Looking for Agnostic quote

LittleBook

Folks, I read a quote in someone's sigline a coupla years back which was (IIRC) a defence of agnosticism, can't for the life of me remember the entire quote but would love to have it.

It went something like ... "if you can give me one single piece of proof your god exists, I can prove he doesn't" ... or something like that, maybe vice versa, it was about proof anyway ... I think.

Cheers.

Galway K9

Agnostics cant prove he doesnt exist, its against our philosphy and the meaning of the word.

As betrand russell said when asked at a conference "What will you say to God when you die and find out he exists?" Russell replied: "God, you gave me insufficient evidence!"

Galway K9

LittleBook wrote: »

Folks, I read a quote in someone's sigline a coupla years back which was (IIRC) a defence of agnosticism, can't for the life of me remember the entire quote but would love to have it.

It went something like ... "if you can give me one single piece of proof your god exists, I can prove he doesn't" ... or something like that, maybe vice versa, it was about proof anyway ... I think.

Cheers.

to take a stab at your quote though, you might be referrign to this one....."Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof."

LittleBook

OK, well maybe the "quote" sample is wrong. It felt at the time like that the point of the quote was the impossibility of being able to prove anything either way.

LittleBook

Galway K9 wrote: »

to take a stab at your quote though, you might be referrign to this one....."Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof."

No, it's a good one but definitely not the one I'm thinking of, but I appreciate your effort and feel at this point I should apologise in advance if I eventually get "the" quote and it's nothing like my OP.

If it helps, I'm fairly sure it was a sig here on Boards.

pH

LittleBook wrote: »

OK, well maybe the "quote" sample is wrong. It felt at the time like that the point of the quote was the impossibility of being able to prove anything either way.

Can you prove "the impossibility of being able to prove either way", or is that just something you believe to be true?

Dades

I know where this thread is going!

(Clue: agnosticism disparages incorrect definition of atheism)

AhSureTisGrand

pH wrote: »

Can you prove "the impossibility of being able to prove either way", or is that just something you believe to be true?

The concept of God is made to be unprovable and unfalsifiable. Russell's teapot etc...

Pygmalion

A similar enough one I've read (but unfortunately can't remember where) was along the lines of:

"You can't prove God doesn't exist, so how can you say you don't believe in Him?"
"Provide me with the method you used to disprove the existence of Zeus, and I'll use that method to disprove the Christian God."

Ninap

Someone on politics.ie has this as his/her signature:


[Thomas Paine, Age Of Reason, pg. 54]
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."

pH

AhSureTisGrand wrote: »

The concept of God is made to be unprovable and unfalsifiable. Russell's teapot etc...

Say what?

I can postulate an infinite number of provable Gods - I guess others have attempted to postulate unprovable ones, and there's an infinite number of them too, but that doesn't make the "concept of God unprovable and unfalsifiable".

But still back to the basic question - can you prove it's impossible to prove God's existence one way or another, or is that just a guess/hunch/belief?

Turtwig

How about the one in my sig :

Militant Agnosticism : You don't know and I don't know either!

AhSureTisGrand

pH wrote: »

I can postulate an infinite number of provable Gods

But nobody would believe in those

pH

AhSureTisGrand wrote: »

But nobody would believe in those

Billions have for thousands of years.

AhSureTisGrand

pH wrote: »

Billions have for thousands of years.

Whcuh god would this be?

Funglegunk

Malty_T wrote: »

How about the one in my sig :

Militant Agnosticism : You don't know and I don't know either!

Haha, love that one. Actually used it for a witty conversation once, hope you don't mind!

LittleBook

Pygmalion wrote: »

A similar enough one I've read (but unfortunately can't remember where) was along the lines of:

"You can't prove God doesn't exist, so how can you say you don't believe in Him?"
"Provide me with the method you used to disprove the existence of Zeus, and I'll use that method to disprove the Christian God."

The bolded one sounds very, very close!

Doctor DooM

Perhaps it's the one from Douglas Adams which goes something like "If you ever actually found proof of God, he would actually vanish in a puff of faith".