Is agnosticism the only honest position?

i would say that faith is also a lot like hope. people are hoping it's true while others believe it to true for the purpose of making their reality or world according to their beliefs.

i would also say that there is an unnoticed aspect to religion. while the distracting focus among debaters of either side is often on the existence of a creator or not, most believers believe for more local reasons or may be the real reason. whether to push their agenda with the name/concept god attached which gives the illusion that it's not at all personally motivated, for moral values, god concept may appeal to, representative of or serves their megalomania or with some people and some cases, the opposite; that god represents a source of protection from others and also a concept that can be used to dissolve responsiblilty to others by citing their responsibility to god more important as well as to consider something beyond themselves (others) etc. all the motivations are not negative or duplicitous though but they can be used that way.

in other words, right or wrong, god concept can appeal to, be used and be representative of many different things to many different people by their own nature and for their own purpose.

 

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I get an agnostic theist. In agnosticism there is already a probability suggested.

How can somebody be an agnostic atheist?

It doesn't make any sense. There is an essential conflict. A person is either an agnostic, or an atheist. Or going through a process of being an atheist.

 

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And that is basically my position. I most definitely think you can be an agnostic atheist and an agnostic theist. It's the leaving off the agnostic part that I believe to be dishonest (or delusional). If you think you KNOW there isn't a God, or if you think you KNOW there IS a God... then you are either lying to yourself or delusional.

 

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You are actually an agnostic. But you think agnostics are not taken seriously or agressive enough, so you refer to yourself as an atheist?

 

I don't understand why you 'get' the position that makes the least sense. I don't believe anyone can know there is a a god, and I don't take god on faith either, hence I am an agnostic, and an atheist.

But if someone admits they can't know, but 'feels' there is a God, they have to admit to it being subjective, and then how can faith have no doubt?

 

Atheism is about faith, agnosticism about knowledge. Too often, people think agnosticism is about not knowing one's own mind, and being undecided. That isn't correct. Agnosticism is not some apologetic mid ground between theism and atheism.

 

you are right, that's why most have to refer to themselves as atheists to err on the side of most clear.

i think the reason why we allow it is because people often label what they feel inside or their life spark, god. when many are arguing with others about the concept of god, they feel it personally threatening this association(which they've made consciously or unconsciously) and it's dire because to deny the existence of god is denying that they exist or who they are.

 

it has nothing to do with feeling good, for me anyway. i don't see how being a theist makes you feel any better than being an atheist, or agnostic. you could argue the ignorance is bliss stance from either side, but ignorance doesn't make everyone happy.

science doesn't necessarily support my faith in many ways, but it doesn't contradict it either. it's just not interested.

and faith is not belief in the absence of evidence, it is trust in something you know, and you know via interaction and experience, which is the evidence that you base your trust on.

 

Your examples are invalid. And there can't be an 'anecdotes' with werewolves and vampires in it, they don't exist. An anecdote is a real situation actually happened in the past with real people so one could use it to refer the condition.

What you are trying to do is building an anology I guess, but it's incorrect.

Even you don't know if you will win the lottery or not, there is a possibility to win no matter how low, because quite a few people already won the lottery. We know this, we watch them losing all the money in stupid ways.

We haven't seen or witnessed anyone chatting with the creator about his brilliant plan.

You or anyone will never get attacked by a werewolf or a vampire because they don't exist. Even one day if science manages to combine wolf and human dna and that creature attacks a human it won't be a werewolf attack. It will be an attacked casued by a failed biological experiment.

Believing god and believing vampires&werewolves are not the same kind of delusions.

Claiming -in any sense- everybody is agnostic at some point also means the idea of agnosticism covers every concept related to fundemental questions which in the first place is the reason of conflict. It refuses to cover them.

 

Why it's the least position that makes sense? I can't understand how somebody be two exactly opposing things. Where did I 'get' the least position that makes sense before?

 

Why can you not believe God is real simply because you have admitted doubt? I would argue that it isn't belief UNLESS there is doubt. Remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? The part where he was supposed to "take a leap of faith", and when he did realized there was a stone bridge that he couldn't see at first? If he could have seen it, it wouldn't have been a leap of faith, would it?

 

They aren't unjustified, they just change their epistemological position or methodology. I don't find this inherently fallacious, I don't think it's possible to maintain a single stance for everything. But it is typically unexamined and often people will switch stances without argument whenever they find it convenient which I do find invalid.

Most often the primary position is empirical but then switches to provide justification of belief in god. As with a Christian who holds to scientific methodology except where their personal experience of god trumps it. Technically it's still an empirical stance but the methodology has changed, I tend to call it revelatory to distinguish the difference.

As I stated though I don't think it's true possible to maintain a single stance though, the error lies in not providing sufficient argument. For example, even though for most purposes I take a scientific position at some point a reductive argument forces me to move to rationalism to establish a priori propositions (I exist, my perceptions are in some way congruent with reality or can be validated to be so).

~Raithere

 

Not true, there are plenty of examples of people that claim to have been bitten by a vampire, or seen a ghost, and so on. If the person making these claims believes them to be true then they are presenting anecdotal evidence.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0027380#m_en_gb0027380

My point is that it is similar to claiming a belief in a God(s), little more than imagination fueled delusions, sometimes combined with wishful thinking.

By the way, how do you know vampires and werewolves don't exist?

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How can you think something you doubt, is real? Surely, all it can ever be, is a case of 'I Want to Believe'?

 

I think the only way to be an honest atheist or person of religion is to be mentally imbalanced.

So yes, there are people who truly believe wholeheartedly in something they have NO KNOWLEDGE OF, they just aren't sane people.

I think that sane people can only truly be agnostic, any sane atheist or theist I ever met eventually became agnostic because they never really believed the hype, but they wanted to.

Hell, we all wanted to believe in the imaginary things we were taught as a child that allowed us to divide people into categories of good and bad. It's a little disheartening to know that we are all just people.

 

I KNOW that Zeus (a powerful, corporeal being, resembling a large human, and living in a palace on top of Mount Olympus) does not exist. - We have photos of Mount Olympus and no one is living there.

I KNOW that Jehovah (a god who answers people's prayers and heals them preferentially) does not exist. - We have studied the healing effect of prayer and it falls inside the margin of error.

You have to define god first.

~Raithere

 

the thing most theists don't consider is that even if god/creator were proved to be true, it doesn't mean anything would change.

it doesn't mean god would suddenly be agreed with or that it would be worshiped either. for example, one can identify the president or those in power but that doesn't mean all agree with their decisions. some may want to kill it or some may like/dislike. hypothetically, it may be best that god doesn't show up.

if a creator really did exist and showed itself with the ability to communicate with us, it would receive more requests for change than not.

so, either way, it is largely irrevelant except to give hope to people that there is a good reason for keep going and being a positive change. the reasons may be real and valid but the concept may not be and that is where many get stumped, confused or they need a mental concrete image (god is an entity with xyz characteristics) in order to validate purpose. if they need it or it's real to them, then so be it and that's what works for them.

 

Sorry, I cannot take you seriously.

 

I consider myself an agnostic with regards to transcendental matters. But I don't have any problem believing that I have knowledge about a great many mundane earthly matters.

By 'transcendental', I guess that I mean something like supposed beings and realms that lie 'beyond' the natural world revealed by our senses and/or 'beyond' our human powers of cognition. That's why I typically respond to transcendentalist claims with epistemological questions. If somebody starts making assertions about supposed "higher realities", my first instinct is to ask what persuasive account they can give for how they know the things that they say they know.

Bottom line: For me at least, agnosticism depends upon the nature of the object about which knowledge claims are being made, and upon the kinds of epistemological difficulties that those knowledge claims raise. Some knowledge claims are going to be more problematic than others.

 

Well I can't imagine why not.
It's a simple question, since it is not possible to prove the non-existance of either werewolves or God.

I don't KNOW God doesn't exist, nor do you KNOW werewolves don't exist.
I don't believe in either of them, for the same reason; both are made up by man.