Quote from Automaton

Yeah... that's what I'm saying. We do this, and therefore we can't include the unknown in the probability for god's existence.

Which is why I said it is currently unknown, but could be known in the future to a near 100 percent once we know more about the universe. My main point however was that it is not a 50/50 chance just because they are two options.

It's not a 50/50 chance because determining probability requires having enough information to form a predictive model based off of them. We don't have that information, and we likely never will, and it's a complete waste of time to try and determine the probable odds of two scenarios being true when absolutely no evidence exists for either of them.

It's like asking what the odds are for life on other planets. The only possible answers are yes and no, but that doesn't make their probability 50/50. It means we have no way to support either argument and it's worthless to try and say how likely one is compared to the other. Equivalent amounts of evidence (none) doesn't mean equivalent odds of likelihood.

Quote from Exilement

I am not saying they're idiots for believing it's possible to know for certain. I'm just saying your argument does nothing to address the people who have those beliefs. There are people who claim they do know God exists. Just like people claim to know God doesn't exist. they're not agnostics.

So an agnostic is indeed someone who says they don't know whether a god exists and a gnostic is someone who says they know that a god does/doesn't exist?
There's no evidence whatsoever for gods existence and therefore anyone that claims to know is lying... that's pretty much my whole argument on that. Until evidence is provided, nobody KNOWS, and I've yet to see anyone that's "gnostic" provide such evidence of their knowledge. Someone can say that they can predict the future. They claim to be gnostic about their abilities to predict the future. They are not, however, gnostic, because they don't KNOW that to be the case until they can prove it. These terms are useless if they can only be internally judged by yourself, they have to be based on more than that. My conclusion is therefore correct in that nobody is gnostic, if that is the definition we're going on (that gnostic = someone that knows one way or the other).

[edit]
Alright, my argument has been defeated on the 50/50 point, back to being an atheist I go (yes, I never stopped being one, I know).

[edit 2]
Also, let's say that someone says they're gnostic on god's existence. What point is there in that definition if it's only one that they apply to themselves? They say "I'm gnostic", I say "you're not because I don't think you KNOW that there's a god", they say "I do", I say "you don't". The only way gnosticism works is through self-reflection, it becomes a completely useless term for discussing with anyone else, and what's the point in a term if nobody else will agree with it. I'm finding it hard to explain what I mean but I'm sure you'll get the gist.

Quote from Automaton

(that gnostic = someone that knows one way or the other).

Look up the definition of gnosticism, that's not what it means.

No one really claims to be "gnostic". Agnosticism refers to people who personally acknowledge a reasonable amount of doubt in their beliefs. There are theists and atheists who fanatically defend their views and refuse to admit they might be wrong, and they are not agnostic.

What you're doing is turning "agnosticism" into the truth that no one knows for sure, and assuming some reverse viewpoint exists as "gnosticism" which you immediately consider useless because it directly opposes the truth you see in agnosticism. People who are not agnostic don't claim to have empirical, verifiable evidence for their beliefs, they simply don't allow the lack of said evidence to play a part in how they form their beliefs.

I guess my problem here is finding a definition for gnosticism. I mean, look at this shit:
https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&gs_nf=1&tok=8FVVRZbfZUx6otPqMTtMlw&pq=gnosticism&cp=11&gs_id=1b&xhr=t&q=gnosticism+definition&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=gnosticism+&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=ea5ffb3f7fd7136&biw=1680&bih=949

"A prominent heretical movement of the 2nd-century Christian Church, partly of pre-Christian origin. Gnostic doctrine taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled the redemption of the human spirit" ... wtf...

So I just based my view on gnosticism as the opposite to agnosticism, as I've always considered them to be sort of opposites, and I've always considered defining yourself as agnostic as this:
Saying that you do not know for certain whether a god does/doesn't exist, and therefore reserving room for at least some doubt in your belief/lack of belief.

The opposite to that is saying you do know for certain, which is therefore what I always thought was the case. Care to explain where exactly I'm going wrong with these definitions?
Also, lol, this is kind of proving Jeff's point on me not knowing their definitions. Still, not really proving that I thought it was what he said I thought it was.

That's my point. Gnosticism as a belief system no longer exists, and when it did it was something else entirely.

Gnosis means knowledge, which is where the term agnosticism comes from. It is not a rejection of gnosticism and they aren't polar opposites, they're not related at all. I'm seriously surprised someone who's been debating this for as long as you have doesn't know that yet. Agnosticism has no opposite.

I'm surprised too. Owell. I've never really talked about agnosticism much because I believed that agnostics were atheists anyway (which they are), so the term hasn't came up much.

Anyway, that doesn't really change the point of my other thread. If there is no opposite to agnosticism, and nobody knows whether there is/isn't a god, remind me again why it's a useful term?

Quote from Automaton

I've never really talked about agnosticism much because I believed that agnostics were atheists anyway (which they are)

No they aren't. Agnostic theism exists: "I believe in God, even though I don't know he exists"

Quote from Automaton

If there is no opposite to agnosticism, and nobody knows whether there is/isn't a god, remind me again why it's a useful term?

I've already explained this in the last thread.

"If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist... if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist – an agnostic-atheist – an atheist because an agnostic... while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other..."

"Religious scholars in the three Abrahamic religions affirm the possibility of knowledge, even of metaphysical realities such as God and the soul, because human intelligence, they assert, has a non-material, spiritual element. They affirm that “not being able to see or hold some specific thing does not necessarily negate its existence,” as in the case of gravity, entropy, or reason and thought."


Again, your continued insistence that everyone is agnostic is just showing you have no ability to relate to people who believe their personal experiences with God constitute actual knowledge. Here's twenty arguments for the existence of God. The people who wrote it, or agree with it, believe God's existence can be known. They are not agnostics.

I don't know how else to explain this to you.

Don't know why I said the first point about agnostics being atheists, that's relating to the incorrect agnosticism as if it were a part of the belief scale from theism to atheism, mustn't have been thinking.

When I was religious I had a religious experience that I knew - the same as any other religious person person that claims to "know" - was god. I knew it so much that I built my entire belief around it. I questioned the science teaching of evolution in school and said "but I don't believe in evolution" (I can't believe I believed such things, but the numinous experience was so true to me that I didn't question it). I also had a similar experience while stoned, but that doesn't count in my eyes for obvious reasons (not in the right mind). Looking back on that experience, even though I thought I knew at the time that it was god, I realise now that I was completely wrong in saying that I knew. If I could go back in time and talk to myself at that moment, I would say to myself "no, you fucking idiot, you do NOT know that god exists just because you felt that presence within you, the mind is capable of many things". So, it's not as if I don't understand that sort of "knowing", I just don't believe you can have a personal experience or something that's not backed up empirically or logically, and then call it knowledge. Just because you feel something's true, doesn't mean it's okay to say it's true to anyone else unless you can verify it as such, either through logical arguing or through evidence (and as we all know, neither of those 2 options have proved gods existence yet).

...

That doesn't address anything I just said, at all. I'll repeat myself:

"Religious scholars in the three Abrahamic religions affirm the possibility of knowledge, even of metaphysical realities such as God and the soul, because human intelligence, they assert, has a non-material, spiritual element."

They are not saying a single thing about empirical evidence or logic, and they're not attempting to bring God into it. They're saying that spiritual knowledge exists, that it's an intrinsic aspect of human intelligence, and through it God can be known.


You, as an agnostic, disagree with this view. See why it's a useful term now?

Yes, yes I do.
One final question for the purpose of enlightening me so that I know this in the future:

Is someone that is not agnostic saying that they have this knowledge, or are they saying that this knowledge is theoretically possible to gain?

I don't know? Ask them. "I'm not agnostic" says fuck all about what they believe and, as we've demonstrated through this discussion today, siding with any particular -ism doesn't necessarily mean they understand it.

There's ... just ... so much text in this thread. But I noticed my name in Fusion's post when I was skimming, so I'll poke my nose in.

Quote from Automaton

I thought Zed was doing some semantics, or enjoyed that part of the course, at uni. Maybe he can input a little on this. I'm not too sure where the balance between keeping definitions strict and letting them evolve should be. Obviously there HAVE to be purists who stop words from changing meaning because otherwise english language would become a mess, but there has to be lenience the other way too.

There are two basic schools of thought regarding how individual words get and maintain their meaning. There's the external (or causal) view which says that things undergo an initial baptism and then there's a chain linking everyone's use of the word to the thing itself, and there's the internal (or descriptivist) view that says each person has a set of beliefs about what fits a certain word and whatever fits those beliefs is what they're referring to when they use the word.

In the context of this argument, (from the 3% or so that I've skimmed) Jeff seems to be saying that the word in question has a definite and fixed meaning, while Automaton is being flexible with it and using it as shorthand for a set of qualities which don't necessarily correspond to Jeff's definition. So Jeff is going for more of an external view (ie. the word has a meaning independent of individual usage) and Automaton has an internal view of it (ie. the word means what he needs it to mean when he uses it).

Neither view is really more dominant than the other, as far as I am aware. But I personally am writing my dissertation on why the externalist view is wrong so I'll be siding with Automaton on this one. I think it's fine to use a word however the hell you like. Make up your own private language if you want. But the further you go from what it says in a dictionary the more likely you are to have your points misunderstood. If you want to write an essay completely in Automatonanian then it's totally legitimate but no one will understand it. However there shouldn't be anything wrong with using one or two words in unusual ways as long as you point out clearly when you're doing it and how the word differs from standard usage. I've seen some essays written where the authors actually had to use subscript to clarify whether they were using words normally or by their own definitions in each instance.

In conclusion: It really doesn't matter what the words are supposed to mean or what the dictionaries say. Frankly it's probably easiest not to use the word at all. I don't think the meaning of the name is particularly central to the topic.

If anyone thinks they're being funny by going and checking the proper definitions of the descriptivist and causal theories of language, I will smite them. I didn't bend them beyond breaking point.

Quote from Exilement

siding with any particular -ism doesn't necessarily mean they understand it.

This is an important point. Saying you follow x, y, or z, is completely secondary to whether or not you actually follow x, y, or z. This thread seems to have gone pretty deep into what people say they are while ignoring x, y, and z themselves.

Zed vs Exilement?

Buckle up, niggas. Shit just got real.

Pretty sure we're in agreement here. Like most of the time. I don't think we disagree on much