Can you simply be Agnostic?

Mark Hamill

Jakkass wrote: »

Mark - I don't know what your point is here. I don't believe the earth is young, nor do I believe the caricature that people often present of YEC's. Simply put, I know many of these people.

Evidence collected from face-to-face discussion > Evidence collected on teh internets.

Are you honestly trying to claim that every creationist on the internet isn't real or something? I've read some inane accusations people use to try and disregard others testimonies but that is just insane Jakkass.

Jakkass wrote: »

I'm not talking about the Wikipedia page or other articles. I'm talking about how people often treat YEC's. It's a woeful tactic in handling this issue. Dare I say perhaps you should let Christians who are theistic evolutionists deal with the issue.

Did you even read my post Jakkass? Because if you did then you would see how ridiculous your response is. If YECs where openminded, then they wouldn't get into the situations where they end up being ridiculed in online forums. The cold hard data isn't ridiculing and open mindedly asking for information about evolution wont result in ridicule, least not from people who aren't trolling, its when they try to argue with authority on things they clearly dont know or when they ask clearly loaded questions on long since debunked reasoning that people result in ridicule. This is the second time I've specifically laid this out for you, I wont be doing it agian.

Jakkass wrote: »

Get this clear - I disagree with you, that is not the same thing as "ignoring" you. It's a very annoying tactic that people use on this forum. Indeed perhaps I will ignore all subsequent claims that I am ignoring you when I amn't.

By making ridiculous claims about the nature of online discussions in an effort to disregard them, you are trying to ignore them and my points about them. Your counter to online discussions doesn't actually have any logic to it, its just cognitive dissonance, on a par with "He is arrogant therefore I dont need to listen to him".

Jakkass wrote: »

This is an awful tactic, I'm the one suggesting that your closed minded caricature of YEC's is incorrect more likely than not due to your lack of personal contact with them.

You know very well as much as I do that personal interaction on a face-to-face level is much better than through a computer to varying degrees. The best internet interaction being by Skype which still falls short of actually being there.

Except this is clearly wrong. Firstly I'm not closeminded with respect to YECs, its by being opneminded with them that I actually know that they are intellectual trolls, I've seen the same arguments too many times, I've seen people get corrected, come back when they think everyone has forgotten about it and try to use the same argument again. Secondly while there are some benefits to face to face interactions, there are plenty to online discussions too (its less intimidating, it gives you more time to think about what you are saying, both sides can show their sources, there can be less bullying because of better moderating etc.) Nothing you are saying here stands up to even the lightest of scrutiny Jakkass.

Jakkass wrote: »

I find your accusation to be "dishonest". The "agnostic" / "gnostic" diagram seems to place people within 1 of the 4 quadrants of the diagram. This is why I thought it wasn't the absolute best model to use.

Why ever would the diagram limit you to the quadrants and not the axes? Did you do junior cert maths? Points on an x/y axis can lie on the axes themselves or even in the origin, there is nothing inherent in graphing that stops them. Now I dont think people can truly hit the centre, but thats a result of what is required to be atheist/theist and agnostic and not graph mechanics and I will explain that below:

Jakkass wrote: »

You have now made it clear that you do think people can be defacto agnostics. A few posts ago when I claimed that I was an agnostic as a teenager you posted this:

Please cut the nonsense, it's ruining what is otherwise a very civil discussion.

In what way was it nonsense? You said you were undecided as to the existence of god, therefore by lacking a belief in god you were de facto atheist. I even explained this in the part you just quoted, I even repeated it in my last post too: I dont think, from an evolutionary point of view, that our brains can hold back from forming a belief about some situation or idea even in the total lack of evidence, as wild animals, our ancestors would have needed to make split second decisions without evidence and I think we still have the tendency to do the same. If we couldn't, then we wouldn't be able to do any random act, such as pick random lotto numbers, as we would never be able to decide on a number to pick. Put simply, you can end up very close to the centre of the graph, and mathematically there is nothing stopping us from hitting the bullseye but in practise I dont think our minds will let us sit dead centre. Now if you have some evidence that contradicts this then bring it on, but just an outright denial followed by yet another misinterpretation of the graph and I'll leave you to wallow in your cognitive dissonance.

liamw

Jakkass wrote: »

^^ I personally believe that God created the laws of the universe including the evolutionary process itself. It can be reasonable to expect that an omnipotent creator should such a being exist would know the function of this process.

You haven't answered any of my questions except to vaguely say that an omnipotent deity could do whatever it liked. Surely you've thought about this in greater detail...

philologos

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Are you honestly trying to claim that every creationist on the internet isn't real or something? I've read some inane accusations people use to try and disregard others testimonies but that is just insane Jakkass.

It's stating the obvious. Yes, these interactions are real, but they are severely limited to say the very least. Our discussion is limited in the sense that it would no doubt be much better in person. One can only learn so much about an individual over the internet.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Did you even read my post Jakkass? Because if you did then you would see how ridiculous your response is. If YECs where openminded, then they wouldn't get into the situations where they end up being ridiculed in online forums. The cold hard data isn't ridiculing and open mindedly asking for information about evolution wont result in ridicule, least not from people who aren't trolling, its when they try to argue with authority on things they clearly dont know or when they ask clearly loaded questions on long since debunked reasoning that people result in ridicule. This is the second time I've specifically laid this out for you, I wont be doing it agian.

I've read your posts throughout this discussion, you just aren't appreciating that it is simply the wrong way to deal with this issue. I patently think your approach is simply wrong, that is disagreement and not ignoring your posts. Anyone can clearly see that this approach is wrong, which is why I suggested that it might be more productive to back theistic evolutionist groups such as The Biologos Foundation because they are probably more equipped to inform people about evolution from a faith perspective than atheists are.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

By making ridiculous claims about the nature of online discussions in an effort to disregard them, you are trying to ignore them and my points about them. Your counter to online discussions doesn't actually have any logic to it, its just cognitive dissonance, on a par with "He is arrogant therefore I dont need to listen to him".

I don't disregard them I just understand them for what they are in that they are just simply inferior to real life conversation. Real life discussion with a person is worth about 1000 times more than a text based web discussion.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Except this is clearly wrong. Firstly I'm not closeminded with respect to YECs, its by being opneminded with them that I actually know that they are intellectual trolls, I've seen the same arguments too many times, I've seen people get corrected, come back when they think everyone has forgotten about it and try to use the same argument again. Secondly while there are some benefits to face to face interactions, there are plenty to online discussions too (its less intimidating, it gives you more time to think about what you are saying, both sides can show their sources, there can be less bullying because of better moderating etc.) Nothing you are saying here stands up to even the lightest of scrutiny Jakkass.

Your scrutiny can only be based on the internet based encounters you have. My assessment is based on talking face-to-face with some YEC's that I know. I think the stance of merely ridiculing is destined to fail. That stands up to logic too in terms of common decency towards one another.

I think there are clear advantages to people who believe and trust in God doing this in comparison to atheists. In that some YEC's may see evolution as some form of 'atheistic agenda' or the basis of an 'atheistic worldview'. Indeed looking through some of Ken Ham's material this comes across quite strongly. One can't make similar accusations against Christians who truly believe and trust in God but nonetheless think that biological evolution is reasonable.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Why ever would the diagram limit you to the quadrants and not the axes? Did you do junior cert maths? Points on an x/y axis can lie on the axes themselves or even in the origin, there is nothing inherent in graphing that stops them. Now I dont think people can truly hit the centre, but thats a result of what is required to be atheist/theist and agnostic and not graph mechanics and I will explain that below:

So we're back to square one then

Mark Hamill wrote: »

In what way was it nonsense? You said you were undecided as to the existence of god, therefore by lacking a belief in god you were de facto atheist. I even explained this in the part you just quoted, I even repeated it in my last post too: I dont think, from an evolutionary point of view, that our brains can hold back from forming a belief about some situation or idea even in the total lack of evidence, as wild animals, our ancestors would have needed to make split second decisions without evidence and I think we still have the tendency to do the same. If we couldn't, then we wouldn't be able to do any random act, such as pick random lotto numbers, as we would never be able to decide on a number to pick. Put simply, you can end up very close to the centre of the graph, and mathematically there is nothing stopping us from hitting the bullseye but in practise I dont think our minds will let us sit dead centre. Now if you have some evidence that contradicts this then bring it on, but just an outright denial followed by yet another misinterpretation of the graph and I'll leave you to wallow in your cognitive dissonance.

Now I suspect you haven't been reading my posts :pac:

I think the graph is wholly inadequate if it is incredibly unlikely that anyone can be in fullness an agnostic. I still think in practice there is a certain buffer zone in the middle of the graph where people are more likely to identify as only agnostic even if they may technically fall into the other quadrants. I would suggest placing a circle in the middle of the graph if it were to be truly accurate or indeed based on identity.

philologos

liamw wrote: »

You haven't answered any of my questions except to vaguely say that an omnipotent deity could do whatever it liked. Surely you've thought about this in greater detail...

I've said that the laws of the universe are decided by God. In saying that evolution is a result of God's plan I would think that He would know that humans would arise from such a process. If God willed it the sky could be pink, and the grass blue, but God has willed it to be as it is.

Unless there is a problem in looking at it this way I don't see what more detail would be required.

yawha

Gotta say, I disagree with this "identity" nonsense.

You can't just identify with any keyword you choose. If you're going to give yourself a label which means something then it should actually reflect your behaviours/beliefs. Otherwise it's just hypocritical/delusional.

liamw

Jakkass wrote: »

I've said that the laws of the universe are decided by God. In saying that evolution is a result of God's plan I would think that He would know that humans would arise from such a process. If God willed it the sky could be pink, and the grass blue, but God has willed it to be as it is.

Unless there is a problem in looking at it this way I don't see what more detail would be required.

OK so in your opinion God kicked it all off and then didn't intervene in the evolution process. In that case he deterministically knew that humans would be the end-product after a few billion years.

Thanks for answering the first part but what about this?

liamw wrote: »

Do you believe that humans are 'special' in some way compared to other species; at what point in evolutionary history did that 'special' piece (soul/morals?) get embedded... i.e. was there a baby born at some stage in evolutionary history with this special characteristic whose parents didn't have it?

deise go deo

liamw wrote: »

OK so in your opinion God kicked it all off and then didn't intervene in the evolution process. In that case he deterministically knew that humans would be the end-product after a few billion years.

Why is Billion Years in Bold? What relevance would time scale have on it?

Thanks for answering the first part but what about this?

Is that not the general assumption made by evolution? Things will just appear from time to time?



Also, on a separate note.

In terms of the difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic. My own perception is that an Atheist holds that god does not exist, as fact, where an Agnostic does not know this and is open to the possibility of god existence.

Would that be correct?

pH

Jakkass wrote: »

I've said that the laws of the universe are decided by God. In saying that evolution is a result of God's plan I would think that He would know that humans would arise from such a process. If God willed it the sky could be pink, and the grass blue, but God has willed it to be as it is.

If God willed it could the internal angles of a triangle drawn on a plane add up to 190 degrees?

liamw

deise go deo wrote: »

Why is Billion Years in Bold? What relevance would time scale have on it?

It seems implausible that....

Is that not the general assumption made by evolution? Things will just appear from time to time?

No. Unless you think a random mutation in DNA can create a partial soul that then evolves into a 'full' soul as homo-sapiens evolve from their ancestors.

deise go deo

liamw wrote: »

It seems implausible that....

It's only implausible if you assume that god is in someway bound within the limits of time as we experience it.

No. Unless you think a random mutation in DNA can create a partial soul that then evolves into a 'full' soul as homo-sapiens evolve from their ancestors.

Well at some point humans gained conscious self awareness, it is not overly far fetched to suppose that humanity could have gained a spiritual core in much the same way.

Robert ninja

deise go deo wrote: »

Well at some point humans gained conscious self awareness, it is not overly far fetched to suppose that humanity could have gained a spiritual core in much the same way.

Actually, it is. We know consciousness to exist, but not any spiritual core/soul to exist... ever. Besides, a soul is supposed to be a supernatural entity that exists within humans yet outside the physical realm... that would mean that physical procceses that we know to take place and make us who we are cannot account for anything supernatural.

deise go deo

Robert ninja wrote: »

Actually, it is. We know consciousness to exist, but not any spiritual core/soul to exist... ever. Besides, a soul is supposed to be a supernatural entity that exists within humans yet outside the physical realm... that would mean that physical procceses that we know to take place and make us who we are cannot account for anything supernatural.

I am not so sure about a connection being so far fetched, Humans have clearly diverged from other species, If the question is what makes us special in comparrision to other species, and when did this come about, then the clear physical difference between us and animals is we developed self awareness, and with it, the ability to think symbolically, with that, our own mortality came to hold meaning for us as beings thus bringing a spiritual aspect to our lives previously absent.

deise go deo

pH wrote: »

If God willed it could the internal angles of a triangle drawn on a plane add up to 190 degrees?

Ah come on, that's easy to do;)

robindch

pH wrote: »

If God willed it could the internal angles of a triangle drawn on a plane add up to 190 degrees?

God? Not even Bernhard Riemann could do that

liamw

deise go deo wrote: »

It's only implausible if you assume that god is in someway bound within the limits of time as we experience it.

So God is all around us, he loves us all, he allows victims of earthquakes to survive, on a daily basis he helps kids make home runs.. but it's OK to presume he just skipped through those first few billion years or twiddled his thumbs until humans finally had evolved (I also don't understand where the cut-off was here.. i.e. what defines a fully formed human in god's eyes).

It's great to have it both ways with god isn't it. Use human logic for anything that might support his existence but just say he's omnipotent and his actions are beyond our comprehension when it doesn't suit.

Well at some point humans gained conscious self awareness, it is not overly far fetched to suppose that humanity could have gained a spiritual core in much the same way.

Current evidence and scientific studies indicate that consciousness evolved without the need for any supernatural influences.

If you are going to suppose that a soul evolved in primates, you have to first accept that a supernatural entity can evolve by natural processes (oxymoron) and secondly tell me what happens to a being with a 'partially evolved' soul (can they go to heaven?). At what point did this magical 'soul' become 'full' or 'completed'?

CerebralCortex

Here come wonderfully colourful rationalizations.

philologos

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Here come wonderfully colourful rationalizations.

It doesn't even seem remotely colourful at all considering that what is essentially happening is just pointing out the logical implications of believing in an omnipotent creator. It sounds like going back to basics over the idea of God really.

What I would find more peculiar is finding a way to account for the existence of all things without a Creator.

yawha

deise go deo wrote: »

In terms of the difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic. My own perception is that an Atheist holds that god does not exist, as fact, where an Agnostic does not know this and is open to the possibility of god existence.

Would that be correct?

No.

yawha

Jakkass wrote: »

What I would find more peculiar is finding a way to account for the existence of a Creator without a Creator of that Creator.

FYP.

More plausible that a Creator could "just exist" than that the universe could "just exist" eh?

robindch

Jakkass wrote: »

What I would find more peculiar is finding a way to account for the existence of all things without a Creator.

As yawha says, and how exactly do you get a 'creator' without another creator?

philologos

I've explained this many times on Boards. This is from the infamous megathread on the Christianity forum:

Philosophically it makes a lot of sense to distinguish between temporal and infinite existences. If Christians claimed that God had a temporal existence then yes we would definitely be in trouble. All things which are caused have a finite age.

I don't have to do this at all. Philosophers have suggested that there is a difference between what is contingent, and what is necessary. The universe has a finite age, therefore it is contingent (it can exist or it can not exist), God on the other hand is regarded to be eternal and necessary (all things are dependant on God's existence). It would be fallacious to suggest that the same argument based on something that has a finite age, can also be applied to something that is regarded as eternal.

The situations are entirely different. Thomas Aquinas argued from this point of view, as did the Islamic philosopher Avicenna and I think the Jewish Torah scholar Moses Maimonides used it too.

As for the infinite regress. This is another one that has been dealt with rather robustly within Philosophy. If there was an infinite regress the act of creation would have never occurred. There must be a termination in the regress for something to happen.

If something let's call it Z had a cause Y had a cause X .... and so on, it would never terminate, and as such the universe would have never come into being.

This argument is made by James Sadowsky, a Roman Catholic thinker.

CerebralCortex

Jakkass wrote: »

It doesn't even seem remotely colourful at all considering that what is essentially happening is just pointing out the logical implications of believing in an omnipotent creator. It sounds like going back to basics over the idea of God really.

What I would find more peculiar is finding a way to account for the existence of all things without a Creator.

No what is peculiar is why you think that provides any answers at all? Especially when taking into consideration that the "creator" you posit is a very poor explanation for what we observe in nature. The rational thing to do would be to say here we have a universe, lets try and understand it. Instead you have a conclusion and then you try to rationalise the conclusion, essentially you try to make the evidence fit. Which is wrong. I urge you to read what is at the link provided but I won't hold my breath.

philologos

CerebralCortex wrote: »

No what is peculiar is why you think that provides any answers at all? Especially when taking into consideration that the "creator" you posit is a very poor explanation for what we observe in nature. The rational thing to do would be to say here we have a universe, lets try and understand it. Instead you have a conclusion and then you try to rationalise the conclusion, essentially you try to make the evidence fit. Which is wrong. I urge you to read what is at the link provided but I won't hold my breath.

In life, most people determine what is most reasonable and base their beliefs around this. I find it very reasonable that an omnipotent and omniscient creator created the world rather than nothing. It is this and what I find in the Gospel that encourages me to believe on the basis of common sense.

Atheism simply doesn't correspond to common sense as far as I see it, this is why I don't think I can become an atheist. It's absolutely absurd while also being intriguing to me. I spent much of my teenage years dealing with the absurdity of my agnosticism. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but then again not much else in so far as I knew at the time did at the time either.

CerebralCortex

Jakkass wrote: »

In life, most people determine what is most reasonable and base their beliefs around this. I find it very reasonable that an omnipotent and omniscient creator created the world rather than nothing. It is this and what I find in the Gospel that encourages me to believe on the basis of common sense.

Atheism simply doesn't correspond to common sense as far as I see it, this is why I don't think I can become an atheist. It's absolutely absurd while also being intriguing to me. I spent much of my teenage years dealing with the absurdity of my agnosticism. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but then again not much else in so far as I knew at the time did at the time either.

Did you read the link?

robindch

Jakkass wrote: »

Philosophically it makes a lot of sense to distinguish between temporal and infinite existences.

And as I've said before, that argument -- and that distinction -- was created simply to allow christians to side-step the argument that they to apply to everybody else (as indeed, you've just done here).

It's the ultimate, and embarrassingly obvious, deus ex machina

philologos

^^ Well I presume that is your retort on most occasions when Christians bring something reasonable to the table. After all belief in God can never be reasonable, right? :pac:

Dades

deise go deo wrote: »

If the question is what makes us special in comparrision to other species, and when did this come about,

Who says we are special? Us?

Strip away our clothes, buildings and other trappings and we are still just mammals.
You only need to watch childbirth to see how "different" we really are to other animals.

The fact that we have become so self aware that (some of us) have declared our particular species to be special doesn't make it so. Especially since we know that not long ago, relatively speaking, our ancestors were grunting and dragging their knuckles around in the dirt.

deise go deo wrote: »

In terms of the difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic. My own perception is that an Atheist holds that god does not exist, as fact, where an Agnostic does not know this and is open to the possibility of god existence.

Would that be correct?

An atheist holds a belief (or lacks belief) about the non-existence of gods. Very different to declaring knowledge. Most here would be agnostic atheists in that we lack belief in gods but cannot know for certain.

CerebralCortex

Jakkass wrote: »

^^ Well I presume that is your retort on most occasions when Christians bring something reasonable to the table. After all belief in God can never be reasonable, right? :pac:

You haven't brought anything reasonable to the table, you guys start from a conclusion(a conclusion you would like to be true unless you find it abhorrent) not from evidence. Did you read the link?

philologos

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Did you read the link?

I don't believe that is what I am doing. Indeed, it could be equally what you are doing in respect to God. Disregarding Him in order to make things better fit into your situation.

Goes both ways!

CerebralCortex

Jakkass wrote: »

I don't believe that is what I am doing. Indeed, it could be equally what you are doing in respect to God. Disregarding Him in order to make things better fit into your situation.

Goes both ways!

No if God is the explanation then it is so. The evidence would be such that I would have to say that probability was high that it exists, it doesn't so I can't come to that conclusion. I have to settle with here is the evidence therefore what is probable. It doesn't go both ways, one of us is being rational the other isn't. This is why I'm an agnostic atheist. This is why I want to know if you read the article because articulates exactly what you're doing.