Dude, we're talking about believe in a singular, Judeo-Christian god, not trying to use absolutely proper terms that hold true in every possible situation ever. That diagram is perfectly valid within this discussion.

I think you often take these discussions way too far and ignore what is obviously colloquial phrasing. You end up confusing everyone else.

No

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

The only thing that diagram does is introduce the word 'gnostic' into the discussion, which does absolutely nothing to clarify any situation whatsoever.

"Gnosticism" also is not present in that chart. gnostic can refer to a practitioner of gnosticism, however it can also simply mean "knowledge" especially knowledge of spiritual matters (this knowledge can be "divinely" granted but does not have to be.). a gnostic atheist would literally be someone who "knows" that god does NOT exist. inversely an agnostic atheist would literally mean you dont believe in god but also dont think it can be proven either way.



however i still agree with this.

So it's a question of whether the law of the excluded middle applies or not. Take the proposition P: "I believe in God." Either P, or not-P. Can it be anything else?


"What's your religion?"
"I'm agnostic."
"Uh..."
"..."
"So do you believe in God?"
"No, I'm agnostic."
"So you don't believe in God?"
"No, I'm agnostic."

I suppose the truth value of P can be unknown?

God either exists, or he doesn't. We can all agree there is no middle ground on existence (of anything, not just God). We assume there exists an objective reality, and we assume we can infer something about this objective reality using our knowledge (yeah, **** you Descartes).

You can know God exists, you can not know God exists, or you can know God does not exist. This last possibility is one I find contentious, and is what was raised by Darth_Alran that is particularly interesting. I'll come back to this in a second, it leads me on to something unrelated that I've been pondering.

With all three possible 'knowledges' (call it 'gnoses' or whatever, I only use the term 'Gnostic' in the limited sense of the 3rd century religious movements), there are still only two possible states of existence. You use your knowledge to infer the state of existence (again, this applies to everything, not just God). This knowledge (regardless of whether its origin is spiritual, material, mathematical, logical, it doesn't matter) can only lead you to one of two conclusions: there either exists a God, or there doesn't.

These 'conclusions' are your beliefs about the objective reality, based upon your knowledge of it. Because the objective reality can only take one of two values (and each value is mutually exclusive, God cannot both exist and not exist simultaneously), your beliefs about this objective reality can also only take one of two (mutually exclusive) values. You either believe God exists, or you don't.

If you know God exists, you will necessarily believe God exists.
If you know God does not exist (somehow), you will necessarily believe God does not exist.
If you do not know God exists (and, equivalently, you do not know he doesn't), this does not necessarily lead to either but it must lead to one or the other, as each corresponds to a particular objective reality. God cannot exist and not exist, so your belief about an objective reality must logically correspond to one of those.

It is this last catagory that pretty much everyone will find themselves in, none of us know that God exists nor does anyone know that God does not exist. However, we do know that God must either exist, or not exist. The limited knowledge we have must, logically, lead us to one of those possibilities (because no other possibility exists). Our knowledge will certainly will change over time (or at least it should), and may well lead us to a different conclusion, but there are still only two possibilities. So no, there is no middle ground.

With regards to the possibility of knowing that God does not exist, I find this particularly interesting as it requires that some other non-Godlike supernatural entity has given you this necessarily perfect knowledge about the non-existence of God. An atheist is simply someone that believes there is no God, but what if you believe there is no God but you do believe in something other supernatural? If you believed in ghosts and these ghosts told you there is no God? Would you still be an atheist? Or your thetans came to you and told you there is no Xenu? Would you still be a Scientologist?

Fortunately I personally don't find myself in this conundrum, as I reject all the supernatural, but it does leave me with a semantic quandry as to what I'm supposed to call myself. Atheist certainly implies that you reject the supernatural but it doesn't seem to require it. Hmm.

Batman is god. God is Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is Christian Bale.

Oh shi

And the LORD spake unto Jep "'I'm going to ****ing kick your ****ing *** if you don't shut up for a second! All right? Do you want me to ****ing go trash your lights? You do it one more ****ing time and I ain't walking on this set if you're still hired. I'm ****ing serious. You're a nice guy. You're a nice guy, but that don't ****ing cut it when you're ****ing around like this on set. You and me are done, professionally"

FINE :saddowns:

Mort-Hog, that is an excellent summary. I don't know how many times I've had to explain to people that I BELIEVE that God does not exist, because like you I reject supernatural explanations. Around here people seem to be stuck on the concept of "knowing" and all "know" god exists. They therefore assume I'm saying I "know" god does not exist somehow.

This "agnostic atheists" and "gnostic theists" stuff is pretty gross sophistry.

The literal definition of agnosticism is to be undecided or noncommittal. If belief is a Boolean condition, and a person's choice will certainly change if the existence of God can be conclusively determined, you are disproving adherence to the inverse of agnosticism. So we can cut Emon's chart right in half at least.

Let's take your preconditions for agnosticism then. Given what was demonstrated above, and if belief is a Boolean condition, you can either be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. Once again, however, the literal definition of agnosticism is to be undecided or noncommittal. A claim to be atheist or theist is making a positive statement about your opinion on this subject, and having such an opinion is incompatible with the notion of agnosticism. What you are describing is not a precondition at all, it's a predisposition - a bias.

You can have a bias about something and still be undecided: for a great example, see swing voters in major Democratic and Republican states.

So, given these assertions, we're left with one of these two tightly coiled mounds of wisdom:

• All people are agnostic. Congrats, we've disproven the existence of religion. This is why semantics debates are retarded.
• Or, if we look at your actual point instead of your logic, we're left with the conclusion that agnosticism doesn't actually exist. Given that many people around the world identify with Agnosticism instead of raw atheism, regardless of any hair-splitting on this forum, I would propose that the philosophical system does indeed exist.

I concede to the fact that Mort-Hog and Jon`C know way more about this than I do. :saddowns:

It isn't a case that agnosticism doesn't exist, only that agnosticism isn't a belief system. Agnosticism tackles the question of knowledge, not belief.

The dialogue
"Do you believe in God?"
"I'm agnostic"
simply doesn't make any sense. It doesn't answer the question. It's certainly a dialogue that a lot of people will repeat, but that doesn't mean it makes sense.

The dialogue
"Do you know God exists?"
"I'm agnostic."
on the other hand, does make sense and is invariably what people mean when they 'identify' with agnosticism. It still doesn't answer the question "Do you believe God exists", though. That question requires a whole lot more thought.

I've not 'disproven' religion, as the religious belief is not based upon direct knowledge of God's existence but rather faith in God's existence (as no-one knows God exists other than his prophets) and pretty much all religions go out their way to assure you that belief without knowledge is a 'good thing'. You could be a religious fundamentalist and still be agnostic.

How is that what people mean when they identify with agnosticism? Like you just said, nobody knows that God exists - therefore, by your own assertion, everybody is agnostic.

Here's what I, personally, think people mean:

"Do you believe in God?"
"I haven't decided."

I feel this reflects the spirit of the term as it is used by adherents.

Like I demonstrated, your arguments can be used to prove that there is no positive decision being made with regards to religious affiliation. Semantics debates are pointless and any argument based on semantics is doomed to infinite recursion.

There is a god, and he's American.

(I had to post that, carry on. :ninja:,,,)

"God exists..."

You're still missing the fundemental difference between knowledge and belief. God either exists, or he doesn't. You either believe he exists, or you don't. If you "haven't decided", then you clearly don't (until further knowledge is gained). There is no 'middle ground' in existence and so there is no 'middle ground' in belief in existence. This isn't a semantic issue, it is a logical issue.

...am I missing something here?

I sort of disagree with this. Existence is boolean, but knowledge of the truth of a certain matter is not. So, despite the fact that God (or anything) must either exist or not exist, a person's belief with regards to the question "Does God exist?" can manifest as neither "I believe that God exists" nor "I believe that God does not exist" -- it can simply be be (as Joncy noted) "I do not know if God exists (and therefore neither believe that God exists nor that He does not exist)," or (as another example) "I believe that God *could* exist," or even (irrationally) "I believe that God both does and does not exist"). People can believe anything they want -- it doesn't necessarily have to be correct, feasible, or even consistent with rationality or reality.

Sorry for the double post -- I don't quite agree with this either (for a slightly different reason than in my previous post).

Again, belief in something is not boolean. The fact that you do not think a is true does not mean you think a is false. It means that while you would not act on the assumption that a is true, you would just the same not act on the assumption that a is false. The "default" course of belief-->action is not necessarily that of false. An absence of a belief is a real and logical thing.

For example:

Alabama was blown up by a massive explosion. Nixon is advised that it may have been aliens from outer space. He has two options for action: declare that it was aliens and pass an act to detain and question possible aliens (appropriate if he believes it was aliens), or declare that it wasn't aliens (appropriate if he believes it wasn't aliens). If he doesn't know for sure, however, he neither believes conclusively that it was aliens nor that it wasn't. In this case, he would not want to act based on the assumption that it was aliens (because he doesn't want to breach civil liberties without due cause), but neither would he want to declare to the nation that it wasn't aliens, either (because what if he were wrong? The US could be attacked again, lives would be lost, and he would be run out of office for such a huge mistake). So, rationally, he would take a course of action that is neither appropriate for a positive or negative belief that it was aliens, but rather one that is appropriate for uncertainty (that is, continue to investigate the matter until he can come to a conclusive belief).

yep lololol , im still laughing

I believe that p(God exists)=1
I believe that p(God exists)=.5
I believe that p(God exists)=0

Maybe you hate to death the notion of subjective probability, but it's certainly a way that many people experience the world.

Take another example. My best friend tells me that he didn't steal my car. Now, the proposition Q: "Friend stole car" is either true or false. But the proposition R: "I believe friend is telling the truth" is clearly not.

Belief is your perception of reality. If reality is boolean, then so is your perception of reality. There is nothing 'between' reality and your perception of reality that changes the very nature of reality.

Belief and reality are two entirely different things and should not be compared in that way.

Belief in a particular reality must correspond to some knowledge of that reality. The knowledge may be incomplete (and necessarily always will be, no matter how closely you inspect the house and fail to observe a broom there may always be some tiny broom hiding in some tiny space that you cannot observe and if you reserve yourself to be uncertain regarding the existence of broom you will remain uncertain for an infinite period of time even though the uncertainty becomes infinitesimally small), or just fault, but there is always a tangible link between belief in a reality and the reality itself. There is however a particular dissonance between morality and reality, what you wish to be true and what actually is, and there is no link between the two as shown by Hume's is-ought problem.

So I can believe there is no broom, but the broom is really still there.

Yes.

The literal meaning of gnosis is knowledge. This means that everyone must be agnostic, since no one knows.

So you proved my point in a long and convoluted way

No, the nature of belief is the same as the nature of reality. To determine whether that belief is true, you must consider the knowledge (or 'gnosis' if you're that way inclined).

This does not mean all beliefs are equal, nor does it mean everyone is equally entitled to their beliefs.

If Alice has observed 10% of this house and found no broom she can conclude "There is no broom" with 10% certainty. She has a 10% certainty that there is no broom, and a 0% certainty that there is broom.
If Bob has observed 90% of the house and found no broom, he can conclude "There is no broom" with 90% certainty. He has a 90% certainty that there is no broom, and a 0% certainty that there is broom.
Even though Bob and Alice agree, Bob is more entitled to his belief than Alice is because Bob has more knowledge.

Yeah... that doesn't change (or even argue) my point at all, but ok

You seem to be asserting that an individual has a single set of beliefs that are non-contradictory and logically consistent (to the best of that person's logical faculties). This simply isn't correct! A person is fully capable of holding two contradictory beliefs, or believing something he or she knows to be false. A person's world-view is not a static and internally consistent representation of a reality.

Also, I think there might be some confusion in this discussion about "not believing in God".
An agnostic does not believe in God.
A "strong" atheist believes there is no God, which is not the same thing.
See, someone who simply "doesn't believe in God" could either be thinking, "There is no God", or "There may or may not be a God, but I'm not convinced either way."

but can you bend it with your mind is the question

Look, if I say "I believe it might rain tomorrow," do I believe that it will rain tomorrow? Do I not believe that it will rain tomorrow?

If I was in a bunker yesterday, and someone asks me what I think the weather was yesterday, I might say, "I believe it might have rained yesterday." Do I believe that it did rain yesterday, or that it didn't rain yesterday?

Yes. There is a God. And this is him:

Does that mean the Theory of Relativity is complete crap? Because, according to those who believe in that theory, perception is reality.

So either your line of thinking is flawed or those who believe in the Theory of Relativity is flawed. You decide...

Er... what "theory of relativity" are you talking about? Not the scientific one...

lulz, God is gay?