The Like/Hate Thread

[Ashe]

I'm technically an agnostic in the most literal sense. a (without) gnos (knowledge). It is a literal impossibility to fathom the existence or non existence of an all powerful being. To think you can is stupid. I simply have never seen any reliable evidence to support the presence of such a thing.

It's like bigfoot. You can't PROVE he's not out there. But, I mean, I don't leave bigfoot treats out in hopes that he won't toss my trash every morning.

There are four stances (and most believe three).

The three that people misunderstand are "agnostics aren't sure if they believe or not", "atheists believe he doesn't exist", and "theists believe he does". This is incorrect and defines the first two wrong.

Gnosticism is stance of knowledge (falling back to the root word) and Theism is a stance of belief (again falling back to the root). "a-" means "without", not "no".

This means that you have four stances. Agnostic Atheism - "Lack knowledge and lack belief", Gnostic Atheism - "Knowledgable and lack belief", Agnostic Theism - "Lack knowledge and hold belief", and Gnostic Theism - "Knowledgable and hold belief".

The thing is, given that a deity cannot be tested under the laws of the physical world (leaving the TAG argument to be what it is), we are all agnostic. We do not have irrefutable knowledge as to whether a deity does or does not exist. No one is absolutely certain in either direction. You can't prove a negative, so the fact that no one has ever seen one doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that its rational to take a stance of not professing an active belief that it does. (This works for anything you haven't seen, from invisible unicorns, deities, extra terrestrials, lesbian lizards that breed sexually. It is rational to not put your money on any of these things existing. It is not rational to assume otherwise without having seen evidence that they do. That being said, despite correctly not believing that a lesbian lizard exists that breeds sexually, that doesn't mean that you can actively state that they don't, because you simply lack evidence either way and a negative cannot be proven. Which leaves you with this - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na...rds14.html)

The stance of atheism or theism is a situation of believing regardless of knowledge. Being atheistic to something does not mean "You believe it doesn't exist" so much as "you lack belief that it does exist". This isn't necessarily semantics because you are atheistic about many things, but don't put forth a belief one way or another about its existence. If I were to state that I owned a computer store, should you rationally believe it? No. All you have to believe me is my word. Should you tell people "He doesn't own one"? No, you don't have a reason to believe that either. So you simply lack a belief that I own a computer store until you see more evidence.