-QUIZ TIME-

Question - Do you believe in a god? 

If you answer 'yes', you are a theist.

If you answer 'no', you are an atheist

(it's really that simple)

There is not an in between position as you have so poorly been taught. 

You are making fundamental confusions regarding the atheist position. And please correct your grammer and spelling, as it is almost impossible to read your posts.

I believe the term is Agnostic. It would seem to me you are making an argumentum ad nauseam. This means you are making a fallacy of assertion. Atheism, at least, the atheism to which you refer, is not a belief. There are no "theories" or "assumptions", unless you can correct me. You have not actually justified anything you have said henceforth. It is merely a negative claim regarding the existence of God, any other attached labels to the group as a whole are incoherent and false.

This is a foolish epistemic fallacy of negative proof. Why is it so frequently employed? The burden of proof does not rest on the negative claimant, rather the positive claimant. If your implication were true, a proposition could be defended solely on basis that it cannot be disproved! This is absurd. Do you believe in fairies merely because they cannot be disproved? Of course not.

Also, you are making a fundamental strawman regarding the atheist position.

A weak atheist makes a negative claim I do not believe that God exists. A weak atheist holds that there is no evidence for God and proofs of God (cosmology, design etc) are invalid, hence there is no reason to accept God without evidence. In this case, the weak atheist is making a valid negative claim. This is cogent but non-binding, meaning that the weak atheist does not know without doubt that God does not exist, they never claimed that, hence making your claim an invalid non sequitor (the claim that absolute knowledge is required to dismiss the concept of God). this is false because the weak atheist position is that were evidence to come along for God, they would either counter it or abdicate their position. I have neve, ever heard a weak atheist claim they know beyond doubt that God does not exist.

Being a logical proposition, the notion of transcendant intelligence should be testable and hence falsifiable. Having studied both the philosophical schools of rationality and empiricism for a long time, I have become convinced it is neither. Hence, any talk of it is meaningless. I tend to view religious proposition as noncognitivist, anyway, so it is irrelevant. Also, it seems you have, again, made a fallacy of negative proof. This shows such a poor knowledge of epistemic validity I am suprised anyone would entertain it.

In epistemology, the burden of proof rests on the claimant at all times. Hence, unless evidence is presented for God, only the atheist is operating within their epistemic rights

This is a fallacy of false dichotomy, and being that you are invoking the RRS as saying that, I would imagine it is also a strawman.

As of yet, you have hitherto not justified your assertion that "atheism" is a belief, nor have you made reference to which philosophical stance you are referring to (weak atheism, otherwise known as agnostic atheism, or strong atheism, otherwise known as deductive atheism). Regarding the deductive atheist position, there are multiple deductive arguments against theistic propositions. I have written several myself. Like this one:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/all_a_posteriori_arguments_for_the_existence_of_god_are_intellectually_bankrupt

Also, your statement regarding consciousness can also be proven false, as I have shown here:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/vitalism_immaterialism_and_christian_dualism_have_long_since_been_debunked_response

And, of course, we must take into account the noncognitivist position, which dismisses theistic propositions as not cogently meaningful:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_clarification_of_the_theological_noncognitivist_position

And lastly, please learn to spell.

Here's the thing.  I'm predicting you're going to have about three more posts before you do get banned.  I'm not going to do it, just to prove a point, but you've got an enormous chip on your shoulder, and you've obviously not bothered to read the ENORMOUS amount of debate/discussion of this subject that is already on the board, saying everything you've said.

Why don't you take that enormous chip off your shoulder, do some reading, and then come back when you've informed yourself more appropriately.  I can guarantee that if you spew much more of this kind of nonsense, you will get banned.

Consider this your first warning.

Sure you just handed me YOUR dogma a few links of stuff that OTHER people wrote. Ironicly NEITHER athiesm or christianity have ANY proof. So if your all going to act "BETTER" than me. Go ahead and ban me.

Athiesm is no more than an assumption. Yes you are a belief. You think you are right and everyone else is wrong. Your just like christianity. But almost oppisites. Christianity dumb and arrogant, Athiesm intelligant and arrogant.

You can tell me "There is no god"

You can me "THERE IS A GOD"

Eitherway Im not going to believe ANY side until I see some REAL physical proof infront of me.

Go ahead MAKE me a troll for what I think. GO AHEAD! If you get that worked up over someone disagreeing with you then take a good look at yourselves.

You provided THEROYS! You provided the equivallant of an ASSUMPTION. You gave me links that you copy and pasted. You gave me something that someone else typed.

I think it's possible for one to be an agnostic if he/she thinks it equally likely that some god exists as it doesn't.

Or if one thinks that beliefs must be held with certainty before they are rational / defensable.

On the later, I think the burden of proof should never be "with certainty". Otherwise we couldn't believe in anything.

We believe or disbelieve lots of things without being certain. Why exempt the god belief or hold it to a higher standard before calling it.

Am I certain no gods exist?  No. Do I need to be certain before asserting "no gods exist" is rational. No.

Yes, but Christians never have original thoughts. They copy off other people. As I told you, this is my own writing. So, being that, you would have the courtesy to at least read what I (NOT SOMEONE ELSE,FUCKWAD) have taken the the time to write, because what I (I! I! I! I! I! I! I!) Have written, does answer your queries.

On the other hand, if you would prefer to continue this excercise in deliberate intellectual laziness...

Furyan, I take back what I said about not banning you.  This is your second and final warning.

Deludedgod has given you directions for how to get to his writings.  You have no proof that he was plagiarizing (I know for a fact he's not) so your accusation amounts to an attack on a member.

If you do not address the arguments presented to you, I will personally ban you, and won't feel a moment's remorse.  You are acting like an ass.  Shape up now or you're gone.

Nevermind

If you can debate with me intelligantly I can respect you which you are doing now. Personally I think if there IS something out there that deserves the "title" of "god" then no man made religion can find of discover it and it would have to be revealed by science or it will have to reveal itself to us. But looking at the size of the universe we would be no smaller than ants. It would be like trying to make contact with the atoms floating around in our bodies.

 Then there is the fact that this universe could easly be out of chance no meaning to life what so ever just out of chance. We reproduce die reproduce die, endless cycle.

My real proposition is we just don't know. We do know that the thiestic God (the whole God, satan, hell, mary) is false. I dont believe in that in ANYWAY. Nor do I side with them. I DO DENY THEIR EXISTANCES!

I did note that Jesus, (The so called prophet Buddha not Siddartha) and speakers of many other cultures said almost the EXACT same thing about peace and forgiveness.

I have read a theroy that the "universes" are all one big intelligant consiencess and there are a crapload of big bangs going on making new ones all the time. No Indivdual spirt God, the thought that we are just that. A thought of our own.

I'm not saying that is true. Its a theroy, an interesting one that I read. But true or not I like to read anything that has a philosophical meaning. But I never make it my belief.

Truth is there is alot of stuff unexplained shit. Im sorry we got off on the wrong note there.

/salute

If its the God labeled by man as "God" then No I dont believe.

Awnser = Athiest 

Oh yeah sorry. In answer to the original question...Your right..I dont fuckin know. I actually dont care to know. I think its a waste of life to even try to know the answers. Ill find out when Im dead. Not going to sweat it now.

People sometimes get confused between belief and knowledge.  As BGH points out, when talking about belief you're dealing with a binary state - you either do or you don't.  Saying "I don't know" implies a lack of belief because if you did there would be absolutely no uncertainty or room for doubt.

Knowledge is a bit different as it's more concrete than belief - there has to be pretty absolute proof to say we know something.  In this sense we're probably all agnostic as far as religion goes given that neither side can prove or disprove God's existence.

 Summary: You can't be agnostic in terms of belief, only knowledge.

I find that in the everyday speech, people unfortunately have a lot of variety in their definitions for "agnostic" vs. "atheist."

In response to the question "Do you believe there is a god?", the answer:

- "I don't know" qualifies the respondent as an atheist by some schools of thought . . .

---whereas the answer:

- "I've yet to see any convincing evidence for a god" qualifies the respondent as an agnostic (!) by those who (mistakenly) think that being an atheist means saying "I KNOW there's no god."

This is why I sometimes skip the label and just spell out that my belief in a Higher Power is similar to my belief in unicorns: I can't "prove" they don't exist, but until there's some evidence for their existence, I see no reason to hold such a belief. (Furthermore, the lack of being able to prove unicorn's non-existence doesn't mean that the probability of their existence vs. non-existence is 50/50.)

Then again, should such evidence ever arise---be it for God or unicorns---I'll be 100% willing to change my position!

- Todd

I wouldn't mind an apology either, however I don't foresee one.

It's good to have this semantic argument from time to time. It is unfortunate, however, that it must be had EVERY thread. In doing so we distract from what I believe to be the real topic at hand. The real question is not "which title do you give yourself?" even though I think it is helpful to decide that for the sake of discussion. The real quesiton is "are you thinking or aren't you?"

If we are actually thinking about how we view the world, the ideas of fanciful daydreams will be clearly shown as such. When we ask the question "why do I hold this belief" it will be plain enough which ones make sense and which ones are just twaddle.

When I think of God in the sense of an uber-wizard that farted the world into existance I usually come around to the question "are you fucking serious?"

My point is, if we believe in this silly stuff we are either suffering from a mental disorder or we are not thinking at all...as others have already said. The labels of theist/atheist and agnostic are merely designators of a set of beliefs, they are not relevant in and of themselves.