Ronin

~ so you believe.

I know that a 'supernatural' anything is nonsensical and abstract enough to warrant absolutely no belief in.

How long will this dance last?

Amie

I'll dance with you Ronin

I heard the term "agnostic atheist" used together and I must say the term "agnostic atheist" as opposed to "atheist" can get confusing...I don't really see a difference between the two terms...

Darwin's Finch

It's really not that confusing, Amie. Agnosticism deals with questions of knowledge. Theism and atheism address belief. For example, I don't know there is not a god of some kind. However, having no evidence that would compel me to believe in a deity or deities, I disbelieve, or lack belief, in their existence. Thus, I am ultimately an agnostic-atheist (or "weak atheist"). There are also self-characterized agnostic-theists. They don't really know there is a deity, but they believe it to be true.

However, my weak atheism doesn't extend to concepts of deity that are logically incoherent. A being described as omni-powerful, omniscient and omni-benevolent (with Hell thrown in as a bonus) strikes me as hopelessly incoherent. Here, the agnostic side of the equation evaporates for me. I am an out-and-out strong atheist with respect to such a concept.

Does that help?

Amie

Hi Darwin's Finch
Yes it does help, thanks. However technically speaking since I don't think most people claim to actually "know" there is a God or not so doesn't that make us all agnostic up to some point?

I actually just looked up the definition of agnostic in my Oxfords and it said "a person who believes the existence or nature of God can not be proven"...Isn't that all of us?

Darwin's Finch

Amie, I think you've got it. Yes, I would argue that we are all, on some ultimate level, agnostics in that we don't know if there is some sort of deity that is logically coherent. My purpose in mentioning self-characterized agnostic- theists was to distinguish them from their less honest fellow-theists: the shrill ones who just know there is a god but can never really put their finger on a compelling argument and pass on their precious knowledge.

Arrowman

Well, much of this has been said before but I'll throw in my bit.

Until a few years ago I would have classed myself as an agnostic or a weak atheist. Having given the matter much more thought in the past few years than I have before, I realise that I am in fact a strong atheist. Now, to qualify/justify that further, especially in the context of the question asked at the start of this thread:

I am a strong atheist with regard to any of the gods known to (ie invented by) humans. This is because those gods are logically incoherent (as Darwin's Finch put it) and are defined as supernatural beings which in one way or another intervene in human affairs. Since it can be clearly demonstrated that such intervention does not happen, those gods by definition cannot exist.

In this, I hold the same position that all people (including theists) hold with regard to Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy - I believe that they do not exist.

These days I apply the same standard of evidence and proof to all unseen entities; it was the realisation that I was applying a different standard to the God I had been brought up with that made me realise I was a strong atheist.

There is an infinite number of other possibilities for the existence of "gods" (or supernatural beings) which exist outside of our direct experience. There could be a minor deity orbiting Alpha Centauri for all I know. I see no point in determining whether I am a weak or strong atheist in regard to those hypotheticals; they are simply irrelevant.

In response to the "but you never know" argument:

It may be true that you cannot prove a universal negative. On the other hand, nothing we "know" or "believe" can ever be 100% proven. I cannot know for certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that gravity will cease to operate, but nevertheless for all practical purposes I know that these things will not happen, and I am 100% sure of this. This is a practical definition of "100% sure" which we all use, knowingly or unknowingly, all the time. I see no point in qualifying every belief, no matter how strongly based, with "but you never know".

(Theists who will happily assert that the sun will rise tomorrow, and yet expect me to qualify my disbelief in their god, are imho taking a self-serving view of what it means to say "you can never be sure of anything". It is a form of special pleading, I suppose.)

There comes a point when the case against a given belief is so strong that it makes no sense not to not only reject that belief, but to positively assert its opposite.

(I could take this further but I think the above should suffice to show that [strong] atheism is not irrational.)

Arrowman

Hi Amie - I believe the post I just made (crossign with yours, it seems) may go some way to answering this question. Would you like to know more?

Amie

yes. How would you go about explaining the color orange to a blind person?

no in all seriousness thanks Arrowman and Darwin's Finch for helping me gain some more understanding about that...

Thomas Ash

But Denis, would you really say that if I then posit some a 'spiritual' invisible pink unicorn (with a highly specific theology to go with her of morally perfect pinkness, etc.) which exists in a 'spiritual' realm (and to only consider the non-existence of her in the physical realm would be to use an unjustifiably restricted sense of the word 'exists'), wouldn't you be happy to say ex silencio that you positively think (though don't 100% *know*) she doesn't exist? I would.

PS: Good essay you linked to.
PPS: Edited to apologize for my total failure to phrase the above bit coherently.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: Thomas Ash ]</p>

Goliath

Keith,

No, I don't believe that I hold no beliefs regarding the supernatural, I know that I hold no beliefs regarding the supernatural.

Sincerely,

Goliath