Bingo. It's entirely a self-deception thing, leading to a desperate need to hijack the word, and to redefine it in some absurd way that assuages one's own insecurities.
This is certainly one way to look at it. I am an atheist ... but I am an actual atheist, i.e. I lack any theism. This means that I have no affirmative beliefs. I don't believe that there is a God, and I don't believe that is not a God. An atheist is characterized by the complete lack of any beliefs. This rubs hijacking Christians who have assigned their own personal meaning to "atheist" and "agnostic" the wrong way. PostmodernProphet is forever insisting that my position is something other than what it is, and that my complete lack of any affirmative theistic beliefs is somehow a set of theistic beliefs. There is no reasoning with him; he has hijacked the words for his own personal purposes and he will no longer listen to reason. Frank Apisa is an atheist who is exactly as you describe; he will readily acknowledge his complete lack of theistic beliefs and then immediately insist that he is not atheistic. I don't think Frank Apisa has made an honest post in his adult life.
Anyway, yes, if it turns out that you are correct and that I end up before the
Throne of Judgement, my plan is twofold:
1. I will hand over a list of Christians who owe me big time, as references, who will put in a good word for me, you know, looking for that "suspended sentence" as long as I complete so many hours of community service, and ...
2. I will point to the Throne and recommend a comfy recliner instead, and I will offer my services as a seating consultant.
Of course it is. It follows from philosophical definitions of what it means to "know" something and legitimately concluding that God and the supernatural are simply not knowable. It has nothing to do with one's affirmative belief in anything.
Simple. Everything else in their lives exists within nature and is knowable. God and the supernatural do not reside in nature and are therefore not knowable. It's just a locking-down of definitions and semantics so that discussion is possible.
Look, I get it. You're a Christian so you are
obligated to insist that "Of course God is knowable! blah, blah, blah ..." The problem is that you are then deviating from any locking-down of definitions, rendering discussion impossible. There is nothing you can do to get me to
know God,
no matter how hard you and I both try. I ask you to have Him show up for dinner so that I can meet Him, and that I'll whip up a pot roast and we can all discuss salvation over a few beers. You then say "It doesn't work that way. You need to believe
first." I then ask you why you are carving out a special exemption for God that doesn't apply to ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR LIFE. This is known as a
Special Pleading fallacy. Eventually, after some lengthy (and honest) philosophical discussion, we end up agreeing "OK, OK, God is not
knowable in the sense of the verb 'to know' outside of a unique, miraculous, non-repeatable (per the scientific method) supernatural experience that cannot be shared ... but is definitely believable ... and it is entirely legitimate for one to have the position that 'all the evidence
points to God's existence'."
So you, a Christian, and I, an atheist, engage in discussion, with both of us taking the agnostic position. Of course, many Christians simply cannot be honest in this way. They fear that if they are honest with semantics and definitions, God will be angry that mere faith in God is being claimed, not KNOWLEDGE! So yes, many Christians have taken on a rather annoying contradiction that prevents honest discussion.
Not all of them. Try me.
Let's talk about Cypress for a moment. His problem is that he recognizes that he is a loser who squandered his years of learning opportunities and has nothing to show for it. He is desperate for the world to view him as some sort of authority. That is his sole reason for posting on JPP and it is terribly pathetic. His only tool is to rush to Wikipedia (which is a non-authoritative source that is awash in errors) and to copy-paste what Wikipedia claims that experts claim. If someone knowledgeable, such as myself, merely contributes to a thread in which he is role-playing a thmart perthon, he immediately feels threatened, he arches his back, he hisses and he lashes out with "You just rushed to Wikipedia to copy-paste that!" (because that is what he does). He panics at the thought that everybody's attention will turn away from him to whomever is contributing something more interesting and with fewer to no errors. The last thing he will ever do is simply engage in a conversation with others who are contributing because not only are they forcing him into a painful withdrawal of his desperate fantasy, he doesn't know anything to serve as any impetus for participation. He knows nothing. He is totally uneducated. The only one with whom he will "engage" is Terry (Doc Dutch) who responds to everything Cypress writes with "Agreed." It doesn't matter how stupid what Cypress writes is, Terry doesn't dare lose the only person who will actually feign respect. Terry is one of the stupidest people on the internet and won't be finding anyone else of such a low intellectual level anytime soon.
