because there was and is no proof that the myths are true - they can take them to be true, but that is an example of faith, not knowledge.
If I say “there’s not enough evidence to convince me that god exists” that equals “there’s no such thing as gods”.
Unless of course there wasn’t enough evidence to decide which is clearly not the case.
Funny how I could say "there’s no such thing as unicorns and you wouldn’t even flinch.
This certainty thing, is just a linguistic trick, nothing more.
Dawkins, who you hate, made a 7 point scale of certainty. He said he was a 6 or 6.5.
I’m actually a 7. I’m sure that god does not exist. As sure as someone can be at least.
Is this arrogance? not really. The reason I don’t believe in it is of course the fact that there’s not a shred of evidence that supports it but the reason I’m absolutely sure can only be explained by analogy. Take fairies, no one in the developed world actually thinks there’s a possibility that fairies exist, DESPITE the fact that we can’t prove or disprove their existence. Are all those people arrogant? No, they’re just rational.
See where I’m getting at ?
This certainty that is so commonly perceived as arrogance is actually displayed by people everyday towards a bunch of silly concepts and ideas, it’s just that when it comes to god/religion the nature of the game seems to change due to religious discourse being so pervasive in today’s society. Religious discourse did a great job of hermetically sealing itself.
Thank you. At least someone saw straight to the heart of this thread.
it doesn’t matter if there’s no proof that their conception of god is something that actually exists. We’re not talking about a proof of their God, we’re talking about “their notion of God.” That’s what this conversation is about – not proofs of ideas, but ideas. Their notion of God IS, in fact, that he has been known, and is therefore knowable.
i’m responding to this, btw. idk if that’s clear to you.
that you can’t know does not follow from the fact that you don’t know.
Indeed, FJ, but I think we’re missing the point. The OP stresses the attribute “laziness” to which we can accurately reply: If the “laziness” of a belief is determined by the relative effort required to defend the contention, then indeed Agnosticism is, by concerning these parameters, the “laziest of the three.” However, if we attend to Occam’s razor, it is, as a consequence of this same “laziness”, the most solid of the three. So then is laziness next to accuracy?
i’m saying that based on their belief that god created the universe they couldn’t have known that such god exists, regardless of what they thought they knew
you’re right, it doesn’t, but i’m not claiming it does - i’m claiming that that there is no conceivable way to prove and therefore know that the god in which they believe exists.
to be clear, i’m not saying it’s impossible to imagine that we might perhaps discover for sure wether or not god exists at some point in the future, anything’s possible, i’m merely saying that we don’t and can’t know now.
I don’t think it’s the most error-prone - “I don’t know” can only be wrong if I actually do know, and that’s only an error if I don’t know that I know it. Which is possible, but compared to staking everything on one or other answer, not particularly risky. Even the strong claim “it’s not knowable” doesn’t seem any worse than an absolutist claim by the other camps.
No conclusion requires effort. The effort is spent on the way to a conclusion. Everyone should be as agnostic as possible while expending the effort to find out one way or the other, anyway, really, given human weaknesses in terms of cognitive bias. But it’s possible to have expended a great deal of effort to come to an agnostic position, and it’s everso easy to expend no effort at all to slip into a/theism.
I’m fairly certain that pragmatic atheism (aka “apatheism”) is without question the laziest (or perhaps better, least invested in expending any energy toward the issue), and imo most lauditory, of the spectrum. If only I were able to be so disinterested…
I see that wikipedia’s entry on apatheism notes some comparison be given to “apathetic agnosticism” as well, though its description of the latter implies some effort was made to come to that position.
Agnosticism places epistemological limits that seem to be completely arbitrary.
"There is not enough evidence to decide…’
"We cannot know for certain…’
“etc”
They’re all the same.
You just invest in presumptions that prevent you from getting to a conclusion, and then you repeat that you can never get there.
so which is your conclusion, AF?
As I said in the OP, I don’t characterize myself as solely any single one. I think beliefs are meant to be used; they shouldn’t use you as the fanatics who cannot go 5 minutes without mentioning South Park can attest to.
Woops. I didn’t say that. This was taken from a Facebook post. I will copy the rest:
I think that it’s possible to use religion to a certain point. I find that certainly ideas are compelling, though, and ought have influence. Particularly, if an event can reasonably be understood as being fated to occur, then it ought to be done. People might simply be an exceptionally complex cluster of deterministic logic which automatically resolves itself. Because of evolution, it is natural for people to want to take care of themselves, as they would not have been very fit to survive for long otherwise. However, it is better to work on the situation that we are faced with. At this point, we are at the stage of working to figure out exactly what stuff is made out of scientifically, but afterwards we might have a fairly clear purpose.
As for theism, atheism, and agnosticism, i think it’s like if somebody wants to refer to their toaster as Mr. Toaster, the toaster, or whatever that thing is, respectively.
a) just because you can’t conceive of it doesn’t mean it’s conceivable.
b) it’s actually pretty easily conceivable. you can’t imagine anything happening in the world that would convince you there’s a god? nothing? your imagination is that out of tune that you can’t imagine any way in which you would be convinced? i’m sure you can, man, go ahead and try. give it a shot brother. i believe in you.
well, it would need to do more than simply convince me subjectively, it would have to be proven true in general, so that we can fairly say we know that god exists.
i must admit i have a hard time imagining what such a proof might consist of - burning bushes? parted seas? big-ass hand reaching down from the clouds to smite mine enemies?
what kind of thing do you have in mind?
why?
what do you think “proven true in general” means? seems to me like it would mean “convince most people subjectively.” maybe even less than most.
yeah, truth is intersubjective, so one would reasonably expect that a proof of god’s existence would convince most people subjectively - some kind of duplicable expirement, perhaps - something the kids could learn in school . . .
so when you say “it’s impossible to know,” what you’re saying is not that it’s impossible for individuals to know, you’re saying it’s impossible to be proven to most people.
but once again, you can’t think of anything that could possibly happen to convince most people that there’s a god? never mind the fact that most people already ARE convinced, we can ignore that for the moment. use your imagination. there’s nothing?