Religulous

[Kuya]

So you're agreeing with my conclusion? (and Kaylia's also, i think)

[Blarg]

And my whole points is that you can't reject "God" because it's overdefined by a particular religion. You have to generalize the concept and strip it from the "overdefined" part before rejecting it.

You don't want to under define god either since you start to separate the definition from what 90+% of people view the term. It's like those people who say 'god is love' when you ask them what they think god means. So you have to have a somewhat generalized view of god that will fit the vast majority of people view the term as if you want to get anywhere. A being with some form of 'intelligence', or the ability to create, who is responsible for the universe is a rather normal starting point.

[Beckwin]

maybe? my whole original premise was that agnostics are atheists; my objection is that they unnecessarily cater to theist ideas.

[Kaylia]

It would help if you specified under what context you're speaking, as i think you're referencing a monotheistic point of view when you talk. In other words; you're talking about a single relative definition/description of a god. Unless what you mean to say is that atheism is the rejection of religious belief and not spiritual belief as you're rejecting notions of a god exceeding from the basic principle of what a god is, meaning you're not criticizing all spirituality just a specific sect or sects. In whatever case you may be redefining atheism and agnosticism.

So i have to ask, is atheism the rejection of religious belief or all belief based on spirituality?

After the last thread, it feel wrong to not disagree with you. I want to, but I couldn't find anything .

Ok fuck it I lied...

For some reason, it made me laugh loud. None of us want this, but we all get sucked in anyway.

Anyway, you consider yourself as an agnostic? Right?

Again, I welcome and challenge anyone to show and present everyone with absolute proof of this existence. Just how we (Science lovers) cant declare something as absolute fact without proof, why are you not held to the same standard? Just some serious questions that I would like genuine answers.

Just want to add a correction, there is no absolute fact in sciences. We often consider them as correct because everyone agree with it, but science doesn make them "absolute".

Every time there is an absolute, it's because we defined something and decided there would be a quantity of "1"

[Kuya]

If an atheist can and can not be an agnostic, and if an agnostic can and can not be an atheist, then they cannot be the same thing, as an agnostic may reject to accept as fact because of a lack of empirical evidence, but not necessarily reject it outright or say it is not true and ignore logical inconsistencies within certain other beliefs.

Your second contention is mere mudslinging as you're simply generalizing all agnostics as having the same criteria for rejecting theism or simply ignoring it.

[Blarg]

If an atheist can and can not be an agnostic, and if an agnostic can and can not be an atheist, then they cannot be the same thing, as an agnostic may reject to accept as fact because of a lack of empirical evidence, but not necessarily reject it outright or say it is not true and ignore logical inconsistencies within certain other beliefs.

Your second contention is mere mudslinging as you're simply generalizing all agnostics as having the same criteria for rejecting theism or simply ignoring it.

Agnostic can and should (technically) be used for everything's claim of truth. I wouldn't say an atheist can not simultaneously be an agnostic unless they are being untruthful.

[Beckwin]

no, an atheist can and cannot be agnostic, but an agnostic must be atheist.

my problem with agnosticism is again that it unnecessarily caters to those logical inconsistencies and fictional certainties and overdefined concepts.

[Kuya]

Why do you think an agnostic has to be an atheist? That would imply that the definition of agnosticism is inside of the definition of atheism.

[Beckwin]

because if you aren't sure theism is the truth, then you lack belief in theism, which is the base definition of atheism.

[Blarg]

no, an atheist can and cannot be agnostic, but an agnostic must be atheist.

my problem with agnosticism is again that it unnecessarily caters to those logical inconsistencies and fictional certainties and overdefined concepts.

So you don't think we should be technically agnostic, that is not 100% sure, on everything?

[Kuya]

The base definition of atheism is rejection, the base definition of agnosticism is neither a rejection or belief because of a lack of evidence for or against. If you're not sure that a theistic belief is true, that means you do not know, therefore you are agnostic, not atheist, an atheist knows it is not true; in order to reject you have to know.

Another issue is that we're broadly applying the terms on everything, instead of saying that you're atheistic with this, but agnostic with that. The problem lies with the term atheism itself implies rejection of all theism, while agnosticism does not just speak of theism.

In other words, if an atheist does not reject a theist belief for whatever reason, then he's being agnostic, and an agnostic can reject a theist belief and still be agnostic because theism is not the same as deism, pantheism or any other form of spirituality.

[Beckwin]

if you do not know, you do not hold the theistic belief. you don't have faith in it. therefore you are atheist.

and no, an agnostic can't reject a theist belief and remain an agnostic.

and atheism is inherently a broad term- really broad; all it implies is the lack of belief in theism. you can go a million ways from there and it's highly dependent on the individual to define it. it's not some homogeneous set of complex ideals, it's just a lack of belief. nothingness.

[Kuya]

if you do not know, you do not hold the theistic belief. you don't have faith in it. therefore you are atheist.

and no, an agnostic can't reject a theist belief and remain an agnostic.

and atheism is inherently a broad term- really broad; all it implies is the lack of belief in theism. you can go a million ways from there and it's highly dependent on the individual to define it. it's not some homogeneous set of complex ideals, it's just a lack of belief. nothingness.

A lack of belief is actually called nontheism. Also, how did you come to the first conclusion? Explain how you jumped from rejection of theism as fact, to a rejection of theism as false. And why can't an agnostic reject a theistic belief when the definition of agnostic says that agnostics do not just hold ambivalent positions towards theism? The definition never asserted that an agnostic has to be ambivalent with every spiritual belief, it merely declared all the spiritual beliefs which an agnostic can hold an ambivalent position with.

It doesn't help that a belief is not a fact. Your first statement is disingenuous; if atheist think that theism is false then obviously they're not going to believe in it, your statement ignores particularities in order to come to the conclusion you want and imply something which is not necessarily true.

[Kaylia]

Kaylia, the word "God" is theist by nature. call it "unknown force/entity" and then we're talkin'.

But consider this: if you don't have an opinion either way, doesn't that mean you lack belief in theism? so I think we're in agreement that agnostics are atheists (which is part of my original premise, if you recall). what I'm challenging is the reason for agnosticism to be defined from atheism because of what I see as catering to theists.

I just think it's totally unnecessary to acknowledge that you don't know all the truths and that it may be impossible to, but then to say "well y'know they could be 100% right about all that jesus/mohammad/buddha/krishna/great father/zeus/thor stuff" when you fucking know some of it has to be fiction.

I lack "belief", but not just in theism. I don't want my opinion to be a belief, I want it to be a logical stance that I can defend. The moment we accept "belief" in a discusion, we basically have to say that everyone could be right.


My only beliefs is that if everyone (and I really mean everyone) agree, something is correct. I could probably just say that I believe I exist, and I believe there is an universe that I can observe around me. I need this belief for sciences.

In the event this belief is wrong, everything is meaningless.

So you're agreeing with my conclusion? (and Kaylia's also, i think)

I have the feeling we all agree here, just word thing differently.

You don't want to under define god either since you start to separate the definition from what 90+% of people view the term. It's like those people who say 'god is love' when you ask them what they think god means. So you have to have a somewhat generalized view of god that will fit the vast majority of people view the term as if you want to get anywhere. A being with some form of 'intelligence', or the ability to create, who is responsible for the universe is a rather normal starting point.

The language is an useful tool to associate a concept to something, to communicate it with other. The problem here is that God mean hundred of totally different concepts.

God is love? Fine. I God you all. What else is there to say about such God?
An intelligent being? Does he have to be above everything, or he is simply a being from a higher dimension? Do you include the multiverse in universe? We will have to change theism and everything accordingly

I understand why you think I'm underdefining it, but how can anyone decide of the definition of God, unless there is a particular context.

[Kaylia]

maybe? my whole original premise was that agnostics are atheists; my objection is that they unnecessarily cater to theist ideas.

But you know people are refering to "strong atheism"when they talk about atheism? The broad definition of atheism is so broad that it has little use to classify people. I don't mind using it in this thread (to avoid another discusion about meaning), but when you go outside and talk about atheism, people won't have agnostism in mind.

And I don't see how I cater to theist ideas despite being agnostic. It's not a concession I'm doing to another group, it's a stance I'm taking because it's the only defendable stance.

Why do you think an agnostic has to be an atheist? That would imply that the definition of agnosticism is inside of the definition of atheism.

There is theism and ¬theism (¬= non, and literally mean everything else if anyone didn't get it by now)
¬theism is also called atheism
Atheism include strong atheism (belief that God doesn't exist), agnosticism (people who know the answer is not determined), people who believe in spiritual thing..etc

I think this is the current concensus in this thread, it's also the one posted on wikipedia.



Personally, I think the the conventional definition is better

Non theism (agnosticism*) = people who can't answer a question that isn't defined. Basically, everything that isn't theism.
Theism= people who believe in god
Atheism = Oopposite of theism; people who don't believe in God

*agnosticism is the case that reject both theism and atheism

[edit]
Quite frankly, the 2nd definition has to be the better one when you look at the ethymology. Non theism should be the broad term, and atheism should be a particular case of non theism.

[Neosutra]

We stopped arguing about religion 3 pages ago and started arguing about how we define a word. Brilliant.

[Kuya]

Yes, i think you could put agnosticism and atheism under nontheism, as the latter implies that there is no belief, meaning there is no assumption of fact or anything that doesn't fit into the definition, whether it be because of theism may be false (or assumed to be false, believed to be false), because there is neither a concession of fact or falsehood, or simply because it doesn't fit into the definition of theism.

[Kaylia]

We stopped arguing about religion 3 pages ago and started arguing about how we define a word. Brilliant.

Post like this is what make you "win" argument? Brillant.


And I personally think it's a good idea to define your premise before an argument. Of course, it has the disadvantage that you can't dance around the topic once they are defined

[Neosutra]

Post like this is what make you "win" argument? Brillant.


And I personally think it's a good idea to define your premise before an argument. Of course, it has the disadvantage that you can't dance around the topic once they are defined

Who the fuck said anything about winning an argument, I was laughing at what we were arguing about, and the cyclic nonsensical statements you keep making.

You dont argue like a mathematician, you argue like a theist, who ignores contradicting statements and regurgitates the same crap over and over. It gets old pretty fast.

You are dancing around the concept of "god" in all definitions, and hiding inside the realm of a loosly defined being that you cant quite put a form too.

You still havent quite figured out that as an atheist, it isnt just a rejectiong a specific dogma, but rather the very concept of "god" itself. If you define it to be a specific deity of legend, then it is easy to disprove. If you loosly define it to be some entity of omnipresense, then the rational person can state that no such evidence for these things exists. Is god a person or is he everything? Do you worship all matter in the universe? Is god love, an emotion, or simply the concept of love? Do you worship a concept? Does he have a penis? Does he have an intelligence, or do you simply worship causality?

It is the very word "god" that atheists do not follow, as "god" implies very specific qualities of power/intelligence/heirarchy/worship (as beckwin has stated about 7 times and you have ignored about 7 times). Stop dancing around the debate and hiding in the loose definition for god.

[Kaylia]

Who the fuck said anything about winning an argument, I was laughing at what we were arguing about, and the cyclic nonsensical statements you keep making.

You dont argue like a mathematician, you argue like a theist, who ignores contradicting statements and regurgitates the same crap over and over. It gets old pretty fast.

You are dancing around the concept of "god" in all definitions, and hiding inside the realm of a loosly defined being that you cant quite put a form too.

You still havent quite figured out that as an atheist, it isnt just a rejectiong a specific dogma, but rather the very concept of "god" itself. If you define it to be a specific deity of legend, then it is easy to disprove. If you loosly define it to be some entity of omnipresense, then the rational person can state that no such evidence for these things exists. Is god a person or is he everything? Do you worship all matter in the universe? Is god love, an emotion, or simply the concept of love? Do you worship a concept? Does he have a penis? Does he have an intelligence, or do you simply worship causality?

It is the very word "god" that atheists do not follow, as "god" implies very specific qualities of power/intelligence/heirarchy/worship (as beckwin has stated about 7 times and you have ignored about 7 times). Stop dancing around the debate and hiding in the loose definition for god.

You then went BACK to the definitive god argument that you lost in the last thread.

You did, and I'm curious to see what standard make you win/lose an argument.

You keep repeating over and over that I ignore contradicting sentence, but could you please bold me those, because I sure don't see any in your posts.

In my last post directed at you, I asked you for a definition of atheism and agnosticism, which are needed if we want to even debate about the subect. Why did you not post them? I'm not dancing around the subject, I posted them clearly and many times already, leaving myself open to attack if there was a flaw in my reasoning.
The only thing I can say from your post is that, nontheism = atheism, there isn't even a place for agnoticism.

You still havent quite figured out that as an atheist, it isnt just a rejectiong a specific dogma, but rather the very concept of "god" itself. If you define it to be a specific deity of legend, then it is easy to disprove. If you loosly define it to be some entity of omnipresense, then the rational person can state that no such evidence for these things exists. Is god a person or is he everything? Do you worship all matter in the universe? Is god love, an emotion, or simply the concept of love? Do you worship a concept? Does he have a penis? Does he have an intelligence, or do you simply worship causality?

It's not "easy" to disprove the deity of a legend. It's easy to disprove the reason why it was brought, and make the deity itself useless, but you still can't disprove the deity when it's not defined to be directly in our world.

God is one answer to the question "why everything exist?". It's a valid question, and God is one of the postulate people proposed to answer it. There isn't more to it.