Bad faith of the agnostic

Hume said:
Last time: I will respond to a post with NO personal attacks and NO ad hominems. I will not respond otherwise.
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Respond...or do not respond. That is up to you.

But if you intend to dictate rather than discuss...ain't gonna get a lot done.
 
Hume said:
I see you are not here to debate. This is not in my interest.
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I am here to debate. You are here to engage with people who agree with you...or who are not able to put reasonable challenges to your horse shit into coherent responses.

Get off it.

Let's go back to the discussion rather than you giving a lecture about manners.
 
Cypress said:
This doesn't make any sense. It does not logically follow that not making a decision amounts to bad faith.
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Bad faith as defined by the story Sartre tells.
I assumed everyone was familiar. I will find that text and post it.
 
Cypress said:
This doesn't make any sense. It does not logically follow that not making a decision amounts to bad faith.
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On the question of whether any gods exist or not...being agnostic (acknowledging one does not know) is almost the antithesis of "bad faith."

It is the unvarnished truth offered without reservations or conditions.

Atheists like Hume seem to want to mock the position for some reason. I suspect it is because Hume sees it as superior to his/her position.

So be it.
 
The agnostic says we cannot have knowledge of god. But believers do not say it is an object of knowledge.
 
Ross Dolan said:
On the question of whether any gods exist or not...being agnostic (acknowledging one does not know) is almost the antithesis of "bad faith."

It is the unvarnished truth offered without reservations or conditions.

Atheists like Hume seem to want to mock the position for some reason. I suspect it is because Hume sees it as superior to his/her position.

So be it.
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Most people seem to be either spiritual or agnostic. There seem to be exceedingly few true atheists.

Very few people are willing to fully embrace a strictly materialistic and reductionist view that nothing exists except quarks and electrons, that our lives are insignificant and irrelevant to the universe, that nothing but physics and chemistry has any relevance or explanatory power.

The atheist French philosopher mentioned mentioned in the OP reputedly had a deathbed conversion back to religion.
 
Cypress said:
Most people seem to be either spiritual or agnostic. There seem to be exceedingly few true atheists.

Very few people are willing to fully embrace a strictly materialistic and reductionist view that nothing exists exists quarks and electrons, that we are insignificant and irrelevant to the universe, that nothing but physics and chemistry has any relevance or explanatory power.
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Most intellectuals throughout history were atheists. Religion is for the masses.
 
Hume said:
Most intellectuals throughout history were atheists. Religion is for the masses.
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Throught most of history..."atheism" was defined as being without gods. It certainly does not mean what "atheists" of today want to suggest it means, "without a belief in a god."

That is a contrived meaning which developed (I think) during the early 1950's...and contends that atheism derives (etymologically) from "a" (without) + "theist" (a person with a belief in a GOD) = a person without a belief in a god. But that is absurd, mostly because the word atheist came into the English language almost 100 years BEFORE the word theist. Therefore it could not possibly have derived that way. Etymological dictionaries show that the word derived from the Greek through the French thusly: "a" (without) + theos (a god) = without a god.

www.etymonline.com

atheist | Search Online Etymology Dictionary

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.
www.etymonline.com www.etymonline.com

Atheists in the mid 20th century recongnized that they could appear more logical if they made the change...and many atheists of today stick with it. But some want to make the designation "without a belief in a god" to be definitional...and therefore ANYONE without a belief in a god was required to be an atheist.

No way.
 
Hume said:
A man and woman sit in a cafe and the man reaches over and places his hand on the woman's hand. She neither embraces his hand nor pulls away. Sartre calls this bad faith because she refuses to make a decision.

The agnostic has bad faith in same sense by refusing to decide if god is there or not.
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Wrong again. Admission that one does not know is completely different.

And, if people were really honest about the reality of the universe, they would all admit they do not know. They would admit they were theists, that they believe. But, nobody really knows.

Not even a good try, pally boy.
 
Hume said:
But you, the agnostic, sets those standards.
Science can only explain physical objects.
No one thinks of god as a physical object.
Thus wrong method.
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Horseshit. There are many believers who visualize their god as a real physical being.
 
Hume said:
The agnostic has bad faith in same sense by refusing to decide if god is there or not.
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Incorrect. You do not know what an agnostic is.

Every agnostic has decided/concluded definitively that nothing supernatural can be known.
 
Cypress said:
You said in all of history.

A poll is only of living philosophers.

Try again.
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I answered. I said I am reporting a CURRENT STUDY OF PHILOSOPHERS.

I said I have no knowledge of any study of all intellectuals in the history of civilization and only gave my JUDGMENT.
 
Hume said:
I answered. I said I am reporting a CURRENT STUDY OF PHILOSOPHERS.

I said I have no knowledge of any study of all intellectuals in the history of civilization and only gave my JUDGMENT.
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That is a poll with just theist or atheist.

It is my opinion that most intellectuals who are not theists...are agnostics.

In a March 1996 profile by Jim Dawson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sagan talked about his then-new book The Demon Haunted World and was asked about his personal spiritual views: "My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it," he said. "An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."
I e-mailed the person who would know Sagan’s views better than anyone: Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow. I specifically asked her about the quote in my 1996 story (“An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no God”). Druyan responded:

“Carl meant exactly what he said. He used words with great care. He did not know if there was a god. It is my understanding that to be an atheist is to take the position that it is known that there is no god or equivalent. Carl was comfortable with the label ‘agnostic’ but not ‘atheist.'”
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In his book on Stephen Hawking, “Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and God, Henry F. Schaefer III, writes:

Now, lest anyone be confused, let me state that Hawking strenuously denies charges that he is an atheist. When he is accused of that he really gets angry and says that such assertions are not true at all. He is an agnostic or deist or something more along those lines. He's certainly not an atheist and not even very sympathetic to atheism.
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It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”

Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.
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