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Can you simply be Agnostic?

yawha

From my understanding of the term "agnostic", it's not something that you can be independent of a position on theism. To be gnostic or agnostic about something is a statement about the certainty or uncertainty of a particular belief or lack of one.

But so many people seem to think that to be "agnostic" is to be half way between theism and atheism. Indeed, that's the first definition I heard of, but on further reflection, it doesn't make any sense. Belief in something is binary - you either believe in something or you don't, but the level of certainty regarding whether a particular belief or lack of is correct is not. I see it as a continuum ranging from gnostic to agnostic. So you might have a (a)theist who is very agnostic about their belief/lack of belief, or a (a)theist who is very gnostic about it, but one is not simply "agnostic" alone.

I reckon that most who call themselves agnostic would be atheists with a high level of uncertainty regarding their lack of belief.

Thoughts?

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sink

I agree, this discussion has been had many times before on this forum.

There is also a third option which is ignostic. It is basically the rejection of current assumptions about god and without a coherent falsifiable definition of god the question as to whether it exists is not cognitively meaningful. Which is the position I would take. So I would be a ignostic atheist.

Dades

yawha wrote: »

I reckon that most who call themselves agnostic would be atheists with a high level of uncertainty regarding their lack of belief.

I agree.

I think an awful lot of self-confessed agnostics are so because they misunderstand the term atheism, and what it actually entails. (i.e. They think it involves saying or knowing there are no gods).

Galvasean

Dades wrote: »

I think an awful lot of self-confessed agnostics are so because they misunderstand the term atheism, and what it actually entails. (i.e. They think it involves saying or knowing there are no gods).

Well, when you consider that not a week goes by without someone coming into the forum and telling us what an atheist is (they are almost always completely wrong), maybe we should pop up a sticky thread with the definition?

Denerick

I'm currently reading Contact by Carl Sagan. Here is a particularly relevant sentance:

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

I'm still waiting for the evidence to pile up before I make a decision either way

Galvasean wrote: »

Well, when you consider that not a week goes by without someone coming into the forum and telling us what an atheist is (they are almost always completely wrong), maybe we should pop up a sticky thread with the definition?

You're presuming a definition could be agreed!

For instance, there are those who think there is a world of difference between

"I believe God does not exist"

"I do not believe God does exist"

Galvasean

pH wrote: »

"I do not believe God does exist"

This one!

sponsoredwalk

pH wrote: »

"I believe God does not exist"

Arrogant atheist :mad:

pH wrote: »

"I do not believe God does exist"

Brainwashed by Hitchens/Dawkins to be a "Skeptic" :rolleyes:

yawha

Denerick wrote: »

I'm still waiting for the evidence to pile up before I make a decision either way

And thus, in the meantime, you lack a belief in any god?

Denerick

yawha wrote: »

And thus, in the meantime, you lack a belief in any god?

I assume there is no God. If there is a God, I'm confident she would be horrified by organised religions at present. Until some evidence emerges to either confirm or deny the supposition I shall remain healthily skeptical of both atheism and theism.

El_Duderino 09

Denerick wrote: »

I assume there is no God. If there is a God, I'm confident she would be horrified by organised religions at present. Until some evidence emerges to either confirm or deny the supposition I shall remain healthily skeptical of both atheism and theism.

Do you mean you will remain healthily skeptical of both theism and anti theism? Thus making you my friend, an atheist?

[Deleted User]

Denerick wrote: »

I assume there is no God. If there is a God, I'm confident she would be horrified by organised religions at present. Until some evidence emerges to either confirm or deny the supposition I shall remain healthily skeptical of both atheism and theism.

Hello, atheism.

Dades

Dades wrote: »

I think an awful lot of self-confessed agnostics are so because they misunderstand the term atheism, and what it actually entails. (i.e. They think it involves saying or knowing there are no gods).

Denerick wrote: »

Until some evidence emerges to either confirm or deny the supposition I shall remain healthily skeptical of both atheism and theism.

I rest my case.

robindch

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Brainwashed by Hitchens/Dawkins to be a "Skeptic" :rolleyes:

How, uh..., uncharitable!

strobe

bluewolf wrote: »

Hello, atheism

This is going to sound very very OCDish......but is there any chance you could edit that post and put a full stop at the end of it Blue?

ArtSmart

yawha wrote: »

I reckon that most who call themselves agnostic would be atheists with a high level of uncertainty regarding their lack of belief.

Thoughts?

true. nuthin worse than a backsliding agnostic

sponsoredwalk

robindch wrote: »

How, uh..., uncharitable!

One of them!

[Deleted User]

There you go, strobe.

bnt

The OP is right in saying that (a)gnosticism and (a)theism are different questions. Maybe it's time I posted this again, from irreligion.org:

One thing that occurs to me, however, is that not all positions on that 2-axis system are logical. If you are an agnostic, then you think there can never be answer to these questions (on the existence of gods); but to be a theist means that you think you have the answer! (The idea of "some kind of god out there somewhere" is not theism, it's deism: to be a theist is to take a specified faith position.)

In all cases, though, I think certainty is unwarranted. I'm not certain that there are no gods, but I don't need to be. To be certain, when there is no evidence to support certainty, would also be a faith position. You sometimes see religious types accusing atheists of this kind of thing, but if they actually asked the atheists what they thought, they might learn something new. :rolleyes:

Peregrinus

Well, I’ve argued elsewhere that Catholics get to self-define. So, I reckon, do atheists and agnostics.

The words “atheism” and “atheist” only entered the English language in the second half of the sixteenth century. Initially the concept of “atheism” embraced three things:

- Denial of the existence of god(s)

- Lack of any belief in the existence of god(s)

- “Practical” atheism - i.e. disregard of duties to god(s), regardless of belief.

At first, the sense of practical atheism seems to have predominated. Pretty soon, however, that meaning came to be mostly expressed by other words, e.g. godlessness, impiety. So “atheism” came to signify the two philosophical senses.

It’s obvious that those who deny the existence of god(s) are a subset of those who lack belief in the existence of god(s).

“Agnostic” and “agnosticism” don’t turn up for another three hundred years or so. In fact, we know who coined the words; it was Thomas Huxley, in about 1869. Huxley intended the words for those who (like himself) not only didn’t know whether god(s) existed or not, but argued that we couldn’t know this. He believed, essentially, that the existence of anything beyond or behind material phenomena was unknown and unknowable.

It seems that, to Huxley, “denial” atheism was a faith-based position just as much as theism was. In his view denial atheists were asserting as true something which could not be known to be true. (Huxley, perhaps, would have said that a denial atheist who completed the current census by ticking “other religion” and then writing “Atheist” would be correct.)

Very quickly, a large number of people who might previously have been described as atheists began to self-describe as agnostics. This included not only people who shared Huxley’s conviction that we cannot know if god(s) exist, but also those who simply felt that they themselves were uncertain about the existence of god(s) as well as, in time, a group who simply weren’t greatly interested in the question of whether god(s) exist. “Atheist” soon came to refer mainly to the hard-core denialists.

I suspect that what may have driven this fairly rapid change in meaning was the fact that up to that time “atheist” was mostly used in a pejorative sense. The newly-coined agnostics were seeking to affirm themselves and their position as socially and intellectually respectable by embracing this new label.

The end result of these shifting meanings is that we have two fairly clearly-defined philosophical positions for which only one label is appropriate - those who assert that god(s) do not exist, who are always “atheist”, and those who assert that we cannot know whether god(s) exist, who are always “agnostic”.

In between we have what I suspect is a larger group of people who we can characterise only in negative terms - they don’t have a belief in the existence of god(s), they don’t assert that god(s) do not or cannot exist, they don’t assert anything about the limits to human knowledge in this respect. They can be described (or they can self-describe) as either “atheist” or “agnostic” according to preference, or fashion, or to which of the other two groups they prefer to tog out with. Arguments about whether they are more accurately described as “atheist” or “agnostic” are not much use (except, perhaps, that they tend to cast light on the position of the person making the argument). (FWIW, my entirely subjective and unreliable impression is that, in recent years, people who lack any belief in god(s) have become more prone than formerly to self-identify as “atheist”.)

I think this does have some implications for discussions about how the non-religious ought to complete the census, or about what options the census form ought to offer them. Because the boundary between atheism and agnosticism is movable, getting people to classify themselves as atheist or agnostic is of limited value. People with identical positions might classify themselves differently, and changes from census to census in the numbers classifying themselves as one or the other might point to shifting positions, but they could equally point to unchanged positions which are simply being differently described or labelled, and we would have no way of knowing which phenomenon was at work. I suspect that information about the aggregate number identifying as non-religious is probably more meaningful than any attempt to analyse the non-religious between atheism and agnosticism.

dead one

second law of thermodynamics gives, universe is running out of energy, It implies universe can't be eternal, it is also proved by mathematic and philosophy that it can't be possible a universe with infinite number of events. Thus it is proved by modern science that the universe began to exist. The fact "universe began to exist which has cause, To deny this cause is absurd and to ignore this cause makes one agnostic. The universe began to exist, What is its cause? Answering this question lead us to the nature and reality of God. God's existence is simple logic to "cause" the universe. Only an uncaused and omnipresent cause is enough on account for universe. Therefore such supernatural being exist. Many agnostic and atheist say that God needs a first cause because they redefined God in term of matter and energy, But there is no one like God in whole universe.

Quran - ‘There is nothing like Him, He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing (Ash-Shura – 11).

Improbable

dead one wrote: »

second law of thermodynamics gives, universe is running out of energy, It implies universe can't be eternal, it is also proved by mathematic and philosophy that it can't be possible a universe with infinite number of events. Thus it is proved by modern science that the universe began to exist. The fact "universe began to exist which has cause, To deny this cause is absurd and to ignore this cause makes one agnostic. The universe began to exist, What is its cause? Answering this question lead us to the nature and reality of God. God's existence is simple logic to "cause" the universe. Only an uncaused and omnipresent cause is enough on account for universe. Therefore such supernatural being exist. Many agnostic and atheist say that God needs a first cause because they redefined God in term of matter and energy, But there is no one like God in whole universe.

That's not what the second law of thermodynamics means at all. This argument is either a poor attempt to misrepresent scientific facts to suit your own argument or an argument stemming from an ignorance of scientific fact. Thus, everything following your statement that "the universe is running out of energy" is a logical fallacy and can be discounted. Much like all god theories.

dead one

Improbable wrote: »

That's not what the second law of thermodynamics means at all. This argument is either a poor attempt to misrepresent scientific facts to suit your own argument or an argument stemming from an ignorance of scientific fact. Thus, everything following your statement that "the universe is running out of energy" is a logical fallacy and can be discounted. Much like all god theories.

You don't say. The indication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The system of universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. It is logical to conclude that universe isn't eternal. The universe had a limited beginning.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state.

also entropy has proved invalidity of evolution.

[Deleted User]

dead one wrote: »

You don't say. The indication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The system of universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. It is logical to conclude that universe isn't eternal. The universe had a limited beginning.

also entropy has proved invalidity of evolution.

I love when people use one scientific fact to try argue against another :rolleyes:
It's really funny.
Why don't you start arguing against the 2nd law with all your "to err is human" rubbish?

housetypeb

dead one wrote: »

also entropy has proved invalidity of evolution.

How does it do that?

I like how you're able to switch to believing in science when you think it agrees with your particular holy book.

dead one

bluewolf wrote: »

I love when people use one scientific fact to try argue against another :rolleyes:
It's really funny.
Why don't you start arguing against the 2nd law with all your "to err is human" rubbish?

I also love when people use Fun to avoid the truth and reason.
It's really funny.:P
What's so funny??

housetypeb wrote: »

How does it do that?

macro evolution of complex living things from single cell, You know something about disorder ?

Improbable

dead one wrote: »

You don't say. The indication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The system of universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. It is logical to conclude that universe isn't eternal. The universe had a limited beginning.

You can't "lose" energy. The energy "loss" you're describing is merely the transformation of one type of energy into another. If the universe is of an open configuration, it is possible there will be a point of maximum entropy, which only means that all of the available energy will be uniformally distributed and will not be able to do any work, not that there is no energy. That doesn't mean that the universe will stop existing...

Do you have any scientific rebuttals to that?

dead one wrote: »

also entropy has proved invalidity of evolution.

Explain how.

b318isp

dead one wrote: »

You don't say. The indication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The system of universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. It is logical to conclude that universe isn't eternal.

The 2nd law is about equilibrium. From Wiki: "differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system."

I'd also point out that it is only a theory, not a true law.

And your comment runs contrary to the conservation of energy "law" too.

And even e=mc^2 would require you to demonstrate where all the mass is as energy reduces.

b318isp

dead one wrote: »

also entropy has proved invalidity of evolution.

Entropy does indeed describe the reduction of energy in a system, but you're not suggesting that living things don't consume energy over their lifetimes? We consume energy to (partly) organise simpler forms into the complex organism that we are. When we die, no further energy is consumed and we decay.

robindch

dead one wrote: »

The system of universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining.

I mentioned this to JC a while ago, but there's a source of energy in the Universe which you can actually see with you own eyes. Here's what you have to do:

Go into some open space during the daytime
If it's a cloudy day, wait until the skies are clear.
Tilt your head upwards and find the bright, hot, large, round, yellow thing
That's it!

Let us know how you get on, or if you need a hand out. Common mistakes with this experimental protocol include trying to do it at night, with a cloudy sky or with your eyes closed.

raah!

This pushing of "atheism is just a lack of belief" is definitely not something which is universally accepted as the definition of atheism. If you actually read this forum, you'll see time and time again "God probably doesn't exist". This is a declaration of "I believe that it does not exist". If you're able to speak english, you'll see quite easily the difference between the two statements. There is no point in pretending that when anyone uses the term atheist they mean "lack of belief". This is not how the word is used today, and infact it was used soley in the "belief of non-existence" sense before people started to be offended by agnostics claiming a firmer epistemological footing.

It's clear that under the "I believe that god does not exist" definition, one can indeed be an agnostic but not an atheist.

The second Law would only be broken by evolving organisms if they could be considered to be closed/isolated systems. They are not unfortunately.