Are skepticism and Belief in God mutually exclusive?

GuanYin

Originally posted by davros
I was just picking up on your own reference to Buddhism earlier. I was aiming to cool passions just a little - some of the comments have attacked the commenter rather than the argument. But it was meant generally, and was not directed at you. I apologise for any perceived disrespect. As I said earlier, I try to stay off the topic of religion for exactly that reason. I should listen to myself

Fair enough. If the word "fraud" had not been mentioned earlier, I would have pointed to specific claims on particular products and you could have addressed those.

i see your point, but some postershave rubbished philosophers etc and tarred alot of communities with one unsavoury brush.

my impatience is at one particular case where the poster ignores the obvious references to inconsistancies in his posts and arguements and continues to hypocritically slag off other views.

personally im notbothered,but iabhorrthe mis use of science.

williamgrogan

"God does not exist."

is as valid a statement as the 9'tics are wrong.

I have been accused of ignoring points (even though I have RSI from typing) but most people on this thread are ignoring the entire thrust of my argument, that "GOD" is an invention, not of intelligent, well educated & knowledgeable people but of our ancestors who literally didn't know their arse from their elbow.

I genuinely cannot see any fundamental difference between the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley MEP MP MNIA Prime Minister of the top right eastern bit of Ireland Designate’s view of reality and the Agnostics other than timing. Paisley believes that god made the Earth 6,000 years ago and the Agnostics currently think that he/she/it/them may have made it 13,700,000,000 years ago.

God is held up by many people as a reasonable opinion to hold and there is a PC frame of mind that says that no matter what someone says they “are entitled to their opinion”. This type of twisted logic is used by the purveyors of miracle creams to put a spin on their product. “OK, if you are closed minded then it won’t work….. duh!”

My children attended one of the first schools ever set up in Ireland NOT run by the religious, one of the first project schools. There was an argument for some time as to whether the school should “respect” the “beliefs” of the parents of all children but eventually the non-religious wing won and it was agreed we respected the children and not the beliefs.

I do not respect the beliefs of the religious and that include Muslims, Catholics, Big Bang Agnostics, 9’tics and Buddists and I seriously think that saying that you respect daft opinions is sending the wrong message.

Part of the reason that Homeopathy, Indian Head Message, Reflexology, Rekki (****e, I can never remember how to spell that stupid word) Healing, are so popular is that no one laughs out loud at the proponents of such blatant nonsense.

The king has no clothes.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
"God does not exist." is as valid a statement as the 10'tics are wrong.

Not from the point of view of scientific testing, which you have been holding up as the best point of view with which to judge theories about the universe.

I have been accused of ignoring points (even though I have RSI from typing) but most people on this thread are ignoring the entire thrust of my argument, that "GOD" is an invention, not of intelligent, well educated & knowledgeable people but of our ancestors who literally didn't know their arse from their elbow.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm saying that science hasn't debunked it and you haven't offered a convincing argument that you're right.

I genuinely cannot see any fundamental difference between the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley MEP MP MNIA Prime Minister of the top right eastern bit of Ireland Designate’s view of reality and the Agnostics other than timing.

Bringing timing into the view of the agnostics or equating the firm beliefs of one man with lack of a strong position on a question of another group seems like a gross misrepresentation to me.

God is held up by many people as a reasonable opinion to hold and there is a PC frame of mind that says that no matter what someone says they “are entitled to their opinion”.

Well, people are entitled to their opinion, so I assume that you mean that people should be open to being challenged, which is fine. I am challenging your statements and arguments, but you seem to think that this is out of some sort of misguided political correctness. However, the reason I'm challenging them is that they are unconvincing, inconsistent and you have yet to show that god is an unreasonable proposition, or even come close.

williamgrogan

firm beliefs

Does an Agnostic not have firm beliefs? Presumable he is firm in his belief that there may be a god? I think to say otherwise is a gross misrepresentation of the Agnostic’s (sorry I left out the apostrophe the last time) position.

Science cannot disprove the 9'tics unless it makes the assumption that the major tenet of their belief that God made us all at 9:00 o'clock Wednesday night is invalid. If this major tenet is true then by its nature the Scientists are wrong.

PS

A breakaway sect is now claiming that god created the universe at 10:00 o’clock and not 9:00 o’clock. It claims it has evidence from the fossilised thread record. I claim that this is false evidence that was planted there.

Apostates – burn them……….

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Does an Agnostic not have firm beliefs? Presumable he is firm in his belief that there may be a god? I think to say otherwise is a gross misrepresentation of the Agnostic’s (sorry I left out the apostrophe the last time) position.

The firm belief one way or another that god does or does not exist, is what I meant there.

I was not saying anything about the 'firm beliefs' of agnostics, I'm commenting on the way that you are equating a belief in the existence of god with the position that we cannot know one way or another whether god exists. From the point of view of considering the question "Does god exist?", they are not the same thing. I might as easily equate agnosticism and atheism.

Science cannot disprove the 9'tics unless it makes the assumption that the major tenet of their belief that God made us all at 9:00 o'clock Wednesday night is invalid.

The assumption is that our senses are not betraying us in such a blatent fashion. Do you not think that physical sciences make that assumption? That assumption leads to the conclusion that the major tenet is invalid.

williamgrogan

I've just had a thought.

Shoot me down if I am totally wrong here but, is it not possible that the big bang was not actually a big event?

All definitions of god that I have ever heard of propose that he is "all powerful", "all knowing" etc.. Well up to now to create a universe he would have had to be. A BIG god that can do BIG things. Could the big bang not have been a terribly small quantum event? Maybe even triggered in another dimension(s) by the sort of daft Italian scientist that goes around claiming to have cloned a human? In other words could it turn out that the big bang required an ordinary type of "person" to make it?

If this is so then the big bang god isn't even a real god.

ecksor

Wahey, more evasion.

williamgrogan

Bringing timing into the view of the agnostics or equating the firm beliefs of one man with lack of a strong position on a question of another group seems like a gross misrepresentation to me.

I'm sorry but I've read this sentence a few times and I cannot accept what you said in the previous quote.

The firm belief of one man is of course the firm belief of many men, Paisley is not the only Young Earther. I would like to ask an Agnostic whether he thinks his position is less firm than say mine. It seems to me that many people on this thread are adament that one cannot prove the non existance of god and therefore hold a strong position on it.

As for timing. What is the fundemental difference between a god who creates the universe at 9 o'clock last wednesday, 6000 years ago or 13,700,000,000 billions years ago except for timing. (In fact the 13,700,000,000 figure was only recently discovered by scientists and not Agnostics. They just jumpted on the band wagon.)

My point here is that there is no difference and that the bufoon Paisley is no different from any Agnostic. They are both effectively religious.

williamgrogan

Wahey, more evasion.

Hold on ........... there was only 10 minutes between me reading your post and replying to it. That's hardly evasion. It was just a question of timing.

williamgrogan

Sorry, back to bed I was only getting a drink of water........bloody ADSL connections......on all the time......... zzzzzzzzzzzzz

GuanYin

Originally posted by ecksor
Wahey, more evasion.

It seems the only thing he's actually consistant about

ecksor

I think you'll find that one is still agnostic if they hold the position that we do not have enough knowledge to answer the question of the existence of god. While that may be saying that it is impossible to answer the question, it is not saying that it will always be impossible.

I will continue to think that we can't currently disprove (or prove for that matter) the existence of god right up until someone actually does prove or disprove it.

As for the timing issue that you keep raising, you still haven't addressed the consistency of maintaining that all of those beliefs are equivilent if one subscribes to the idea that our observations and the scientific method are the best tools with which to test such ideas.

Also, I don't think any agnostics here have claimed anything about a timing of 13.7 billion years ago, I seem to remember you being the person who introduced the 'big bang god' to this thread. Agnosticism may hold that we can't disprove such a proposition, but I don't even hold the time itself as a strong estimate. If you wish to keep trying to put words into the mouths of the opposing argument and then argue against those words, then feel free, but you're only making yourself look increasingly ridiculous.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
That's hardly evasion. It was just a question of timing.

Ah, ok, it was merely another red herring before yet another evasion of the issue that your arguments are shockingly inconsistent.

williamgrogan

Ah, ok, it was merely another red herring before yet another evasion of the issue that your arguments are shockingly inconsistent

As my post of the 10-01-04 02:52 says, "I have just had a thought".

The sequence of posting here is important. I went to my PC, typed in the post into my word processor that started, "I have just had a thought".

When I posted the post, it brought me to the post from Ecksor which I read and I then immediately replied at 10-01-04 03:05, minutes after reading Ecksor's post.

Upon posting that post I get an accusation of evasion levelled at me!!!! I replied to Ecksor’s post that he accuses me of evading BEFORE I read the one accusing me of evasion.

Sorry lads this time you are clearly wrong. There can be a time lag between posts if one is to read or write previous ones.

red herring"

Is this not simple invective?

How is it a red herring that I have just put forward a theory that god is equivalent to a minor mad Italian Scientist?

If I can prove this then not alone have I gone a long way to disproving the personal God, and the Agnostic God but even if there is a big bang god he is a very very minor deity.

Please now specify a relevant point that I have “evaded”. Many of the “points” raised against my statements are not relevant and I have already pointed this out.

e.g.

Studying the brain/mind without studying for example evolution is futile. The brain got here via evolution and therefore this must be a major factor in its “design”. I said this as evidence that the work of philosophers contributed little to the understanding of reality and I said that in response to others defending philosophers and continuously quoting long dead ones as some sort of evidence.

In response to this Syke starts talking about the effect of sugars and the environment and says that I should have said genetics and not evolution and that DNA is not the prime cause of evolution etc.. all red herrings to my point.

I quiet accept that there are many other branches of knowledge relevant to understanding the mind other than evolution and in fact that point strengthens my point.

Here’s another point.

Most people, I suspect, would think that Atheists are say on the left, Religious people (those who believe in the god that asked Abraham to murder his son as a sacrifice and slay various enemies including all their wives and children) and in the middle are Agnostics (fence sitters).

I assert that Agnostics are in the same camp as the religious for all intents and purposes.

williamgrogan

I think you'll find that one is still agnostic if they hold the position that we do not have enough knowledge to answer the question of the existence of god. While that may be saying that it is impossible to answer the question, it is not saying that it will always be impossible. I will continue to think that we can't currently disprove (or prove for that matter) the existence of god right up until someone actually does prove or disprove it.

All this says is that Agnostics say that they will not always be Agnostics. This doesn’t excuse them from currently holding such daft views.

In fact I am trying to prove that holding the position of Agnostic, in the sense that an Agnostic doesn’t know if God created the Universe, is unacceptable in an educated, clear thinking, non brainwashed & intelligent person.

As for the timing issue that you keep raising, you still haven't addressed the consistency of maintaining that all of those beliefs are equivilent if one subscribes to the idea that our observations and the scientific method are the best tools with which to test such ideas.

I think I have indicated that they are equivellant.

I do believe that the scientific method has the best tools, but the 9 o’clock news’tics are just as logical in their ascertain. I am NOT saying that I believe the 9’tics as I neither believe in the position of the Agnostics. I am just saying that I am as Agnostic as to their position as I am to the big bang god’tics position.

In other words do the Agnostics who cannot prove the existence of god BUT believe he may exist and who also cannot prove the 9’tics wrong because of the way that god created the universe at 9 o’clock also believe that the universe may have been made at 9 o’clock complete with all our memories, the fossils, the red shifted light on its way from Andromeda etc..

Are your ordinary decent Agnostics also agnostic about the 9 o’clock’ tics?

Also, I don't think any agnostics here have claimed anything about a timing of 13.7 billion years ago

Sorry maybe I misunderstood?

Do Agnostics not dismiss the idea that god made the world 6,000 year ago complete with fossils BUT think he may have made it 13,699,994,000 years earlier?

sextusempiricus

Originally posted by ecksor
I think you'll find that one is still agnostic if they hold the position that we do not have enough knowledge to answer the question of the existence of god. While that may be saying that it is impossible to answer the question, it is not saying that it will always be impossible.

I will continue to think that we can't currently disprove (or prove for that matter) the existence of god right up until someone actually does prove or disprove it.

I'm not comfortable with the agnostic's position. I'm in aqgreement with WG here.
Consider here first the original description of Agnosticism by Darwin's bulldog, T.H. Huxley [1],

This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

I have a problem with this. Theists claim that God is a TOTAL explanation of all there is. Perhaps I should say USUALLY claim for Jupitor wasn't like this. Deities are all a passing fashion even if it takes two millennia to be unfashionable and modern ideas on God have to appear more reasonable to intelligent people. Thus God today must explain all from ingrowing toe-nails to the Big Bang. This concept of God is inconsistent with nothing and therefore can never be tested for to test any proposition ( such as Francis Galton's investigation into the efficacy of prayer on the health of the British Royal family which I mentioned previously in this thread [2]) it has to rule out something. There NEVER will be EVIDENCE for God. Agnosticism, as quoted, is useful for the more 'down-to-earth' propositions ( e.g. will a hot dinner awaiting me when I get home or the possibility that you can 'bake a universe' in your basement as proposed by the pioneer of inflation theory, Alun Guth [3]). The irony for theists is that something that explains EVERYTHING explains NOTHING. Their only arguments for a deity arise from faulty reasoning such as the ONTOLOGICAL and the FIRST CAUSE arguments which have been convincingly laid to rest more than 200 years ago by philosophers like Hume and Kant. Admittedly the latter not happy after his demolition job against the classical 'proofs' argued for the existence of God from his conviction that there was a moral law. That's another day's argument!

Scepticism as a philosophy is much more like agnosticism in relation to these more 'down-to-earth' propositions. Keep an open mind until evidence backs up a theory. Always bear in mind that the more we discover the more problems that turn up i.e the irony that with the growth in our knowledge there is a growth in our ignorance. For this reason I'm not nearly as confident as WG in the possibilities of science eventually explaining everything. I suspect that problems such as the mind-body problem will never be scientifically explained although we might learn a lot from examining the nervous system. There are limits to science. Meanwhile can we get more 'down-to-earth'.

References
[1] 'Lectures and Essays', T.H.Huxley, The Thinker's Library, No 17, p103.
[2] http://www.abelard.org/galton/galton.htm#prayer
[3] 'Magic Universe',2003, Nigel Calder,p45

williamgrogan

Always bear in mind that the more we discover the more problems that turn up i.e the irony that with the growth in our knowledge there is a growth in our ignorance.

Is this true?

Is there not a finite amount of knowledge? (I ignore data such as the position of every particle in the universe and mean knowledge as in laws, proofs etc..)

If there is a finite amount of knowledge then as time progresses there is less to discover and not more. If there was more than there would have to be new laws coming into existence which sounds like the steady state universe.

I'm not predicting the end of Science but we do now know an awful lot more than we did 150 years ago.

For this reason I'm not nearly as confident as WG in the possibilities of science eventually explaining everything.

Well we have about a zillion years until the universe ends.

I suspect that problems such as the mind-body problem will never be scientifically explained although we might learn a lot from examining the nervous system.

I think this is an illogical suggestion.

It only might be true if there is a god. If there isn’t a god then the mind is something real and concrete and exists in a real non magical universe that obeys laws.

There is a puzzle about consciousness but that could be resolved within a few decades, never mind millennia.

As a programmer I have no problem with the idea of Artificial Intelligence, although I think it would be hard to program at the moment unless there is some major breakthrough in some unknown field. It is possible that consciousness is just an illusion and that AI machines will be conscious and their level of consciousness may be related to how intelligent & sophisticated they are. One can imagine consciousness decreasing as one examines much less intelligent people, then intelligent animals and then dumber animals until it disappears.

There are limits to science. Meanwhile can we get more 'down-to-earth'.

Fine, start another thread.

I started one on The Myth of Chernobyl and few commented yet the vast majority of people in Ireland think thousands of people died and are still dying as a consequence of it and happily give their money to charities collecting money to fix problems that were not caused by the accident in the first place.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Upon posting that post I get an accusation of evasion levelled at me!!!! I replied to Ecksor’s post that he accuses me of evading BEFORE I read the one accusing me of evasion.

That's true, but then you did evade in your reply, as I explain below.

Sorry lads this time you are clearly wrong. There can be a time lag between posts if one is to read or write previous ones.

Lads? There's only one of me.

How is it a red herring that I have just put forward a theory that god is equivalent to a minor mad Italian Scientist?

If I can prove this then not alone have I gone a long way to disproving the personal God, and the Agnostic God but even if there is a big bang god he is a very very minor deity.

If you can develop that and test it, then fine, but unless you have something with which to develop this theory, then I don't see the usefulness to this argument.

How exactly are you defining 'personal God' and 'Agnostic God' ?

Please now specify a relevant point that I have “evaded”. Many of the “points” raised against my statements are not relevant and I have already pointed this out.

Ok, here it is again. You are constantly holding up the theory you have proposed that we sprang into existence the other evening complete with implanted memories etc and saying that that theory is just as ridiculous as any other theory of god. I am saying that if you use a scientific line of inquiry based upon our own observations and memorys to test these ideas, then that idea is certainly inconsistent, but other ideas that relate to the beginning of the universe or some other poorly understood and little observed phenomena is not so easily shown to be inconsistent.

Now, I'm aware of the fact that there's a fundamental conflict between the assumptions made by both groups but I'm prepared to make the one that underlines my faith in science and I can't see how you can have your faith in science without the same belief.

Therefore, by your own standards and mine, the theory that we sprang into existence the other evening is not as strong as the theory that there was some intelligence at work behind the creation of the universe.

I know you have pointed out that I'm making an assumption, but I'm saying that you have to be making the same assumption and that everyone must choose what assumptions they are willing to make before trying to answer questions about their existence.

Here’s another point.

Most people, I suspect, would think that Atheists are say on the left, Religious people (those who believe in the god that asked Abraham to murder his son as a sacrifice and slay various enemies including all their wives and children) and in the middle are Agnostics (fence sitters).

I assert that Agnostics are in the same camp as the religious for all intents and purposes.

You are quite mad.

williamgrogan

Lads? There's only one of me

Read back and you will see the Syke had a go to.

So now you are acusing me in advance of evading. Well I certainly can't win if you can rebut me in advance of what I write.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
In fact I am trying to prove that holding the position of Agnostic, in the sense that an Agnostic doesn’t know if God created the Universe, is unacceptable in an educated, clear thinking, non brainwashed & intelligent person.

Well, if you have made that argument successfully then I must have missed it. Perhaps I'm not clear thinking or intelligent enough? Can you sum it up for me again?

I do believe that the scientific method has the best tools, but the 9 o’clock news’tics are just as logical in their ascertain. I am NOT saying that I believe the 9’tics as I neither believe in the position of the Agnostics. I am just saying that I am as Agnostic as to their position as I am to the big bang god’tics position.

Well, you can show that one point of view is logically consistent with another and I can't dispute that. But, from the point of view of asking if science is compatible with one or the other, I think we must personally judge them on scientific grounds.

Are your ordinary decent Agnostics also agnostic about the 9 o’clock’ tics?

I would say no from the point of view of judging it by the standards that I judge it. Perhaps a very pure form of agnosticism would say yes based on the idea that we can't truly know anything? I can't argue against that viewpoint except on the basis that it isn't a very useful viewpoint for me to hold.

Do Agnostics not dismiss the idea that god made the world 6,000 year ago complete with fossils BUT think he may have made it 13,699,994,000 years earlier?

I don't know, do they? I think belief is a difficult thing to generalise about. However, I suppose I'd broadly agree with the description you give there and I don't see how science contradicts me or gives me enough evidence to have a strong suspicion either way.

williamgrogan

How exactly are you defining 'personal God' and 'Agnostic God' ?

Firstly I don’t believe that there is any sort of god. In fact part of the proof that god is simply a superstition is that there are so many variations on him/it/them believed in by different people.

Other people have defined a personal god as the god that interferes in human matters, i.e. makes people better say at Lourdes, causes it to rain, saves some people in car accidents and kills hundreds more etc.. The Agnostic god was defined as the god that is outside the universe but made it.

Part of my argument is that the silly personal god, the one that Dr Connell believes in, the one that provides Guardian Angels that “hover” about your body, is very similar, is in the same camp as the Agnostic god.

People who think that they are above believing in the personal god, who helps their country in war, but who believe that there may be a god are 99% as disillusioned as the silly god people, not 100% maybe but 99%.

Sorry the match has restarted.

ecksor

Originally posted by sextusempiricus
I'm not comfortable with the agnostic's position. I'm in aqgreement with WG here.

Do you also think it is unacceptable to hold that position for an educated, clear thinking and intelligent person?

I have a problem with this. Theists claim that God is a TOTAL explanation of all there is. Perhaps I should say USUALLY claim for Jupitor wasn't like this. Deities are all a passing fashion even if it takes two millennia to be unfashionable and modern ideas on God have to appear more reasonable to intelligent people. Thus God today must explain all from ingrowing toe-nails to the Big Bang.

Which points out the problems with previous definitions of god, but any theory must seek to explain new information if it is shown to be inadequate in light of old information. The line of reasoning is interesting if you can reduce all possible ideas about god to an absurd or unmaintainable position, but regarding a finite number of cases won't accomplish that.

It's an interesting argument to think about though. In my life I have swayed from one extreme to the other and back into the middle ground as WG calls it, and I can't see a line of reasoning that will take me out of my middle ground or give me any sort of certainty at all.

This concept of God is inconsistent with nothing and therefore can never be tested for to test any proposition ( such as Francis Galton's investigation into the efficacy of prayer on the health of the British Royal family which I mentioned previously in this thread [2]) it has to rule out something. There NEVER will be EVIDENCE for God.

If I accept that (and I'm close to accepting it) then I will always be agnostic, and will never change my mind, as I previously said was possible.

The irony for theists is that something that explains EVERYTHING explains NOTHING.

We know so little about the universe and have so little to go on in the grand scheme of things that I doubt the human capacity to discover and investigate most things about the universe, let alone everything.

[EDIT]So, while I see the value of judging a theory on its usefulness in terms of judging it and accepting it, in this case I can't see the difference between the two viewpoints in terms of usefulness or lack of.[/EDIT]

For this reason I'm not nearly as confident as WG in the possibilities of science eventually explaining everything. I suspect that problems such as the mind-body problem will never be scientifically explained although we might learn a lot from examining the nervous system. There are limits to science.

I am not confident in it at all. I think that the incompleteness theorem leads to the conclusion that science will always have open questions, no?

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Is there not a finite amount of knowledge? (I ignore data such as the position of every particle in the universe and mean knowledge as in laws, proofs etc..)

I don't think the amount of knowledge as you describe it is finite. For one thing wouldn't you need to show that there is a unique finite set of possible models (perhaps containing only one model) which is consistent with itself and with the universe, and then derive a finite set of laws from the first principles?

I think this is an illogical suggestion.

I think it's a perfectly logical suggestion. As a programmer you are no doubt intimately aware with turing's halting problem and since you are comfortable with the idea that we are 'programmed' or that we can be thought of as software / hardware, then you should see that it is impossible for one computer program to determine that any other arbitrary computer program will reach a given state (i.e consciousness) under arbitrary inputs.

That's not to say that I agree with the 'programmed' idea or that we won't somehow stumble upon some model that recreates consciousness, but it is certainly logical to think that we may never know.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
So now you are acusing me in advance of evading. Well I certainly can't win if you can rebut me in advance of what I write.

You may not have been evading in the post that I originally accused you of evading in, but you didn't answer the question in your next post either. Perhaps you'll get around to it in the next one.

williamgrogan

I don't know, do they? I think belief is a difficult thing to generalise about. However, I suppose I'd broadly agree with the description you give there and I don't see how science contradicts me or gives me enough evidence to have a strong suspicion either way.

Well of course I do have a problem attacking the 7,000,000,000 variations on god that people believe in.

Do Agnostics not dismiss the idea that god made the world 6,000 year ago complete with fossils BUT think he may have made it 13,699,994,000 years earlier?

This has to do with timing. My point is that the Young Earthers believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago and whilst the Agnostics can dismiss that (who wants to be associated with Paisley?) BUT do not dismiss that it may have been made by god 13,699,994,999 years earlier. What’s the difference? There is no proof of either. Both positions are equally invalid.

You are quite mad.

Are you not evading answering my point?

Agnosticism is a form of religious belief. Even priests have doubts at times. Saying there is a god and saying there maybe a god are both based on the historical notion of god. Agnostics didn’t invent god, Theists did. Agnostics are just not sure that the Theists are wrong. I am.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
This has to do with timing. My point is that the Young Earthers believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago and whilst the Agnostics can dismiss that (who wants to be associated with Paisley?) BUT do not dismiss that it may have been made by god 13,699,994,999 years earlier. What’s the difference? There is no proof of either. Both positions are equally invalid.

In my mind, the one that holds beliefs that supports a scientific line of inquiry (which is what you're holding up as the way to judge theories), those positions are not equally invalid.

Are you not evading answering my point?

It was just a comment on equating a stance on god with a stance on the killing of children and suchlike, but if you really think that or think that most think it then that's your own business. I didn't realise there was a point to that analogy so of course I didn't answer it.

Agnosticism is a form of religious belief. Even priests have doubts at times. Saying there is a god and saying there maybe a god are both based on the historical notion of god.

I base it on the lack of a convincing argument either way.

Agnostics didn’t invent god, Theists did. Agnostics are just not sure that the Theists are wrong. I am.

But not only are you sure, you're saying that it's the only valid stance for a person in their right mind?

williamgrogan

I might as easily equate agnosticism and atheism

This I reject.

Agnostics and Theists have something in common – God. One doesn’t know if something invented by the other is true and the other believes in his invention.

I am not an Atheist and never define myself as such except as shorthand and generally qualify it. Neither am I a A-9’o’clock news, an A-our minds are Thetans who escaped from an intergalactic war (Scientology), an A-The World is balanced on Top of a Big Turtle who sits on an Elephant … etc..

As I said earlier and was accused of being mad, Agnostics and Theists are in the same camp. The variations on a religious theme camp. They argue amongst themselves what time god made the world at, 9:0 O’Clock, 6000 years ago or 13.7 billion.

Let me carry the argument back to the Agnostics, why believe that there may be a god? What reasons have you for this suspicion? Are your only reasons related to the beliefs of our pre-historic ancestors who invented god? That they may be right. Everything else they believed in was wrong and you don’t believe in any other things they believe in but maybe by some unimaginable coincidence they guessed god existed and were right. Is that in itself not a religious belief? It certainly isn’t a scientific belief.

The assumption is that our senses are not betraying us in such a blatent fashion. Do you not think that physical sciences make that assumption? That assumption leads to the conclusion that the major tenet is invalid.

You have no more evidence that our senses are betraying us than god made the big bang yet you don’t believe in the 9 o’clock’tics not are you Agnostic about it. If you argue that you are an Agnostic about the making of the big bang then you should be an Agnostic about the 9 o’clock news, in fact any proposition because every possible proposition is possible once any question about it cannot be answered with 100% certainty.

People who are Agnostic should ask themselves to truthfully answer the question, “Am I Agnostic because other people believe in God?”.

If you answer yes then the people who believe in god are responsible for your position. I don’t want any misunderstandings about my point. Agnostics are no better then Theists, Mother Theresa, The Pope, Homeopathy believers, Water Diviners, Young Earthers etc..

williamgrogan

I base it on the lack of a convincing argument either way

But you don't believe in killing wives and children, presumably you support the availability of contraception & divorce, you object to women having to wear a silly hat/scarf thing that they peep out through, you oppose the locking up & burning at the stake of scientists, you object to censorship, you believe in evolution but hey! those religious people could be right about god.

The daft thing is that even the religious people whose intellectual inventiveness you admire don’t believe in your god of the gaps. Their god is a lot busier.

I'm insulted, my arguments against the existence of god are no better than your average Taliban?

ecksor

If you are not an atheist can you give us a definition of your stance that doesn't just list off some things that you don't believe in?

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Let me carry the argument back to the Agnostics, why believe that there may be a god? What reasons have you for this suspicion?

I believe that there may be a god because I can't think of a good way of discrediting the idea. You can discredit various institutions and people and collections of people that believe in the idea, but I don't think that an idea is responsible for the people that believe in it. This isn't exactly a suspicion, since I know that I can't think of a good way of discrediting the idea.

If you mean the suspicion that there might be a god, then I do not suspect that there is a god. If anything, I suspect the opposite. However, I can't assign any degree of confidence to that suspicion.

You have no more evidence that our senses are betraying us than god made the big bang yet you don’t believe in the 9 o’clock’tics not are you Agnostic about it. If you argue that you are an Agnostic about the making of the big bang then you should be an Agnostic about the 9 o’clock news, in fact any proposition because every possible proposition is possible once any question about it cannot be answered with 100% certainty.

No, I don't have that evidence, that's why it is an assumption. Do you or do you not make that assumption? You have previously answered yes to this I believe, and yet continue to hold up a line of reasoning that rejects that assumption. Under that assumption, one is clearly invalid and the other isn't so clearly invalid.

If you do make that assumption, then I think it is reasonable for us to examine ideas based upon that common assumption. If you do not make that asumpion, then I would like to know what fundamental assumptions you are making.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
But you don't believe in killing wives and children, presumably you support the availability of contraception & divorce, you object to women having to wear a silly hat/scarf thing that they peep out through, you oppose the locking up & burning at the stake of scientists, you object to censorship, you believe in evolution but hey! those religious people could be right about god.

This is a fundamental difference in our ways of examining this issue I think. I'm examining a very very abstract idea which isn't dependent upon groups of people or what they choose to do.

The daft thing is that even the religious people whose intellectual inventiveness you admire don’t believe in your god of the gaps. Their god is a lot busier.

I don't recall saying anything about the intellectual inventiveness of religious people.

I'm insulted, my arguments against the existence of god are no better than your average Taliban?

Sorry. Mind you, I don't see where the average Taliban's argument has come into this either.