no arguments for or against god's existence, which is what agnosticism, quod erat demonstrandum, already requires.

what i would wish to have stumbled, is an argument that really does show that there can't be arguments for or against god, not one that returns to the same old task we agnostics must face: refute every particular argument for and against the existence of god. maybe if i could come up with a deeper necessity for the value assignment... no.

Wiploc

You might check out My Fantasy Debate With William Lane Craig at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=44372

It has a technique for dismissing god-claims by category rather than individually.
crc