Magical thinking.

Anarchon said:
Agreeing with you on that matter is another thing that is not a requirement for being an atheist. You keep making all kinds of claims about atheists that aren't true. Why is that? Are you a habitual liar? That would fit, seeing how you support religion the way you do.
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You keep making all kinds of claims about atheists that aren't true. Why is that? Are you a habitual liar? That would fit, seeing how you support atheism the way you do......
 
PostmodernProphet said:
everyone except atheists have the same one.......you're the only ones who talk about strong, weak and feeble minded atheists.....
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Agnostics do not deny the existence of God—instead, they hold that one cannot know for certain whether or not God exists. The term agnostic was coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge.
 
kudzu said:
Agnostics do not deny the existence of God—instead, they hold that one cannot know for certain whether or not God exists. The term agnostic was coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge.
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???.....I never said they did......I also never said they were atheists........atheists are the ones who tried to include them in their ranks as "weak atheists"......Have you ever heard an agnostic self identify as a weak atheist?......
 
kudzu said:
I don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or fortune tellers or talking snakes either.. and that is NOT a religion.
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saying there is no god is an assertion in the absence of evidence......you can pretend otherwise as strongly as you want......the more you do so, the more religious you appear.....
 
PostmodernProphet said:
saying there is no god is an assertion in the absence of evidence......you can pretend otherwise as strongly as you want......the more you do so, the more religious you appear.....
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That's not true. There is NO evidence that God exists.. Do you believe in the Zodiac ?


Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.

How Agnostic Differs From Atheist.

Many people are interested in distinguishing between the words agnostic and atheist.The difference is quite simple: atheist refers to someone who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods, and agnostic refers to someone who doesn’t know whether there is a god, or even if such a thing is knowable.
 
Anarchon said:
This is rational. The problem is that gods are defined as being supernatural entities. As I mentioned before, the proof of the non-existence of a god hinges on the definition of god. Without a theist offering a definition for what it is they believe in (something they conveniently refuse to do), I chose the most common, all-inclusive attribute of all gods, which is that they are supernatural. If any theist doesn't like that attribute, they are free to define god for us, and I will address that definition as well.
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Okay...but I want to discuss this issue with you, Anarchon, and I am not a theist. So my perspective will be that of an "agnostic." **

First of all, if we "define" any X as something that cannot exist...we will always (and correctly) conclude that X does not exist. Conversely if we "define" any X as something that MUST exist...we will always (and correctly) conclude that X exists.

We agree that if a god (however it eventually is “described”) exists…it EXISTS and is not supernatural. In fact, we seem to agree that the word “supernatural” is incongruous…so using it as a descriptor in a discussion about whether gods exist...is incongruous. (Theists using that descriptor are making a huge mistake…lexicographers using that descriptor are making the same mistake.)

Ancients did NOT make that mistake. They made their gods part of nature…and they made their gods “godS” rather than “God”…plural and sorta uncapitalized. The step to monotheism…may have been a step forward (I sometimes think NOT), but the move to “supernatural” was definitely a step backward. The god of Abraham was NOT originally supernatural. That is a relatively recent investiture.

Okay…enough for initial remarks right now. Some comments, if you will, about what is here so far.



**I prefer not to use descriptors like "atheist" or "agnostic" except as a shortcut, because they mean so many different things to different people. So to be sure we are on the same page when I use "agnostic" to describe me, I essentially mean:

I do not know if gods exist or not;
I see no reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of gods is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...

...so I don't.
 
I strongly disagree with lots of what is being said about "atheist" and "agnostic" in the other posts here...but I'll speak to that in time. Suffice right now to say that use of those words almost always seems to require lots of explanations...so the use of them is functionally useless.

Each of us should clearly state a position rather than us them.
 
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