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SteveG

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Posted: October 20 2015 at 12:16

Agnostic means to be without knowledge. Gnostic means knowledge. Agnostic means sans knowledge, if I remember my Greek correctly, so what knowledge does an atheist present that there is no God?

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Posted: October 20 2015 at 12:39

SteveG wrote:

so what knowledge does an atheist present that there is no God?

The Babel Fish

CosmicVibration View Drop Down

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Posted: October 20 2015 at 13:20

The written or spoken word is a poor communicator, but it’s what we have so it has to do. Words are only sign posts that point to an idea. My definition or idea of faith is probably different from most.

What is the difference between belief and faith? When does belief stop and faith take over? Where does one draw this line?

The Bible for the most part is incomprehensible. To penetrate the hidden meanings of all the metaphors, parables and symbolisms one must be somewhat enlightened. If your enlightened then you don’t need books such as the Bible, one can perceive wisdom straight from to the source. How’s that for a catch 22?

Nevertheless, I perceive this passage from the Bible on faith as being literal:

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.”

If this is the case then faith is of the Soul and belief is of the ego. Everyone has wisdom and faith, wisdom being another attribute of the Soul. It may be relatively dormant, but it’s there.

In this context, faith is never bad, quite the opposite. It’s moral, virtuous and wholesome.

In contrast, a close minded belief can have dire consequences.

SteveG

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Posted: October 20 2015 at 13:26

^You sound more like a spiritualist in that you find meaning between the words or see them as pointing to something beyond the mere words. Fantastic!

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lazland

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Posted: October 21 2015 at 07:07

Sean Trane wrote:

lazland wrote:

I have been very careful not to insult anybody, barring the overall movement of militant atheism, which is a somewhat different proposition, so, you are right. No insult intended at all.

Steve, everyone here knows full well that you do not insult anyone

. And the least I can counter with is that I wouldn't want you to feel insulted by my comments. Even by my disputable/clumsy comment that we feel superior to believers, precisely because we don't "believe".

When I say that you (believers in general, not you specifically) have a hard time grasping that atheist don't have any beliefs in the creator's existence, it's because you view atheists as your opponents, and therefore our knowledge (conviction if you choose) is also a belief. That's simply and plainly wrong.

We don't "believe", period. And even then, I can't speak for most atheists, since we're not a congregation that gathers around to share our convictions and agree on a common line ... This is what religions do (and those dorks who claim to be atheists, but start building a 10 commandments charts, like in Frisco, California)... and real atheists refuse to do (actually, we/they don't refuse, we have no interest in doing that).

Atheists don't feel the need to discuss their knowledge/convictions... and we come naturally together on the same side when there is such a public debate... But there is never any consulting in between ourselves to adopt a clear strategy or defence line. In some ways, it's a weakness in a debate, since most of our opponents have agreed on a dogma and a doctrine. Atheist don't even feel like a community at all. I don't have anymore sympathy for Dean because he's (more or less

) on my side of this argument... Neither do I have more sympathy for my neighbour since I accidently (or not) discovered that he also is an atheist.

What I meant, about freedom, is that 90% or religious people have to obey a rule book (bible or testaments or torah, etc??? ) or a doctrine... and that you believers are bound to the limits/rules drawn by these "scriptures" or else you're a bad guy, and could face shame or being snubbed by your community, because you're a sinner. You believers are also subjected to that Judeo-Christian complex of guilt and shame, something that oddly enough, the Muslims are much less prone to, despite their scriptures being derived from the bible.

I wouldn't say that atheists don't feel shame, guilt or culpability at all, because we're still very much in Christian-dominated world (and most of our grand parents were active practicing religion, so we have some remains/residues), but we don't (or try not to) have the same angle on those philosophical points.

@HFan: I'd also like to add that if I share an uneasiness with some words chosen (but not belief or faith), it's more to describe my stance... I don't feel the word knowledge or conviction (the words I use, I've not read anyone else in this thread using them) are not really appropriate to describe my stance (even that word is not good for what I mean).

Thanks Hugues

I am actually on holiday, with not a very good internet connection, so thanks for your comments, but I will not respond to them as yet.

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Dean

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Posted: October 21 2015 at 21:43

SteveG wrote:

Agnostic means to be without knowledge. Gnostic means knowledge. Agnostic means sans knowledge, if I remember my Greek correctly, so what knowledge does an atheist present that there is no God?

By the same argument you could ask what knowledge does a theist present that there are gods or a monotheist present that there is a god, but you wouldn't do that for several reasons.

Firstly, the words atheist, theist and monotheist do not infer "with knowledge". If we must get all greek on our arses then atheism means "without gods" and originally meant the rejection of gods, this meant that an ancient Greek, while not denying that the gods existed, would not partake in the practice of worshipping them.

Secondly, and this goes back to the somewhat failed earlier argument of what belief actually means, a theist/monotheist believes that gods/god exist whereas an atheist denies that whole premise ... as I said here, he does not deny the existence, he denies the belief.

Try this:

I can make a statement that no one (except me) can prove or disprove, such as "There is a banana on my desk" and you can either believe that or you can doubt it - the choice is yours, but you cannot disbelieve it. This is because the question is not about the existence of the banana on my desk, but whether I have made a truthful statement. It is an equation with two unknowns - 1: the existence of the banana and 2: the truth of the statement, but since there is no proof of the banana we can only question the truthfulness of the statement itself.

a) If you have faith that I have made a truthful statement then you will believe that there is a banana on my desk. You can state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" but you cannot state "I know there is a banana on Dean's desk"

b) If you doubt I have made a truthful statement then you can say there may be a banana on my desk but unless there is proof you aren't going to state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" nor can you say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"

There is no "atheist" position on the existence of the banana because even a consummate liar can sometimes tell the truth so no one can say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk", nor can they say "I believe there is no banana on Dean's desk"

... that is the point most agnostics make when they rally against atheists. But as Todd and I have said, it's not like that.

Now supposing the only source we have of the statement is from the believers in (a) above. Now the statement becomes: "We believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". So now not only can you believe or doubt that there is a banana on Dean's desk, but you also have the option of doubting that the believers (a) are correct and therefore you can make the statement "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". However, this still does not refute the existence of the banana. So now we have:

c) because you believe that the believers (a) believe there is a banana on my desk you can also say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"

d) if you doubt the existence of the banana you can say there may be a banana on my desk but unless there is proof you aren't going to state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" nor can you say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" ... i.e the "agnostic" position is unchanged but now it is the existence of the banana that is in doubt, not whether I was making a truthful statement (since there is no evidence I ever made the claim in the first place).

e) if you doubt the existence of the banana [from (d)] AND doubt the belief that there is one [from (c)] then you can say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". So now we have an "atheist" position without having to prove that there isn't a banana on my desk.

At this stage we now have an "atheist" position but he is not refuting the existence of the banana, but only the believers (c) belief that there is one on my table.

Now repeat using (c) as the source of the statement:

f) because you believe that the believers (c) believed that the believers (a) believed there is a banana you can also say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"
g) if you believe most of what (c) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk but on my table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's table"

d) the "agnostic" position is unchanged since he still needs proof of the banana to believe anything.

h) the "atheist" position now has an extra level of doubt introduced by believers (f) and believers (g) since their beliefs were not based upon the original source of the statement "There is a banana on my desk", but on believers (c) statement "We believe there is a banana on Dean's desk/table", so you can continue to say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk or table" without having to refute the existence of the banana.

However, now the "atheist" position has become stronger because the existence of the banana is becoming more tenuous, though still not refutable.

A few generations later we could arrive at another set of positions:

f) believers (f) are unchanged.
g) believers (g) are unchanged.
i) if you believe most of what (f) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk but on Dan's desk, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dan's desk"
j) if you believe most of what (g) believes but believe the banana is not on my table but on Don's table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Don's table"
k) if you believe some of what (g) and (i) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk or table but on Dan's table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dan's table"
... then at some time in the future those denominations of believers split even further (to the extent that some even doubt the banana and claim it was an pomegranate instead - needless to say no one else believes the pomegranate exists).

d) the "agnostic" position is unchanged since he still needs proof of the banana (or the pomegranate) to believe anything. .

l) the "atheist" position now has an extra level of doubt introduced by believers (i), (j) and (k) since their beliefs were again not based upon the original source of the statement "There is a banana on my desk" either, nor were they based upon the first indirect statement "I believe the banana is on Dean's desk", so you can now say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean/Dan/Don's desk/table or any combination thereof". (He doesn't need any convincing that the entire pomegranate idea was anything other than a complete fabrication so he ignores it).

Now the "atheist" is in a position to say, "Do you know what guys? Maybe there never was a banana."

At this juncture we still have someways to go before an "atheist" can say "There is no banana" but to arrive at that position we have to examine whether the initial statement of belief was truthful, allegorical or a fabrication and to do that requires investigation of external factors related to the statements and the motivation for making them. Since categoric proof of the existence of the banana (or the desk, table or either Dean, Dan and Don) can never be produced then we enter into the realm of probabilities that any of them ever existed. If each probability is low then we can say there is reasonable doubt in the existence of the banana, and as each tends to zero we can then state the existence of the banana is beyond reasonable doubt. However, this example is too simplistic to go to that extreme.

/edit -a few stupid typo's corrected because I posted this at silly o'clock in the morning and made a couple of mistakes in the text.

Edited by Dean - October 22 2015 at 03:06

What?

Triceratopsoil View Drop Down

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Posted: October 21 2015 at 22:26

q: how do you know somebody is an atheist?

a: they will write essay length 888 posts about it

well close enough to the saying

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Posted: October 21 2015 at 22:31

^ Bananas and desks exist and, it is believed, even Deans have appeared from time to time throughout human civilization. If Dean claims to have a banana on his desk, a person with means could actually track Dean down and locate said banana rotting away on his desk. And if said banana rotted away completely and disappeared from Dean's desk, one could still attempt to find cellular remains of the defunct banana using scientific methods.

God is not like bananas, desks or even Deans. There is no proof that a god or gods, demons, angels, leprechauns or hobgoblins ever existed. It is a pleasant enough fantasy or crutch, and I bear no one any animosity for their chosen beliefs, until the delusion impinges on the freedoms of people who choose not to believe in whichever floating fantasy one blindly follows, and violence ensues. The violent delusion can be one of faith as in Christians or Muslims, or a secular delusion such as communism or fascism. Zealots kill, whatever denomination they have been suckered into.

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Posted: October 21 2015 at 22:36

Sean Trane wrote:

when it comes to religion, of course it is.... since faith implies believing without (or very little) discussions. That's why it's called blind faith.. if you (the people in general) opened your eyes, you'd "know" that there is no god/creator and that the obligation to adore it is a control ploy for the masses.

Of course for other purposes or matters, the word faith is used in debates (legal or not) about innocence (good faith) or trying to escape responsibility (bad faith)

I think - and I agree (up to a point) with Steve - that this over simplifies the issue. My grandfather was a science prof (long retired now) and devised some integrated circuits (I THINK, what it exactly was eludes this accountant!) back in the 70s but didn't have the means to get it patented in our country with its weak IPR laws. He doesn't miss his daily mantras to God one single day and he's now nearing 85. He's seen enough people/events over a period of time to both reinforce and destroy faith: Gandhi, Hitler, the assassination of JFK, Emergency, etc. But he doesn't impose his beliefs on anyone, doesn't expect us to be orthodox. For that matter, isn't particularly orthodox himself. How does he reconcile all this is something he would probably know. It doesn't really matter. A person's intent and character ultimately matters a lot more than whether he's a believer or a 'rationalist'. A sincere person, even being a believer, would instinctively know that killing another in the name of religion is simply wrong and unjustifiable under any circumstance. A greedy rationalist wouldn't think twice about putting the knife in if it helps him achieve his desired ends. Religion has lost its moral compass over a period of time (perhaps one may ask if it ever had one, but that's a separate discussion) but broadly speaking, that holds good for the human race per se too. An ever increasing set of desires to fulfill creates unhealthy competition between people for resources and they lose the ability/willingness to share a little bit of their pie with those whose need is greater than their own. But holding faith in the spiritual dimension of life does not by itself hinder one's ability to remain rational and logical when it comes to every day matters, though rationalists are far too easily persuaded of this notion. People who know my grandfather well would attest that he is almost robotically logical; he has to be told sometimes that everybody cannot be so logical and to make a little room for 'sentiment'.

Dean

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 02:32

Triceratopsoil wrote:

q: how do you know somebody is an atheist?

a: they will write essay length 888 posts about it

well close enough to the saying

What?

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 02:46

@Dean: I don't want to quote you're post because a whole bunch of formatting shows up, but you stuck it, man. That's the best post ever.

The Dark Elf wrote:

^ Bananas and desks exist and, it is believed, even Deans have appeared from time to time throughout human civilization. If Dean claims to have a banana on his desk, a person with means could actually track Dean down and locate said banana rotting away on his desk. And if said banana rotted away completely and disappeared from Dean's desk, one could still attempt to find cellular remains of the defunct banana using scientific methods.

Only one precise banana is relevant, if it exists. All the rest of the bananas are not relevant. If you're an agnostic and doubting the prop seems unlikely, keep in mind it's only a prop (we hope it's not allegorical) still works with leprechauns too, but Dean's point wasn't to make the case for agnosticism, but to stake out a space for atheism apart from agnosticism.

I would only add that I don't know what the hang up is with agnostics in declaring that inability to produce evidence for something makes it unknowable. In actuality it is acceptable in science to present lack of evidence for something as evidence that that something does not exist. For some reason agnostics are hanging their philosophical hats on the issue of absolute certainty. Yes, something one claims no evidence for could potentially show up at some point. Such things can be surprising when they do since it may have been regarded as highly unlikely, but it's only a methodological problem if that which one assigns veracity to enters into a belief system. Otherwise you just say oops and revise your conclusions.

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 03:32

HackettFan wrote:

@Dean: I don't want to quote you're post because a whole bunch of formatting shows up, but you stuck it, man. That's the best post ever.

.

It's probably going to take as long to read it (I mean understand it fully) as it took for Dean to write

sooo during the w-e

Icarium

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 04:05

is this an epistemic question or ontological

being faithfull or the existence of belief does that qualify as justified belief, is the informasjon in what you hell your faith in based in justified belief, is your knowledge of the thing you hold faith in based on justified evidence? Peter Klein would argue aginst faith as evidence of truth as truth itself can never fullt be satisfied. It faces å problem called regress, faith will støp loose its footingg in the pressence of new proposed reasons for it to not be hele as sound evidence. faith will and can always be questioned and falsified which means the truth will face neverending regress of reasons of its truthvalue.

Infinitism - regress problem - pyrhonian sceptisisme

Edited by Icarium - October 22 2015 at 04:20

Dean

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 11:46

CosmicVibration wrote:

Nevertheless, I perceive this passage from the Bible on faith as being literal:

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.”

Okay, my curiosity is piqued... If that quotation is to be taken literally then literally what does it mean (to you)?

What?

Padraic

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 11:49

The thread title is still killing me.

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 12:07

Dean wrote:

CosmicVibration wrote:

Nevertheless, I perceive this passage from the Bible on faith as being literal:

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.”

Okay, my curiosity is piqued... If that quotation is to be taken literally then literally what does it mean (to you)?

Literally, you can make a mountain move thinking about a mustard seed. It happens all the time. Tongue

SteveG

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 13:51

Dean wrote:

By the same argument you could ask what knowledge does a theist present that there are gods or a monotheist present that there is a god, but you wouldn't do that for several reasons.

Try this:

I can make a statement that no one (except me) can prove or disprove, such as "There is a banana on my desk" and you can either believe that or you can doubt it - the choice is yours, but you cannot disbelieve it. This is because the question is not about the existence of the banana on my desk, but whether I have made a truthful statement. It is an equation with two unknowns - 1: the existence of the banana and 2: the truth of the statement, but since there is no proof of the banana we can only question the truthfulness of the statement itself.

a) If you have faith that I have made a truthful statement then you will believe that there is a banana on my desk. You can state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" but you cannot state "I know there is a banana on Dean's desk"

b) If you doubt I have made a truthful statement then you can say there may be a banana on my desk but unless there is proof you aren't going to state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" nor can you say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"

There is no "atheist" position on the existence of the banana because even a consummate liar can sometimes tell the truth so no one can say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk", nor can they say "I believe there is no banana on Dean's desk"

... that is the point most agnostics make when they rally against atheists. But as Todd and I have said, it's not like that.

Now supposing the only source we have of the statement is from the believers in (a) above. Now the statement becomes: "We believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". So now not only can you believe or doubt that there is a banana on Dean's desk, but you also have the option of doubting that the believers (a) are correct and therefore you can make the statement "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". However, this still does not refute the existence of the banana. So now we have:

c) because you believe that the believers (a) believe there is a banana on my desk you can also say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"

d) if you doubt the existence of the banana you can say there may be a banana on my desk but unless there is proof you aren't going to state "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" nor can you say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk" ... i.e the "agnostic" position is unchanged but now it is the existence of the banana that is in doubt, not whether I was making a truthful statement (since there is no evidence I ever made the claim in the first place).

e) if you doubt the existence of the banana [from (d)] AND doubt the belief that there is one [from (c)] then you can say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk". So now we have an "atheist" position without having to prove that there isn't a banana on my desk.

At this stage we now have an "atheist" position but he is not refuting the existence of the banana, but only the believers (c) belief that there is one on my table.

Now repeat using (c) as the source of the statement:

f) because you believe that the believers (c) believed that the believers (a) believed there is a banana you can also say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's desk"
g) if you believe most of what (c) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk but on my table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dean's table"

d) the "agnostic" position is unchanged since he still needs proof of the banana to believe anything.

h) the "atheist" position now has an extra level of doubt introduced by believers (f) and believers (g) since their beliefs were not based upon the original source of the statement "There is a banana on my desk", but on believers (c) statement "We believe there is a banana on Dean's desk/table", so you can continue to say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean's desk or table" without having to refute the existence of the banana.

However, now the "atheist" position has become stronger because the existence of the banana is becoming more tenuous, though still not refutable.

A few generations later we could arrive at another set of positions:

f) believers (f) are unchanged.
g) believers (g) are unchanged.
i) if you believe most of what (f) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk but on Dan's desk, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dan's desk"
j) if you believe most of what (g) believes but believe the banana is not on my table but on Don's table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Don's table"
k) if you believe some of what (g) and (i) believes but believe the banana is not on my desk or table but on Dan's table, you say "I believe there is a banana on Dan's table"
... then at some time in the future those denominations of believers split even further (to the extent that some even doubt the banana and claim it was an pomegranate instead - needless to say no one else believes the pomegranate exists).

d) the "agnostic" position is unchanged since he still needs proof of the banana (or the pomegranate) to believe anything. .

l) the "atheist" position now has an extra level of doubt introduced by believers (i), (j) and (k) since their beliefs were again not based upon the original source of the statement "There is a banana on my desk" either, nor were they based upon the first indirect statement "I believe the banana is on Dean's desk", so you can now say "I don't believe there is a banana on Dean/Dan/Don's desk/table or any combination thereof". (He doesn't need any convincing that the entire pomegranate idea was anything other than a complete fabrication so he ignores it).

Now the "atheist" is in a position to say, "Do you know what guys? Maybe there never was a banana."

/edit -a few stupid typo's corrected because I posted this at silly o'clock in the morning and made a couple of mistakes in the text.

Great explanation and exposition, Dean. My post was a knee jerk reaction to the militant tones of some atheist's posts, but this places the topic into well formulated sense.

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 14:01

Removed due to PA's deliberated act of deleting threads as alleged featuring negative behaviour posts towards others.

Edited by Otto9999 - October 31 2015 at 11:17

SteveG

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 14:10

Intellectuals and snobs are not mutually inclusive, even though it may not seem that way at times.

Edited by SteveG - October 22 2015 at 16:38

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Posted: October 22 2015 at 16:25

Dean wrote:

CosmicVibration wrote:

Nevertheless, I perceive this passage from the Bible on faith as being literal:

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.”

Okay, my curiosity is piqued... If that quotation is to be taken literally then literally what does it mean (to you)?

I should have probably elaborated a bit on the Soul in that post. The Soul is individualized Spirit. Spirit or God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The Soul, made in the perfect image of God also possesses those same attributes. Moving or creating a mountain for an omnipotent Soul is mere child’s play.

The more one tunes in to their true nature as an Omnipotent Being, the more so called miracles one can perform.

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move.” To me this means that just a tiny fraction of self-realization can move mountains.

Sort of analogous to extracting just a tiny fraction of energy from the vacuum can supply enough power for the entire planet.

I can expand much more on any of this when I get home from work…

Poll Question: Is faith allways bad?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
Yes	9	[27.27%]
No	24	[72.73%]
This topic is closed, no new votes accepted