Yes, we are making this more complicated.

I made it quite clear in the first post when I was talking about the difference between non-belief and disbelief. I think you're thinking that I'm saying that agnostics disbelieve the existance of God, but I'm not, I never have, that's what atheism is all about.

Your 'doing belief' and 'knowing belief' thing seems to be totally synonomous with my 'disbelief' and 'non-belief' thing.

Fine, I was just clearing it up then. I don't think you phrased it very well in the first place.

This is the way I'd put it.

You ask a theist, an atheist and an agnostic this question;

'Does God exist?'

The theist says "Yes, god exists, and I know it."

The atheist says "No, god doesn't exist, and I know it."

The agnostic says "I don't know"


Yes, there is such a thing as theist-agnostics, who tend to lean toward the belief that there is a god, but aren't entirely certain. However, these people are very rare. The vast majority of agnostics are basicly like atheists and believe it's extremely unlikely there is a god, but adhere to the philosophy of 'everything is possible', and that truth is only truth until disproven.

Agnostics certainly aren't people who just "haven't decided yet", or people who aren't very opinionated.

I'm agnostic, and there's no way in hell anyone could ever manage to convert me to a religion.

So, how does one determine the probability that god exists?

Believing it's "extremely unlikely" that god exists isn't much different from believing god doesn't exist. A true agnostic wouldn't claim to know the probability.

Actually, I wasn't saying that Agnostics disbelieve God at all. Here's my two arguments:

1) An Agnostic does not believe in God, but does not not believe in God. This is a logical condradiction, so therefore an Agnostic cannot not believe in God. They simply don't fall into one category or another.

2) Even if you accept that an Agnostic does not believe in God, then that is only through what they are doing. They do not have active belief in God, but in their mind they may or may not believe in God. So on on hand they don't, on the other hand they are neither believers nor non-believers.

Of course, Agnostics are on a very broad spectrum, and trying to define them to a tee isn't very accurate.

'Believing in God' is one catagory - theists. In order to believe in God, you must be in this catagory.

Anyone who is not in this catagory does not believe in God.

Imagine you put everyone with blonde hair into one group, 'The Blonde crew'. You know that everyone that is in this group will have blonde hair. That is their 'uniting factor' so to speak.
Anyone that is not in this group will not have blonde hair. You don't know anything really about what hair colour they actually have, except that it isn't blonde. These lot aren't really a 'group' as such, they are simply what's 'left over' from the other group. There's no real 'uniting factor' in having non-blonde hair.

Imagine there was someone who had had blondey-brown hair. They don't fully belong in the Blonde group or the non Blonde group.

However, this analogy doesn't really work because it doesn't correspond to the subject you're making an analogy for; blonde hair is an exterior physical property, whilst thoughts about God are in the mind and are therefore much less "set" than hair colour. That is why I think you can, with the mind, fall into neither believing or not believing (not the same as disbelieving) in God.

See my two arguments in my previous post.

Knowing something isn't the same as doing it.

Which is why we have two forms of belief. As in two *sepperate* forms. I never said knowing was the same as doing it.