Agnosticism is not Athiesm

nesf

Just something that came up on Philosophy and that annoyed me.

Why is it that some athiests define atheism as if it was agnosticism? There is a lot of grey in this, and I appreciate that it is very easy to get confused or imprecise with definitions here but this strikes me as simple ignorance.

Atheism is not implicitly a lack of belief in a deity. Neither is agnosticism. It is more complicated than that. With regard to the existence of a deity I can take multiple positions. I can believe that this is true. I can believe that it is untrue. Or I can state that I can neither believe nor disbelieve, since it is impossible to establish the truth of the existence or non-existence of a deity, but that I either view the two possibilities as equally likely or valid or that I lean towards one or the other to a greater or lesser extent. I cannot state that I lack belief without implicitly asserting one of the above.

Agnostics would hold the middle ground of neither disbelieving or believing but holding either the existence or non-existence of a deity as being plausable with a close to even split in plausablity. As we head towards either theism or atheism we have theists or atheists who hold that we cannot establish the truth (for whatever reason) but who would definitely view either existence or non-existence as significantly more plausable.


You can create a myriad of subdivisions of the above to catagorise people but the above positions are relatively clear-cut. You cannot claim that agnosticism is atheism or that it is not a position that can be held (i.e. that only agnostic theism and agnostic atheism are valid positions and not agnosticism alone), you can, and some of us do, hold the middle ground. Please do not automatically associate agnositicism with atheism, atheism is as far from agnosticism as theism is. This is why I was opposed to this forum's creation in the first place, I don't appreciate the association that is reinforced here. Or the kids who run around mixing up the two.

(/rant)

Dave!

Yeah, I'know..



I'd say that the 2 terms are becoming interchangeable because of atheists not feeling confident enough in their belief that there is no god, because of things like science's inability to so far explain the universe, and because of the complexity of our brains which allows us to actually think like this! Surely there must be a soul or something!!!

Because of these points it's kinda hard to be an atheist. I used to describe myself as an agnostic, then agnostic with a leaning towards atheism, and now just an atheist I suppose I'm getting alot more confident in my beliefs.

That's not to take away from people who have other reasons from remaining agnostic rather than standing on one side of the fence. I believe there's a couple on this forum who remain agnostic for their own reasons.

Nevyn

Well you also have the post organised religion reaction.
I am not christain, I don't believe in the christian version of god there for I am an atheist, I reject christainity there for I must be an athiest.

Heavens forbid they take the time to figure out what they do believe and see themsleves as an agnostic and question themselves and the universe and keep an open mind.

Dave!

Thaedydal wrote:

Well you also have the post organised religion reaction.
I am not christain, I don't believe in the christian version of god there for I am an atheist, I reject christainity there for I must be an athiest.

Heavens forbid they take the time to figure out what they do believe and see themsleves as an agnostic and question themselves and the universe and keep an open mind.

Good point.

Zillah

Thaedydal wrote:

I don't believe in the christian version of god there for I am an atheist, I reject christainity there for I must be an athiest.

By that logic everyone is an atheist. According to your definition you have to accept all religions in the universe as true to not be an atheist, which clearly isn't accurate.

An atheist rejects all Gods.

If you believe in any sort of God or Gods then you're not an atheist.

EDIT: Which might have been your point all along...

nesf

Thaedydal wrote:

Well you also have the post organised religion reaction.
I am not christain, I don't believe in the christian version of god there for I am an atheist, I reject christainity there for I must be an athiest.

Heavens forbid they take the time to figure out what they do believe and see themsleves as an agnostic and question themselves and the universe and keep an open mind.

Don't get me started about them...

nesf

Zillah wrote:

EDIT: Which might have been your point all along...

It was, I believe. It's this whole naive athiesm movement, usually fueled by teenage angst or postponed teenage angst, that is so offensive really.

Of course, some Catholics view not believing in God as being an atheistic position but that's a different side of the coin. Though I honestly feel sometimes that some atheists do more to discredit agnosticism than any theist manages.

Dave!

Zillah wrote:

EDIT: Which might have been your point all along...

There's a slight chance of that!

Zillah

Shut up! I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

Dave!

Zillah wrote:

Shut up! I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

Sleep is for the weak!

</spam>

aidan24326

nesf, what you are getting at (I think) is that there is alot of grey area and alot of people who fall somewhere in or around the whole spectrum of non-religious or non-believer but for who the terms atheist or agnostic don't exactly match up with their own views.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of these isms myself, as they tend to lump a certain group of people all together who may not all share the same viewpoint or even hold the same definition for what their own particular -ism means. In general I call myself atheist as a convenient quickly identifiable label, but in reality that may not give a 100% accurate picture. Near enough though.

Scofflaw

Alatrism = non-worship.

Describes me every day of the week, whether I'm feeling assertively atheist or assertively agnostic. Covers my position with respect to all known gods.

repetitively,
Scofflaw

lostexpectation

both in the recent wired article and in dibert's maker blog he refferred to atheist as the new gay, needing to come of the closet, so that makes agnostics bi, which one knows is cheating and self delusional :P

Asiaprod

lostexpectation wrote:

both in the recent wired article and in dibert's maker blog he refferred to atheist as the new gay, needing to come of the closet, so that makes agnostics bi, which one knows is cheating and self delusional :P

Interesting analogy.

Nevyn

lostexpectation wrote:

so that makes agnostics bi, which one knows is cheating and self delusional :P

Actually I find that offensive.

Dave!

Oh no.

Zillah

Thaedydal wrote:

Actually I find that offensive.

Why?

If he's right then you should accept it and move on.
If he's wrong then you shouldn't care that some silly stranger got it wrong.

Nevyn

I find the propigation of the idea that people who are bisexual are self delusional and can not be faithful to one partner to be offensive.

The analogy is incorrect and I as someone who happens to be bisexual find it offensive.

Zillah wrote:

If he's right then you should accept it and move on.
If he's wrong then you shouldn't care that some silly stranger got it wrong.

There would never be any changes or understandings reached if everyone did just that and never spoke out.
I can't leave that comment hanging there for who knows how long to be read by many people and maybe some of those young impressionible rebels.

I am sorry for going off topic but I would not leave it go unanswered,
if a comment was made like that about a persons gender rather then thier gender prference it would not be acceptible.

I do think that the fact atheists are coming out of hiding to dispell myths about themselves to be a good thing.

The idea that a person is moraless and not a good person unless they are christain or have some belief if god to be close minded and antiquated.

The dilbert blog link here use the closet concept, but there are many types of closet, indeed with in the pagan community there is the concept of the broom closet.
There have been members of the pagan community that have had it said to them after the came out of the broom closet that their parents had hoped they were gay as they could not control that but to choose to be pagan was a worse stigma then being gay.

The world is waking up at last that not everyone has the same beliefs as themsleves, be it a different religious belief or no beliefs at all and a good neighbour is a good neighbour no matter their creed or lack of it.

Evangelical fundamentalist are to be feared by everyone and while for some it can be a case of them being coming militant after thier conversion ( even to athiesism ) they settle down, I would prefer moderate neighbours then disrespectful fundamentalist of any ilk and this realisation is dawning on people.

Asiaprod

Zillah wrote:

Why?

Not aimed at me I know, but I do have a comment on that. I do not really appreciate the comparison that this statement draws in that BIs are cheating and self delusional. I have a few BI friends who would certainly disagree with this. It was just an interesting analogy.

Nevyn

I guess it is easier for people today that they are athiest then agnostic and then try to explain what that is and what is it that they do believe in or don't dis believe in enough to call themselves agnostics.

HealingBlight

Correct me if I'm right, but this is how I understand what the words mean:

a- = without/absence of
theism = belief in the existence of God
gnostic = of or relating to knowledge (in this case, the existence of god)

So atheism is the lack of a belief in god, it is as simple as that, such is the only thing that qualifies someone as atheist. Agnosticism is the lack of knowledge of gods existence (and by some extension, the idea that one could never know).

While it is correct to say that agnostics are not atheists and visa versa, I find it odd to hear people answer the question referring to their belief, by responding with their stance of knowledge. I'm pretty sure we are all atheist or theist in one form or another, same for gnostic or agnostic, however I think people who prefer to answer question a with answer b, do so out of an unwillingness to be associated with one group or another.

*Is agnostic atheist, to clear things up.*
If I'm mistaken, you understand me wrong, interpret it until it becomes correct and I will always be right, so sayith in the bible.

nesf

Don't break it into the greek, it doesn't always work like that in english. It's a bit like directly translating 'cul de sac'.


From the Oxford English Dictionary:

Atheist:
1) A person who denies or disbelieves in the existence of God or gods.
2) A person who denies God morally; a godless person.


Agnostic:
A person who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena. Also, a person who is uncertain or non-committal about a particular thing.


Your above usage is actually a big problem within this entire thing these days. Some atheists choose to define atheism as being nontheism using etymology as their justification (what you did above). There are problems, and resistance to this, not only because it implicitly labels many agnostics as atheists but:

"This is evident in its very name—atheism is a-theism: the negation of theistic belief.... I think this view is profoundly mistaken. Its initial plausibility is based on a very crude piece of flawed reasoning we can call the etymological fallacy. This is the mistake of thinking that one can best understand what a word means by understanding its origin."

(Baggini 2003, p. 7 (A very short introduction to Atheism, Oxford University Press)

Personally, I agree with Baggini and consider it to be an etymological fallacy. Even though I appreciate the use of a precising defintion in logical argument, it should not be confused with "redefining" the general meaning of the word.


Defining atheism as non-theism is essentially a minority usage of the word and should not be considered to be the default usage when discussing topics with other people who haven't expressly agreed on the alternate definition. To try and argue that another person's definition is false because they use the majority definition of the word instead of your minority definition is non-sensical. It would be like me telling you that cats are birds not mammals since I define birds to include all vertebrates not just winged ones with feathers. Do you know what I mean?

Another example of an etymological fallacy:

My surname, O'Sullivan. In Irish it is ó Súilleabháin. It "sounds" like "súil + amháin". Which translates as "one eye". The problem is that that is modern Irish, the surname is far older than that. It really is "súil + dubh + án" which could translate as "hawk eyes" or "black eyes" the Irish scholars don't quite agree since it is ambigious, but you'll find sites and books everywhere talking about "one eyed" and this entire false naive etymology of the surname exists.

Dades

HealingBlight wrote:

So atheism is the lack of a belief in god, it is as simple as that

Except there's nothing simple about the definition of "god". In my experience that's usually where the disagreement comes about.

----

nesf, I understand that you don't wish to have atheism defines from an etymological view, but what definition would you give it?

You told me recently that atheism is closer to theism than agnosticism, does that mean you believe that real atheists know there is no god(s) with the same certainty that devout theists know there is?

I find that assertion difficult to agree with, given that no rational thinker can claim to know what is beyond our understanding. That definition would probably clear this forum of atheists completely.

Can a definition evolve? Perhaps the Oxford dictionary defintions are as they are because it has become accepted that a hardline atheist approach is as untenable as a theist approach.

I thought atheism divided into 1- believing there is no god and 2- not believing there is a god
and then agnosticism was 1- believing we cannot know if there's a god and 2- not knowing if there is a god....

and once again, I'm in scofflaw's camp

SonOfPerdition

Zillah wrote:

An atheist rejects all Gods.

If you believe in any sort of God or Gods then you're not an atheist.

Hey Zilah,
Been lurking on this forum for a while now, but i wanted to ask you about that statement.

Surely your statement should be about supernatural Gods? I've maintained in the last few years that it is illogical to blanket deny God when it is impossible to know all possible definitions of God.

What if someone's definition of God is "The process that created the 'something' that eventually led to my existence."

'something' being the universe if we believe our senses.
Then,whatever created our universe or the cause that created it .... *IT* can labeled as "God".

Beyond that there is no further information and no further claims are made.
The god of Abraham, or supernatural events, reincarnation etc is denied.

Could someone with those beliefs and definition of god be considered an atheist?

SOP

Esmereldina

The Atheist wrote:

Except there's nothing simple about the definition of "god". In my experience that's usually where the disagreement comes about.

----

nesf, I understand that you don't wish to have atheism defines from an etymological view, but what definition would you give it?

You told me recently that atheism is closer to theism than agnosticism, does that mean you believe that real atheists know there is no god(s) with the same certainty that devout theists know there is?

I find that assertion difficult to agree with, given that no rational thinker can claim to know what is beyond our understanding. That definition would probably clear this forum of atheists completely.

Can a definition evolve? Perhaps the Oxford dictionary defintions are as they are because it has become accepted that a hardline atheist approach is as untenable as a theist approach.

I consider myself an atheist, and would define my atheism as believing
that there is no god, rather than simply lacking a belief in a god. So I would agree in a sense with the above, although substituting 'believe' for 'know', as obviously, as was pointed out above, we cannot really 'know' whether or not there is a not. So atheist is, in a sense, as much of a leap of faith as theism... I always get annoyed when atheism is defined in the negative, ie as the lack of a belief, while for me, it is a belief which positively informs my values and outlook on life, rather than being something which I am missing and which religious people have.

Dades

SonOfPerdition wrote:

it is impossible to know all possible definitions of God.

Whose definitions are you talking about?

When I describe my beliefs I use the definition that makes sense to me. And it doesn't include the "anything I don't understand" god.

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

Whose definitions are you talking about?

When I describe my beliefs I use the definition that makes sense to me. And it doesn't include the "anything I don't understand" god.

Hang on - so you're defining the God you don't believe in yourself? Doesn't that necessarily make your atheism a personal statement of belief rather than a statement of non-belief? As in "I don't believe in this God that I define thus (however you define God)" rather than "I have no belief in Gods, however defined".

cordially,
Scofflaw

SonOfPerdition

The Atheist wrote:

Whose definitions are you talking about?

Anyone who decides to define God. The entire human race past, present, and future.

When I describe my beliefs I use the definition that makes sense to me. And it doesn't include the "anything I don't understand" god.

You define beliefs that make sense to you.
Anyone can define their God in a way that makes sense to them . .and quite possibly could still fall under the label Atheist. My belief .... for now.

Esmereldina

SonOfPerdition wrote:

Hey Zilah,
Been lurking on this forum for a while now, but i wanted to ask you about that statement.

Surely your statement should be about supernatural Gods? I've maintained in the last few years that it is illogical to blanket deny God when it is impossible to know all possible definitions of God.

What if someone's definition of God is "The process that created the 'something' that eventually led to my existence."

'something' being the universe if we believe our senses.
Then,whatever created our universe or the cause that created it .... *IT* can labeled as "God".

Beyond that there is no further information and no further claims are made.
The god of Abraham, or supernatural events, reincarnation etc is denied.

Could someone with those beliefs and definition of god be considered an atheist?

SOP

See that whole 'there must be something out there that created the world and me, and it could be defined as God' argument just sounds like a play on words to me. Can't you just decide whether you believe in a higher intelligent being (god) or not...

HealingBlight

I've hade the idea, since I was about 16, that god is really just a subjective title much akin to 'King' and that there is nothing really that would ever make a being god except for the worshipers behind it and the amount brute force it can muster to perpetuate and maintain said idea? In essence, just like no 'true' king can seem to exist, would such be the case that no 'true' god can either?

Then I guess that would make me apathetically agnostic, as well as atheist. I still lack a belief in the existence of god, of course the difficulty comes with, in respect to the title idea, if one asks if I were to believe that a theist has a god, or if a subject has a king. These, it would seem would really only amount to the existence pseudogods or pesudokings.


Ugh, I need more sleep, I half-think I'm a bit all over the place. o.o;