Most people would probably label you as an agnostic. Or maybe agnostic atheist, but that wouldn’t be fully clear, and it’s a bit of a pleonasm, to be honest.
:facepalm:
That’s what he’s been doing for the last billion pages of this worthless off-topic argument about WORDS[/SIZE], of all things!
Now can we please get back to having a REAL discussion about the TOPIC?[/SIZE]
I have barely participated in this discussion until my last few pages, so fuck off.
Also notice how I said “maybe” and "but… "
We are just building a common ground for future discussions 
. There is no questions to answer anyway.
That’s an interesting claim. Maybe we should make a poll "What do you understand as “Atheism”? 
I’m sorry, but I don’t see a difference relevant to this discussion.
Yes, dictionaries provide definitions for words as most people understand them, but that’s their purpose, isn’t it? If a lot of people assign the same meaning to a certain word, then a definition that describes it must be correct.
You see, that’s funny, because I’m an Atheist (in any of the definition) and I don’t use the therm “atheism” to define only a lack of belief, for me it’s something more. Am I an exception?
Is the non-existence of God as obvious for you as the fact that the universe was created in the Big Bang? If so, then you are an Atheist according to my definition. The fact that you “don’t know” may indicate that you are a critical rationalist too, but not an Agnostic.
The reason that I separate Agnosticism from Atheism is that when I was an Agnostic, then my world view was completely different from now. This was a period when I could just convert back to Christianity, this is something that may seem hard to understand for most of the Atheists. If you haven’t felt that way (and I’m sure you haven’t) then IMO you shouldn’t call yourself an Agnostic.
Let’s put it this way: Every atheist that I talked to consider atheism to be the lack of belief.
Rain exists. Moscow exists. It could rain in Moscow two weeks from now. Prediction of future events is not equivalent to the existence of something.
Yes, but I’m still not going to eat dinner off my cat regardless of how many people call my cat a dinner table.
You can have more than simple lack of belief, but atheism is simply lack of belief. The ‘something more’ would be something else in addition to atheism. I am a rational humanist. I am a critical rationalist. I am also an atheist. My critical rationalism and rational humanism has nothing to do with my absence of belief in a deity.
The non-existence of a god is not obvious to me because I have no evidence for or against one…or even what a god even is.
I could quite easily convert to Christianity. All it takes is some evidence that Christianity is the right religion. For now, I don’t know (agnostic) and I don’t believe (atheist).
As for the people complaining about the semantics argument, I feel it’s on topic since these are questions for atheists.
No, the definition is extremely precise. Seriously, why can’t you understand this?
Agnosticism - The belief that there can be no proof[/SIZE] either that God exists or that God does not exist.
NO PROOF. NO. PROOF. This is not ambiguous or vague.
An Agnostic is someone who believes there is “NO PROOF”. It doesn’t say “absolute proof”, it says “proof”.
Really, really, really simple.
And you say you AREN’T an atheist?
Is this guy trolling or what?
FFS, how is
“I don’t believe in a god.”
any different from
“I don’t believe there is a god”.
That’s like saying “I don’t there are no fairies, I just don’t believe in fairies.”
There isn’t a difference?
(Just for the record, if there are any misunderstandings from anyone reading this even though I’ve already affirmed this many times in this thread, let me make this perfectly clear: I am an atheist.)
Of course there isn’t! You can’t disbelieve in anything other than concepts without disbelieving its existence!
I’m…confused. Can we start that conversation over?
There is quite a difference between believing in God, and believing in the existence of God.
Someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of God, doesn’t believe in God. But someone who isn’t sure whether there is a God or not, and doesn’t follow the religion connected to God, doesn’t believe in God, he just isn’t sure whether there is a God or not.
Not believing in God = not following a religion, but not denying his (in)existence.
Not believing in the existence of God = not following a religion and claiming God doesn’t exist.
I for one am not convinced by any of the arguments pro or contra the existence of God, I just chose to not follow a holy scripture that dictates me how to live in the eyes of a deity. If God exists, then yay for those that have always believed in him, but I just don’t find his ways to be all that meaningful. If God does exist, I still won’t believe in him because his ways are still meaningless to me.
To not deny his existence, but to deny his religion is to be a fool. One necessitates the other. Without religion we wouldn’t know of a god, without a god there would be no religion.
Since we’re getting all wacky confusing semantic in here, I’m going to state that I’m a gnostic atheist. That means I eat lightning and shit blood and skid through life by on the seat of my pants.
My reasoning for KNOWING that no god exists? Try this analogy on for size:
Guy: I have a faerie!
Me: No you don’t, I don’t see anything.
Guy: Well, you don’t have proof that I do or do not have a faerie, so you should consider the possibility.
Me: Fuck you, no I don’t, there’s no faerie, that’s retarded.
Childish? Maybe, but it’s a kind of logic used by everyone every day, whether or not they purport that PROVING something’s NON-EXISTENCE is just as important as having definable, empirical knowledge.
Every time someone tells you something that seems completely bonkers off the wall untrue, do you consider they may be telling the truth? Not unless they can prove it. Usually, you don’t even care to entertain the idea. You might shrug and give a disinterested grunt at their bullshit, but you don’t consider it. Why should a god be any different?
Starting that conversation over:
Where have I said that I’m not an atheist?
Oh no, you’re not dragging me into this madness again.
You’re an atheist. All atheists are agnostics. The END.
:brow:
Fine. Back to what the nietzschesaurus said:
There was a comic (that now I can’t find) which I feel expresses what you say perfectly:
Scenario #1:
Man 1: I have a baseball.
Man 2: Prove it.
Man 1: Here. shows baseball
Man 2: Okay, you have a baseball.
Scenario #2:
Man 1: God exists.
Man 2: Prove it.
Man 1: YOU CAN’T PROVE HE DOESN’T EXIST!
Man 2: WTF?
And then it went:
Man 1: I have a baseball.
Man 2: Prove it.
Man 1: YOU CANNOT PROVE THAT I HAVEN’T!
Man 2: WTF?!