Percentage of atheists in prison

[indy007]

Originally posted by lazs2

lazs

Again, an agnostic believes there definately is a God.
An atheist believes there is no God.

That's the definitions I'm working with.

Either can be wrong. I'm an Atheist because I'm pretty sure there is no God (or anything "supernatural" for that matter, be it ghosts & goblins, mentalists, psychic powers, etc). I totally do not believe what Moot does, in that even if there were a God, it'd be impossible for us to understand it.

Put down your Beor War books for a few minutes, and hit up Barnes & Knowbles. Go get some works by Michael Shermer. "Why People Believe Weird Things" and "The Science of Good and Evil" are very good books. That would give you far better insight into why I would describe myself as an atheist, as opposed to agnostic, than I could explain on this forum.

[Tachus]

Originally posted by indy007
Again, an agnostic believes there definately is a God.
An atheist believes there is no God.

That's the definitions I'm working with.

Either can be wrong. I'm an Atheist because I'm pretty sure there is no God (or anything "supernatural" for that matter, be it ghosts & goblins, mentalists, psychic powers, etc). I totally do not believe what Moot does, in that even if there were a God, it'd be impossible for us to understand it.

Put down your Beor War books for a few minutes, and hit up Barnes & Knowbles. Go get some works by Michael Shermer. "Why People Believe Weird Things" and "The Science of Good and Evil" are very good books. That would give you far better insight into why I would describe myself as an atheist, as opposed to agnostic, than I could explain on this forum.

I don't really care that much about how you define yourself really. The issue comes from the fact the word agnostic comes from two Greek words, which meant "without" & "knowledge". So most understand that to mean, an agnostic is someone that says, "I don't not know if there is a god." (He is without knowledge) I guess you could say, it meant, there is a god, but I do not know that god, but that definition seems a little forced.

It has always been my understanding that an agnostic claimed, "Not to know" one way or the other.

As opposed to an atheist, that stated, "There is no god" (This is what the American Atheist organization states)

Again, you can define yourself however you like, and I doesn't bother me, just pointing out your definitions are certainly different from what is normally accepted.

Best regards,
--Tachus

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by indy007
Again, an agnostic believes there definately is a God.
An atheist believes there is no God.

That's the definitions I'm working with.

Either can be wrong. I'm an Atheist because I'm pretty sure there is no God (or anything "supernatural" for that matter, be it ghosts & goblins, mentalists, psychic powers, etc). I totally do not believe what Moot does, in that even if there were a God, it'd be impossible for us to understand it.

Put down your Beor War books for a few minutes, and hit up Barnes & Knowbles. Go get some works by Michael Shermer. "Why People Believe Weird Things" and "The Science of Good and Evil" are very good books. That would give you far better insight into why I would describe myself as an atheist, as opposed to agnostic, than I could explain on this forum.

You are alone in your definitions.  An atheist is certain there is no God.  An agnostic believes that there MAY be a God, however probable or improbable.

Usually when people say, "pretty sure", they mean almost sure... so which is it?

I really don't care if you are agnostic or atheist, just understand the standard definitions.

[SaburoS]

Webster's has a simple definition:

Atheist - Denies the existence of God.

[indy007]

Originally posted by eskimo2
You are alone in your definitions.  An atheist is certain there is no God.  An agnostic believes that there MAY be a God, however probable or improbable.

Usually when people say, "pretty sure", they mean almost sure... so which is it?

I really don't care if you are agnostic or atheist, just understand the standard definitions.

Standard? I'm using the definition that's the same from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Online Etymology Dictionary, WordNet 3.0 by Princeton University, and Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary.

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings

1571, from Fr. athéiste (16c.), from Gk. atheos "to deny the gods, godless," from a- "without" + theos "a god" (see Thea). A slightly earlier form is represented by atheonism (c.1534) which is perhaps from It. atheo "atheist

1.  someone who denies the existence of god

a person who does not believe in God

I think I fit that fairly well. I don't believe in a God. I don't believe there's some omniscent being that floats around spying on us. I don't believe there's any type of supernatural or inexplicable powers. I don't believe that something just decided to make everything that is.

now, from those same dictionaries...

1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.  
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.  

agnostic  

1870, "one who professes that the existence of a First Cause and the essential nature of things are not and cannot be known." Coined by T.H. Huxley from Gk. agnostos "unknown, unknowable," from a- "not" + gnostos "(to be) known" (see gnostic). Sometimes said to be a reference to Paul's mention of the altar to "the Unknown God," but according to Huxley it was coined with ref. to the early Church movement known as Gnosticism (see Gnostic).

agnostic

adjective
1.  of or pertaining to an agnostic or agnosticism  
2.  uncertain of all claims to knowledge [ant: gnostic]  

Now I take this to mean 2 things. Either, 1, there definately is a God, but we're too stupid to ever figure out what it is.. or 2, all knowledge is uncertain. I don't believe #1 at all. Like I said, the world used to be flat, and we used to be the center of the universe. I haven't seen anything to suggest that there is a limit to our knowledge. #2 comes back down to reasonable probability. It's really a philisophical question that's been addressed by people far more eloquent than I am.

That's a pretty big difference from what a lot of you are saying, and promptly telling me to read the dictionary... while I'm quoting 4 of them at once. Those sources would lead me to believe that the label Atheist would apply to me, and Agnostic to Moot. It almost seems like y'all are using a pop-culture version of Agnosticism, in that there is a God, the creator, with some sort of plan for humanity, but you don't know what religion is right, or think they all missed the mark. To me that seems quite a bit more like what Chairboy mentioned, closet christians.

[Holden McGroin]

an agnostic does not believe...

An Atheist believes there is no God

Agnostic = no belief in God

Athiest = belief in no God.

There is a distinction.

[Tachus]

The term is defined differently depending on one's source.

Clearly, Indy posted some sources. You can't just ignore them. However, the term is defined differently in other sources, you can't ignore them either.

For example:
Merriam-Webster
1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

(So it is unknown)

From a Philosophy web site
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/agnostic.htm
Agnostic - Agnostos
The English term "agnostic" is derived from the Greek "agnostos," which means, "to not know." An agnostic is one who admits, "I don't know." The term is applied specifically to those who don't know for certain whether or not God exists. An agnostic is one who believes that the existence of God is unknown and most likely beyond human ability to discover.

(Again, I don't know)


 American Heritage Dictionary
         1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
         2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
   2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

(Again, can't know, or don't know)

Worldnet
noun
1.    someone who is doubtful or noncommittal about something
2.    a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)


So, it seems some place define an agnostic as someone that believes there is a God, but claim you can't know that God. (Indy's references)

While others define it as, a person that say I don't know if there is a God, and I doubt that it can be known. (my references)


I'm sure that clears it all up

Best regards,
--Tachus

[moot]

Who cares about the dictionary semantics? The argument's getting stuck in mud so I'm going to cut straight to the bottom lines.

I totally do not believe what Moot does, in that even if there were a God, it'd be impossible for us to understand it.

He wouldn't be much of a god if we could then, would he?

Again, an agnostic believes there definately is a God.

See McGroin's post.  Lazs' categorization is the same, faith vs reason.  Definite conclusions about God's existence are a leap of faith as I'll show further down.

Originally posted by indy007
Occam's Razor. He makes an automatic assumption about the existence of an omnipotent being. An unprovable assumption is the basis for his entire arguement. Therefore, his theory is inherrently flawed.

What assumption about an omnipotent being's existence? That it exists? I don't assume it does.  All I concern myself with is what's on the rational side of the faith/reason divide. I say you can't possibly tell for sure whether god is revealing himself to you or if you're deluding. Can you refute this? Or was this not what you refered to?
The only unprovable assumption I see is insistance that God does exist or that he doesn't.  You can't prove that and yet take it for granted.
If he is in fact provable or disprovable then by all means please settle the thousands of years of debate once and for all!  You're probably on your way to infamy right next to guys like Plato.  I'm all ears.

Tachus, I'm not doing this ad ignorantiam, I'm not laying some two-bit debate trap here so take it easy with that debate devices crap  I'm following common sense only, no fancy stuff.  I do stand on some conventions like Descartes' brain in a jar argument about reality being just a trick of god, and its implications.

We can't know god, because if there is a god he is infinite, and because he's infinite we cannot know him.

If there is a god, and he's not infinite, he's no "god".  We'll surpass him sooner or later as Indy hinted at.  If he's infinite, we'll never reach him.  This last bit is not some philosophical mumbo jumbo, it's plain transparent math:  only by reaching an infinite rate of learning can we reach infinite knowledge.  That scale of knowledge is where a true (infinite) god would be within the reach of our perception unaided by divine will.  With that divine help then yes, obviously you can be aware of god by your own senses; and I had specified this but you either skipped that part or chose to ignore it.  Here it is again:

an infinite god is within our comprehension right now, as we are, not as we could or should be.

And here's the flaw in this part of your post:

Thus a god that is infinite (if you include omniscience and omnipotent, to omnipresent, when defining infinite) that cannot be known by a finite mind cannot exist. (For if it wanted to be known, it could be known)

In blue is God's will, plain text is man's will and ability.  You just illustrated a Deus Ex, not man's will.  Like I said, (how many times do I have to repeat it?) we can't conceive of god's true form on our own.  The scales of finite and infinite are not comparable.

The statement "you can't say anything with certainty about god" qualified the unformulated hypothetical statement

God is such and such / so and so

, not the statement

you can't say anything with certainty about god

itself, because that there statement is not about god nor is it an attribute of it, but is about our ability to state something about a certain subject.  That ability is our own and established, not unknown like "god" is.

Finaly I'll do a quick and dirty simulation of the inadequacy of man's mind in comparison to god:
How much do you need to know about something to accurately predict it beyond doubt?  From A to Z, thoroughly, totaly.  How much does man know now?  How much will he know in a thousand years?  In a few billion orders of magnitude's time more?  All of those durations will yield an infinitely small proportion of knowledge about the totality of the infinite that a true god would be which would be inadequate for us to expect any accuracy from, unless we achieve an infinite rate of learning; in which case we wouldn't need any longer than an infinitely short span of time.
We would have to be infinite ourselves. Not to go off on a tangent here, but that'd coincide with the scriptures' descriptions of man joining with god's knowledge, or whatever.

[lazs2]

chair... I am an agnostic about the possibility of bunnies hiding chicken eggs... I have seen stranger things... I am not gonna post 20 threads on how evil it is to believe in the possibility.

I think we can all see that this has come full circle..  many "atheists" are simply looking for a cool title or... want to distance themselves as far away as they can from the hated theists...

That is fine with me but in doing so they create a huge "gray area" that never existed in the defenitions...

Deny the existence of god simply means.... deny   To be such simply means that... you don't care about any possibilties.. you are operating on pure faith...just as the hated theists are.

agnostic doesn't piss you off near as much but just doesn't have enough punch or shock value..

The real problem comes when you have to explain the whole thing... when the words take meaning and not just an emotional impact.

now you are stuck with a bunch of tapdancing and graying out the simple defenition..

You need to come up with a new word...  one that fits somewhere between agnostic and atheist.... something that says to the world "I am like an agnostic but with a mean streak"

Perhaps you could be AGNATHEISTS?  cause you sure as hell (in your minds at least) don't fit in the accepted defenitions.  at least the rest of us would know that you didn't mean what we thought you meant when you claim to be atheists.

lazs

[Tachus]

Originally posted by moot
Who cares about the dictionary semantics? The argument's getting stuck in mud so I'm going to cut straight to the bottom lines.

He wouldn't be much of a god if we could then, would he?

See McGroin's post.  Lazs' categorization is the same, faith vs reason.  Definite conclusions about God's existence are a leap of faith as I'll show further down.
 
What assumption about an omnipotent being's existence? That it exists? I don't assume it does.  All I concern myself with is what's on the rational side of the faith/reason divide. I say you can't possibly tell for sure whether god is revealing himself to you or if you're deluding. Can you refute this? Or was this not what you refered to?
The only unprovable assumption I see is insistance that God does exist or that he doesn't.  You can't prove that and yet take it for granted.
If he is in fact provable or disprovable then by all means please settle the thousands of years of debate once and for all!  You're probably on your way to infamy right next to guys like Plato.  I'm all ears.

Tachus, I'm not doing this ad ignorantiam, I'm not laying some two-bit debate trap here so take it easy with that debate devices crap  I'm following common sense only, no fancy stuff.  I do stand on some conventions like Descartes' brain in a jar argument about reality being just a trick of god, and its implications.

If there is a god, and he's not infinite, he's no "god".  We'll surpass him sooner or later as Indy hinted at.  If he's infinite, we'll never reach him.  This last bit is not some philosophical mumbo jumbo, it's plain transparent math:  only by reaching an infinite rate of learning can we reach infinite knowledge.  That scale of knowledge is where a true (infinite) god would be within the reach of our perception unaided by divine will.  With that divine help then yes, obviously you can be aware of god by your own senses; and I had specified this but you either skipped that part or chose to ignore it.  Here it is again:
And here's the flaw in this part of your post:
In blue is God's will, plain text is man's will and ability.  You just illustrated a Deus Ex, not man's will.  Like I said, (how many times do I have to repeat it?) we can't conceive of god's true form on our own.  The scales of finite and infinite are not comparable.

The statement "you can't say anything with certainty about god" qualified the unformulated hypothetical statement, not the statement  itself, because that there statement is not about god nor is it an attribute of it, but is about our ability to state something about a certain subject.  That ability is our own and established, not unknown like "god" is.

Finaly I'll do a quick and dirty simulation of the inadequacy of man's mind in comparison to god:
How much do you need to know about something to accurately predict it beyond doubt?  From A to Z, thoroughly, totaly.  How much does man know now?  How much will he know in a thousand years?  In a few billion orders of magnitude's time more?  All of those durations will yield an infinitely small proportion of knowledge about the totality of the infinite that a true god would be which would be inadequate for us to expect any accuracy from, unless we achieve an infinite rate of learning; in which case we wouldn't need any longer than an infinitely short span of time.
We would have to be infinite ourselves. Not to go off on a tangent here, but that'd coincide with the scriptures' descriptions of man joining with god's knowledge, or whatever.

I did indeed mis-read your post, on the issue of knowing God.
If what you are stating is "Man cannot know God, apart from God imparting that knowledge to man." Then I agree with you (at least in part). Which would mean if someone claimed to know God it cannot be simply dismissed out of hand. As it would be possible to know God, if God had desired to reveal himself. So the issue then becomes, not one of ability, but how do we examine his claim? (One way of course would include the question of revelation, since he would lack the ability to know God apart from God imparting him that knowledge, but this is only part of the examination.)

 
I thought you were saying, "Man cannot know God, in his (man) present condition, under any circumstances (ie, God revealing himself)" Which clearly violates the law of Non Contradiction, which I outlined in a earlier post.


Best regards,
--Tachus

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Tachus
As it would be possible to know God, if God had desired to reveal himself.

I once met God.  He was a just stranger on the bus, tryin' to make his way home.  I asked Him, "What's up with riding the bus anyway?  Why don't you just zap yourself to wherever it is you're going?"

"Well, I like to slum it sometimes." He said, "I once got a ride with this nice young man in a AMC Pacer, so this is a step up."

[Chairboy]

Lazs, I think you're fooling yourself.  You're entitled to your beliefs, and I'm entitled to my lack of belief.  The tapdancing is above in your reply, the sophistry you employ dodging the easter bunny issue is proof.

[Tachus]

Chairboy,

As to the a rabbit that lays colored eggs. This happens to be  mentioned when discussing what is Logically Possible vs what is Physically Possible in "How to think about Weird Things" (a college level textbook used for a Critical Thinking class)

I'll quote, "A cow jumping over the moon is physically impossible.... But a cow jumping over the moon is not logically impossible. Similarly, there is no contradiction in the notion of a bunny laying multicolored eggs." (Weird 20)

The point is, when talking about what is logically possible, unless it violates the law of non-contradiction, (a round square, crossing parallel lines) it is NOT logically impossible.

The existence of a God is NOT logically impossible, and either is the existence of a bunny that lays colored eggs. However, we know a bunny that lays colored eggs doesn't exist because is "Physically Impossible".

I'll quote again, (On ESP, but the same principle applies to other topics)
"Now if he [Rothman] means that ESP is logically impossible, then provided he's right, we can dismiss it out of hand, for in that case, it can't exist. But ESP isn't logically impossible." (Weird 19)

So, you can dismiss something out of hand if it's "Logically Impossible" (violates the law of non-constriction for example), but if not, then a dismissal out of hand is unreasonable.


In the end, "the rabbit that lays colored eggs" analogy has no relevance to the topic of the existence of God, accept to demonstrate that the existence of God cannot be reasonably dismissed out of hand (as it is not "Logically Impossible") in the same manner a bunny that lays colored eggs cannot be dismissed out of hand. The bunny bites the dust, when we look at "physically possible".

Best regards,
--Tachus

[Tachus]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
I once met God.  He was a just stranger on the bus, tryin' to make his way home.  I asked Him, "What's up with riding the bus anyway?  Why don't you just zap yourself to wherever it is you're going?"

"Well, I like to slum it sometimes." He said, "I once got a ride with this nice young man in a AMC Pacer, so this is a step up."

I used to own a Pacer

--Tachus

[lazs2]

let's just make the whole thing so simple that even an atheist or a democrat can understand it...  

When it comes to believing in anything there are three choices....

Yes
No
maybe

not... no but maybe yes but not really but only if but.....


yes, no or maybe..

That's it.

You can't be an atheist light... that is simply an agnostic.

I don't care what your belief is... none of my business unless you proclaim it to me but...  I just want to get the terms straight.    words simply mean something.

not an emotional something.... an actual something.

lazs