quartodeciman

Do you believe god(s) exist?

It depends on what you mean by 'believe', 'god(s)' and 'exist'.

quart

Philosoft

It doesn't appear so. If I think the word "God" is fundamentally devoid of meaning, the question, "Do you believe it is possible to know whether God exists?" ends in gibberish. A "yes" or "no" answer assumes I am associating "God" with a concept, so the question is unanswerable.

Dr. Retard

The only way a person couldn't answer Yes or No to "Do you believe that God exists?" is if the person were unable to make sense of his own mind. "I can't access my own beliefs. I don't know what I do and do not believe". Maybe some autistics are like that?

For typical people, whether they think "God exists" is nonsense, unverifiable, unknowable, unbelieveable, unlikely, or simply false, they should answer, "No, I don't believe that God exists". So long as you don't 'sign on' to theism, the answer is No.

The word "agnostic", of course, has about 30 different definitions, depending on who you ask. Anyone who claims to give you the one true definition is BSing you.

beastmaster

Philosoft, thanks but I've read your post about 20 times and I don't understand how this:
follows from this:
Unanswerability seems to be the very core of agnosticism.

Philosoft

I think the distinction is apparent in the example question, "Do you believe it's possible to know whether God exists?" An agnostic would presumably answer, "No," because she accepts that "God" is conceptually meaningful. A noncognitivist would say the question is unanswerable because the letter string "G-o-d" is conceptually empty. It would be like asking, "Do you believe it's possible to know whether kag (or any meaningless letter string) exists?"

beastmaster

This a good question for drawing a fine distinction among agnostics. But it is the wrong question to be asking in order to define at a global level who is an atheist vs. theist vs. agnostic, which is the subject of the thread. I say that because some atheists will answer yes to your question and some will answer no. (In fact, there are some theists who will answer no to your question as well, founding their religion on pure faith without knowledge.)

The relevant question is "Do you believe in god?" Atheists say "no," theists say "yes," and agnostics (including noncogs) say "insufficient information."

I think that noncgonitivism is a streak running throughout the atheist/theist/agnostic divide rather than a fourth category. Obviously, noncognitivism supports a principled agnosticism. But many atheists will also make noncog arguments without inconsistency. Moreover, noncognitivism may be consistent with theism. For example, the Taoist religion has a strong streak of noncognitivism ("The Tao that is spoken of is not the true Tao"), which causes many Westerners (oversimplistically I think) to shoehorn it into the category of "nontheism."

Philosoft

Agreed.

Agreed.

I have to say I think this is not a legitimate answer, unless we assume it is possible for a person to lack epistemic access to her own beliefs. If a belief is an active proposition, it seems trivially true that a person would know, without fail, whether or not she believes in something. If she is not doing whatever activites are entailed by belief, then she does not believe, QED.

Quote:

I think that noncgonitivism is a streak running throughout the atheist/theist/agnostic divide rather than a fourth category. Obviously, noncognitivism supports a principled agnosticism. But many atheists will also make noncog arguments without inconsistency.

I have no problem with this. I can quite consistently call myself an atheist and a noncognitivist.
This is very interesting. I had not thought about it this way before. It might be worth more study.

Bill

This is a recurring argument on these boards. I find myself in much the same position as the late great Bertrand Russell, who, when questioned on the topic of his beliefs about God would give one of two replies, depending upon the characteristics of the questioner.

To "average folks," Lord Russell would reply that he was an atheist. Most "average folks" in Western Civilization are Christians, and Bertrand Russell (like myself) strongly disbelieved in the Christian mythology.

But to his fellow philosophers, and others whom he knew to have a philosophical outlook, Russell would reply that he was an agnostic. People of this sort would understand the label of "agnostic" as an epistemological stance (it makes a claim about the ability of a person to know the truth of any "ultimate reality," such as God), and they would know that such a stance (from a philosophical perspective) is extremely justified, if not actually mandated. (For a discussion of why agnosticism might actually be mandated, you can read either Jim Still's essay on Wittgenstein or my own argument, based on the anti-realist argument. Either one ought to lead you to the idea that you quite simply cannot experience "ultimate reality," and since human knowledge comes only from human experience, humans quite simply cannot ever know any truth about "ultimate reality.")

=====

Here are a few other suggestions for those who are interested in this thread:

• Read Professor Ted Drange's essay on the definitions used when discussing beliefs about god(s). He particularly discriminates between "atheist," "agnostic," and "noncognativist" in such a way as to eliminate overlap between them. (Although I do disagree with his definition of "agnostic," my disagreement is based upon the below essay, meaning that Professor Drange's definition is distinct from the historical usage of the word.)
• Read my own essay on the original definition of the word "agnostic."
• Read the Floy Andrews essay, The Principle of Excluded Middle Then And Now: Aristotle And Principia Mathematica. Like Dr. Andrews, I too believe that the principle of bivalence is not always valid, and that, even for questions that appear to be framed with only two alternatives, there can be hidden alternatives which eliminate the propriety of using the principle of bivalence.
• Or finally, on a simpler vein, at least read the Bifurcation entry on the Logic & Fallacies page of the Atheism Web.

== Bill

beastmaster

I am very sympathetic with the thrust of your argument, but I think you might be confusing the question of "religion vs. irreligion" with "atheism vs. agnosticism vs. theism." That is, I would say that "belief as an active proposition" is "religion" rather than "theism." Thus, I would agree that atheists and agnostics alike are "irreligious" because they are both "not doing whatever activites are entailed by belief." In this sense, atheists and agnostics are functional equivalents. And I would agree that the proof is in the pudding -- beliefs are best measured by conduct.

Nevertheless, when someone walks up to me and says he/she is an agnostic, I am quite reluctant to say (or think) "no you're not" or "there's no such thing" or "you must lack access to your epistemic beliefs."

Although I have been a lifelong atheist, I have on occasion sauntered over to the borderline with pure agnosticism, and I never felt that doing so was a matter of intellectual dishonesty. To the contrary, the cause has typically been that I encounter *new* information that makes me think I understand *less* about god than I did before, and that causes me to sway toward agnosticism. What's always kept me back in the atheist camp is that, I have concluded, after some wrestling, that the properties of god (in the generic) are sufficiently well-understood to form an inference as to its non-existence. But I don't think it would have been illegitimate for me to have made the jump over to "the Other Irreligion."

beastmaster

Gosh, if that's the definition of agnostic, then we are all agnostics! Who could possibly deny that humans cannot *know* the *truth* about god?

As an atheist, I make no knowledge or truth claims. Rather, I make an inference based on the evidence available to me, as I perceive it.