NOT ANOTHER RELIGION TREAD!

Religion threads are awesome! Noone ever gets convinced of anything they didn't already believe, it's just for entertainments :)

devilnis, your differences with RvW seem to be mostly semantic, at least to me.
You both seem to agree that the probability of God existing is extremely low, while being impossible to completely rule it out.
You call that agnosticism, due to the fact that you can't in fact fully rule it out.
Some people (which seem to me to include RvW) call that atheism.
I don't think it really matters.

The reason it seems of little significance that you can't rule it out (to me) is that the same is true of any claim whatsoever.
You can't that ANYTHING doesn't exists: unicorns, dragons, the FSM... maybe you want to say that the appropriate response is to be agnostic about the existence of all those things, in which case I think our disagreement is merely semantic. Otherwise, what's the difference?

In other words, if your point is merely epistemological (i.e.: we can't know ANYTHING with absolute certainty) then I don't think most atheists would disagree with the underlying point; they just choose to call the position of being as certain of the nonexistence of God as they are of the nonexistence of unicorns atheism.

one thing i hate about religion threads are people make long post so can someone plesase recap what has been said so far.

Well, on what do you predicate the certainty of your belief that unicorns don't exist? Because they just might. Actually, I find the existance of a horse-like mammal with a single spiralling horn sprouting from its forehead to be quite a bit more probable than the existance of the Abrahamic God.

And yes, the argument is of semantics - If you grant that there is at least a slight chance that God exists, and yet call yourself an atheist, you are semantically incorrect. It's like calling a man a woman or a dog a cat. Close, but no cigar :)

Semantically incorrect?
What are you basing that on?
On my experience, most atheist stuff I read (including, say, Dawking, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion, "Dawkins does not claim to disprove God with absolute certainty. Instead, he suggests as a general principle that simpler explanations are preferable(...)") would agree with my characterization of atheism.

And as far as I'm concerned, words, particularly labels people use to name the philosophical views they adhere too, mean what the people espousing those ideas claim them to mean.

Do you have any grounds for claiming your definition of atheist is correct, and the one used by most people calling themselves atheists isn't?

If you agree with most of the position and choose to call yourself agnostic, fine... But I don't see how you can say atheists are wrong because you think the beliefs you would like people calling themselves atheists to adhere to are wrong (as opposed to the beliefs people actually mean to endorse when they call themselves atheists).

Perhaps this helps: http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/
I think most atheist's would identify themselves as what that article terms agnostics atheists, not as the gnostic atheists you seem to belief atheism ALWAYS means.
Does clarifying terminology removes our disagreement?

agnostics are like hipster atheist. dawkins is too mainstream.

"as long as you accept a few completely, utterly impossible and self-contradictory statements, which do not coincide with the empirical facts we have discerned about the universe, it kind of makes sense."

of course you cant defnitely say he doesnt exist, but you cant definitely say anything. scientific laws can always be disproved by new evidence. but the likelihood of god turning out to have existed is so minute, its misleading to call yourself agnostic.

taking the middle ground isnt always the best option. in this case, there are clear logical flaws to the middle ground.

devilnis, if you are 99.99999999999999999999999999999% on the atheist-theist spectrum, you should just round yourself up to atheist. would you call yourself bisexual, because you might be attracted to one of the 3.5bn people of your gender? if i asked you the time, would you say: "its 5:23.352358032527234059345346034276234870634763487560827346580764087654783264756384764874549875932847594879574897294875"? i think youd say its 20 past 5. dont be such a pedantic troll, otherwise we cant have an entertaining religion thread like you said.

Well, language does morph over time. Look at the roots though:

A (without) + Theist (God (anglicized))

Without God.

A (without) + Gnostic (Knowledge (anglicized))

Without Knowledge. Gnosis evolved from its original simple meaning of Knowledge to one laden with connotations of spiritual knowledge, so it's more accurately:

Without Spiritual Knowledge.

That slight distinction is actually quite useful in describing someone's mindset. But you're right. The two terms are conflating themselves more and more as time goes on and eventually they will be one and the same in the mind of the general public.

As to "clear logical flaws in the middle ground".. That's utter BS. There's no logical flaw in recognizing that every probability has a corresponding improbability that is yet still quite possible. And yet there's Dawkins describing them as "utterly impossible" in one breath even as he accedes to their possibility in the next. The man is a class A douchebag, and not a good standard bearer for the banner of rational thought. It's his ilk (and the tireless efforts of organizations like the Inquisition) that have made Atheism a term so freighted with misconceptions by the general public that it's nigh useless. Like "Socialism".

- An Empiric Agnostic.

Oh, and you're damned right I'm a troll, but I do have an art for drawing out real discussions of what would have otherwise probably been sheer stupidity. Look at every post before my first little bit of raconteurism for examples :)

Yeesh replies coming in too fast! I believe that everyone is inherently bisexual in terms of possible ranges of future behavior, but that some combination of genetic/physiological predisposition and and social conditioning causes most people to feel they are supposed to choose one way or the other, and most do so. That makes it a very good analogy really, because I believe that most people have at least a LITTLE doubt about their cherished beliefs in their hearts, and thus truly could be affirmed as agnostic, but social conditioning causes them to make a choice and then stick with it adamantly even as their subconscious mind continues to wonder if they mightn't be wrong.

I agree with moros

wow, this was an interesting thread, didnt realize something like this could generate this many responses in a short amount of time. Ill throw my 2 cents in. Im a Christian, I wholly believe that God exists, and that there is plenty of evidence to prove his existence. Ask me a question about anything, ill answer it (im better at formulating responses, than thinking of stuff on the spot.)

Here's where I differ slightly than other Christians, I believe Dickens was right to a point with his theory of evolution. He was right in the fact that animals do chance characteristics periodically, adapting to their environments, but he used the data he found from his experiments and blew it out of proportion. Animals dont evolve from one species to another, you wont ever see a lizard evolve into a bird.
Another thing is that Dickens was a Christian before his experiments, and that by converting into an atheist, and using science to 'prove' his theory of evolution, he actually opened the door for science to help prove the existence of God. Science helps explain how the world works, and by doing that, and showing how complex everything is, it actually is showing that there was someone behind the creation of the universe, that someone being God.

Perrin3088 wrote:
|> RvW, it is irrelevant on if the thing wants to be proven or not.. the pure fact of the matter is, is that next to nothing can be proven not to be, while things can be proven to be... in order to prove john doe is not on a moving train you must simultaneously view every portion of said train at the same time to prove john does lack of existance on said train, but to prove john doe is on said train, all you have to do is find him.

If God *is* on that train (exists), even if we view every portion of the train simultaneously and observe God to not be there, he/she/it might still be there; that's one of the neat things about omnipotence... you get to cheat all the rules whenever you want.

To but it into logic (assuming God doesn't want to be found):

E: God Exists
P: Proof of God's existence can be found

E implies not P
not E implies not P

All we have is the knowledge that (so far) "not P" holds. It's utterly impossible to conclude (with certainty, probabilistically we still have Russell's Teapot) anything at all about whether or not "E" holds.

---

I'm the first to admit all of this is rather theoretical and I honestly don't think a God actually exists, but:

- To a lot of people, this is very important
- I am not **sure** there's no God

For me, that means the only possible course of action is to tread lightly and stick to "probably not". That also means that when people (ab)use science to (attempt to) show there *definitely* is no God, I feel compelled to object.

RvW completely hit the spot about how I feel.

*(can't even write a reply without the tread getting longer in the meantime...)*

@Nighthawk
|> you wont ever see a lizard evolve into a bird

Not within a lifetime, not within a couple dozen generations, but what makes you so sure it won't happen eventually? Remember, even if you stretch the definition as far as it'll go, "science" has only been around for a couple thousand years. If we start keeping detailed track of every species, for millions of years (and without losing those records every few millennia of course), do you really think that all those species will merely adapt to their environments, without any new ones, well, "evolving"?

|> Another thing is that Dickens was a Christian before his experiments, and that by converting into an atheist, and using science to 'prove' his theory of evolution, he actually opened the door for science to help prove the existence of God.

Ehm, how do you figure that? Are you claiming there to be a scientific proof for the existence of God...?

|> Science helps explain how the world works, and by doing that, and showing how complex everything is, it actually is showing that there was someone behind the creation of the universe, that someone being God.

This sounds a lot like "intelligent design".

The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.

@RvW, to your first comment, what makes me sure is the lack of evidence whatsoever that there ever was any links. There is no fossils that show a (to continue on my example from earlier) lizard turning into a bird. Evolutions claim that there are links, which they say would take millions of years to go from one species to another, then why are there no fossils?

'Are you claiming there to be a scientific proof for the existence of God...?'
Ill admit, I do not claim that there is straight scientific proof (yet) for the existence of God. Its more, I can look at the world, see a process of something, know what science says the process does, and it reinforces my belief that God exists.

This sounds a lot like "intelligent design"

Doesnt intelligent design imply that there is a Creator or God behind the intelligent design? Its hard for something, say a book, to be complex and intelligent, without a God designing it.

'That also means that when people (ab)use science to (attempt to) show there definitely is no God, I feel compelled to object.' I was intrigued by this statement. Its rare to hear someone say something like this, when they dont believe that there is a God (or in your case, believe that there is probably not a God).

@Oranos, What the hell is the Babel fish?