Agnostics believe there is a God...

The only thing this thread needs now is...

You are not forced to acknowledge God's existence when entering a church. The people who told him to go to the church never once said he had to believe.

You wouldn't ask a Christian to stop believing for a few hours, but you might ask them to consider there is no God, or that he is something other than what they believe, or to otherwise open their minds to other possibilities.. There is nothing wrong with questioning or challenging your own beliefs. You might come out of it stronger, and with more knowledge about yourself and your faith (or lack thereof). It also wouldn't hurt to learn something about other faiths once in a while. Knowledge is not bad, but ignorance is.

GOD ISNT REAL LOL

This makes the thread worthwhile. Thanks.

I'm still surprised many people don't know the difference between Agnosticism and Atheism.

While people tend to consider them as different parts of a scale, the two don't negate eachother. A gnostic a/theist is making the claim that we can know the existence of God, which in either case is an impossible claim to make because we can't test or reason in either direction. All thinking men are agnostic. This does not make the a/theist any less credible in their belief and the support for their beliefs, it simply means that neither claims absolute knowledge on the subject. (This is where I'd normally show how an agnostic thinking person could propose anything unknowable and claim atheism to it is simply an opposing belief, but that's why we've got reason and doubt.)

Gnosticism is the root of spiritual war, not religion itself.

BAH, HUMBUG.
Wait, Tell a parent or a pasture is you see one? And what are they going to do?

The problem with agnosticism is that it is an utterly useless and stupid position to hold.

Of course there is not enough evidence to make some definite position with absolute certainty. Of course there might possibly exist some extraordinary and hitherto unthinkable evidence just round the corner that will challenge your position.
These postulates are obvious, and can be applied to everything, not just theology.

You have to base a position upon the evidence you already have, not the imaginary evidence that might exist and might be discovered in the future. Fretting about all the possible evidence that might exist will get you nowere. Evaluating the evidence you already have is difficult enough.

Exactly, I'm an atheist because given all the available evidence, there is no reason for me to believe god(s) exist. Especially the gods of the major religions which seem to have contradicting properties or attributes which contradict what we do know about the universe.

Try having a impartial personality and believing all religions point to the same thing. Kinda hard to keep your own beliefs in line then.

That's what I was touching on with my aside. The point I was trying to make is that some people on both sides are certain they're right. Gnostic theists are almost impossible to refute, because they believe a spiritual connection with their god proves his existence. Gnostics have no room for ideas or opinions other than there own, and are dangerous to our society as a whole.

They didn't refuse him anything!

Jesus Christ...

should be a emote

..Where exactly did I claim that they "refused him something"?

They're not disrespecting him in any way.

Refusing to go to his place of worship would be, as an example.

god is for faggets

Calling a person's beliefs stupid. Nice. Let's see if anyone defends Agnosticism the way other beliefs have been defended here.

How so? He said he didn't want to go to a religious activity because he was an atheist and they didn't respect his lack of religious beliefs and made him go anyway. That shows a lack of respect for his beliefs as they are "overruled" by their desire to have him go.

The reason it is stupid is because it isn't a belief. It is a set of trivially obvious statements that when applied to any given situation deduce nothing, predict nothing, and assert nothing.

Of course it isn't 'nice' to call someone's beliefs stupid. I'm not trying to be 'nice'. I'm trying to be kind. Allowing someone to blindly believe something preposterous is terribly cruel. Challenging that is not going to be 'nice', but it is going to be kind.
If you saw someone crossing the road while a car was coming towards them, you would stop them. They held the belief that crossing the road was safe. You held a belief that it wasn't. You aren't going to blindly 'respect their beliefs' purely because they have beliefs. You have compelling evidence (your observation of the car) that your belief is 'correct', and theirs is not, and you are going to present this evidence and your arguments (there's a ****ing car there, you could be ****ing killed you ****ing moron!) to that person. They may rebuke (it's a ****ing milk float, you ****!) and present counter-evidence. You may retort (it's a ****ing jet-powered milk float, that **** will kill you dead!), and so a relationship is born!

This applies to all situtations, not just cars and roads; personal relationships to business meetings.
There's this perception that 'beliefs' and 'opinions' are something sacred and personal and you must begin every sentence with 'I respect your opinion...' to show that you respect an opinion purely for its existence. This might be 'nice', but it is absurd and stupid and sometimes downright dangerous.

how do you figure that it's perposterous?

You believe in a being that knows all and sees all that will never be actually seen or make contact with, yet it's apparently idiotic for someone to believe that this being doesn't exist because of a lack of information / knowledge to prove said existence.

I understand having the knowledge of a God existing sort of defeats the purpose for one to have faith or belief in their God but some people need that information for them to completely accept it and believe it. I don't understand why wanting that information is such a terrible thing

I've never seen a teapot orbitting Uranus. We'll probably never be able to observe the space around Uranus in enough detail to know with absolute certainty that there is no teapot anywhere in the vicinity. There's nothing inherently impossible about the notion, and it would be extraordinarily important and significant to observe an alien teapot (or even better, a self-propelling tea-producing sentient being). However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (this is why the incredibly powerful and accurate particle accelerators like CERN are hesistant to make any claims about discoveries until the same thing has been discovered independently by a 'competitor', like maybe Fermilab).
In the absence of this extraordinary evidence, I can quite comfortably make the entirely unextraordinary statement:
There is no teapot orbitting Uranus.

I cannot 'prove' that there is no such teapot, I probably cannot in the forseeable future even be able to attempt such an expedition, and the agnostic would assert that I must qualify such a statement with:
I currently cannot observe a teapot orbitting Uranus, though such a teapot may still exist beyond our capabilities of observation or comprehension.

I reject such a qualification because it is obvious, and both statements assert exactly the same thing. Only the first statement can be decisively proven wrong (by the extraordinary observation of such a teapot), while the second statement by its very construction will never be proven wrong. Precisely this quality, untestability, is what makes it useless.

Replace 'teapot' with 'God' (and 'Uranus' with, erm, well 'everything') and you have one very good reason to be an atheist. The 'God hypothesis' is either currently unobserved or inherently unobservable. Either way, I am quite comfortable in the statement:
There is no God.

(and we haven't even begun with the logical problems of any entity being 'all-seeing' or 'all-knowing'. The moment you start attributing extraordinary qualities to explain why something hasn't been observed yet, you only make it even harder to observe. The luminiferous aether was supposed to be weightless, transparent, frictionless, negatively compressible, undetectable chemically or physically, and literally permeating all matter and space. There was a much simpler explanation: there is no luminiferous aether)

You're still agnostic, though. The definition is that you don't claim absolute knowledge, and that you don't believe that all knowing is possible. The pure agnostic might be an idiot, but being an agnostic a/theist isn't useless. It's modest.

Maybe someone can clear something up for me. Why discuss this, again? How many times has this topic been covered on this forum alone? Has anyone's opinion ever changed? I just don't understand, I've been plenty bored the past couple of days, but arguing with someone who absolutely refuses to budge just seems so frustrating and pointless.

He's agnostic and atheist. Lets not argue semantics, please. Even though I fall under the definition of "agnostic" I call myself an atheist because I do not believe in god(s). If I called myself agnostic, people (somewhat wrongly if you go by the strict definition) would think me a fence sitter.

I know lots of atheists and none, including myself, would by your definition be an atheist. I've never met an atheist who says "Even if I had evidence of a God, I wouldn't believe in it" because it's absurd, and by your definitions anything but that is agnostic.

Besides, It's not just lack of evidence that makes me not believe in god(s) it's all the contradictions that occur once you start giving god(s) powers and attributes such as saying they created everything.

But Mr. Mort-Hog, Christians believe that God is love! Do you believe there is no love? Poor sad, crotchety old Mr. Mort-Hog...

This thread has dragged on to Page 5... from here on, I refuse to acknowledge its existence! I think CM should bring back the Religious Discussion forum so the fanatics will all have a place to beat their dead horses where it won't bother the rest of us.

Now whenever I see a God debate I will think... jet-powered milk floats.

My opinion on the subject has been changed by just such discussions (though not limited just to ones here).

Quiet, Detty!

These actual discussions are taking away valueable forum space from what we really need; more 'post yer guns!' threads. Only when all the threads on the main page begin with 'post your...' will we reach true collective enlightenment.

In a forum composed of proven stalwarts unwilling to budge from established positions and venerable enough so that everybody knows the stances of the "notable" members, discussions of deep issues have little use anymore. Instead we talk about pithy/fashionable topics, current events, and ask technical or girl advice. The forum's definitely become much more exhibitionist than anything else. Then again, maybe it's always been like that.

I definitely agree with the sentiment that all religions are essentially the same thing. Certain people of faith would be a whole lot more bearable if they realized that what they believe in is no better or worse than anyone else's religion (or lack thereof).

Pumping this dry well sure is fun!

That's why you're still here?

Stop jumping on bandwagons.

Doesn't really mix so well with believing in them though. Believing in a monotheistic religion means everyone else is wrong. |: