Are agnostics pu**ies?

We Seventh Day Agnostics juste hate Militant Agnostics, we think...

Surely not denying the possibility of the existence of a god, gods or whatever is the more scientific position? If a question by its very nature can't be answered, why answer it either way? That's my take on agnosticism, anyway, but then again I'm an engineer and not a philosopher.

If a question by its very nature can't be answered

Why can't it be answered?

Is there a big purple dinosaur floating behind the walls looking to make sure that you don't do anything wrong?

No? How come? Because there's no evidence for it, right? So why can't you answer in the negative w.r.t. other things that have no evidence?

Talk to any religious person and they'll say that their religion is a matter of faith not evidence. If you have no evidence to the contrary, why reject a possibility?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Criticisms_of_Pascal.27s_wa… I think you'll find the link quite comprehensive.

there's as much proof FOR the existence of god as there is AGAINST the existence of god (meaning none for either).

So if by pussy he means not jumping to irrelevant conclusions, then sure, I'm a pussy.

At least 'I don't give a damn if there is a god or not' doesn't have the tinge of *gasp* belief that surrounds Atheism.

If there really is no god, then why bother shouting about it so much? I mean I guess I could run around screaming that my shoes aren't purple (really, they aren't). Which is also an irrelevant fact.

Tom, turn it around. Why hypothesize something with zero explanatory power?

well, i didn't mean this thread to turn serious! the atheism newsgroups got into long arguments about whether agnosticism was orthogonal to atheism or not. i tend to think that one can be an agnostic and either an an atheist or theist, as agnosticism is an epistemological stance. but, in operation many people i know who are agnostics are

a) scared of the social ostracism that goes hand-in-hand with the term atheist

b) take it as a stance that express present (but not necessarily future) uncertainty as opposed to an inability to ever be certain because of the nature of the question

Tom said: "Talk to any religious person and they'll say that their religion is a matter of faith not evidence. If you have no evidence to the contrary, why reject a possibility?"

Because, just like absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, absence of evidence is also not evidence presence. Relatedly, whether or not a god exists is not an empirical question. It is philosophical and ultimately a matter of personal understanding of the world.

As a Nichiren Buddhist, I don't believe in a personal god but a omnipervasive Life Force. However, I would never claim that I have empirical evidence for its existence. It is a matter of faith for me.

I also think part of the problem is people want to feel that believe in something real so they tend conflate spiritual knowledge with empirical knowledge. That is a mistake which will only bring unhappiness in the long run.

GE

tom: we're getting into matters of definition here. Most atheists (formally called "weak atheists", although I loathe the term) don't outright say that God doesn't exist, they just don't currently see any reason to believe in Him. Same goes for the big purple dinosaur.

There are a few "strong atheists" who actively claim that there is no God. I think they're generally aware that this is as much a faith position as believing that there is a God. Although, if you want to get Popperian, believing in the absolute truth of a falsifiable-but-unfalsified statement is considerably less daft than believing in the absolute truth of a verifiable-but-unverified statement.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled light humour. How do you recognise a militant agnostic? He comes round your house and burns question marks into your lawn!

Is there a big purple dinosaur floating behind the walls looking to make sure that you don't do anything wrong?

No? How come? Because there's no evidence for it, right?

Has anyone ever looked for evidence of this big purple dinosaur behind the walls? Maybe the evidence is there, but we haven't taken account of it yet....

(If I had any inclinations toward faith-type believing, I would definitely choose your Big Purple Dinosaur as my deity -- much more appealing than some white-bearded old f*rt in the sky!)

Agnostics are just theo-slackers.

The basic end point is similar to that reached in the Michelson-Morley aether experiment. Once you determine that some phenomenon has no detectable effect, it doesn't matter whether it exists or not. For any practical purpose, it does not. The same with a god or gods; an agnostic or an atheist that follows logic to its conclusion behaves the same way,as if there were no god.

Atheism is essentially eliminative. As a term of self-identification, it means you have examined all the competing monikers and prefer atheist. An agnostic may have no particular religious belief, but hasn't eliminated or ruled out all the possibilites. It's not a question of "don't know", but "haven't ruled out". From this point of view, there is no such thing as a "weak atheist". But there are still plenty of agnostics.

It's not a question of "don't know", but "haven't ruled out".

i would argue "can't know."

Yes. Yes they are. Agnostics are p*ssies, and us atheists, we're the big dawgs. Woof!

i would argue "can't know"

Well, I could go back to Huxley, who said something like "unknown, and probably unknowable"; but "can't know" seems to me too difficult to determine, and essentially agnosticism is about weighing evidence.

unknown, and probably unknowable

yes, that's what i meant. many 'agnostics' behave/speak as if they are waiting for the data to come back. but i think that one, and a more fundamental, interpretation of 'agnostic' concerns the fact that data by definition can never come in on certain issues. it isn't that one hasn't 'made up their mind,' it's that one can never make up their mind because of the nature of the question, at least via standard analytics (a priori derivations) or empirical findings. this leaves the ground open for fideistic theism of course....

I guess I should chime in here -- I could spin it the other way and say that atheists are abrasive ideologues. ;)

I'm actually an atheist. My screen name's from a post on gnxp I responded to about a year ago, about whether depression etc are "real" diseases (this was during the whole tom cruise thing). I'm agnostic in general about scientific issues. After that one post, I figured I might as well stick w/ it.

Militant agnostics can be very aggressive - "I don't know, and you don't either!"

I think there's more than one type of agnostic, among them the "don't know" and "can't know" camps. Personally, my theory (in the scientific sense of the word) is that there is no god. However, I consider myself agnostic rather than atheist specifically because I think of it as a theory: a scientific theory must always be refutable. I don't think it's possible to design an experiment that could provide evidence one way or the other, hence another degree of uncertainty. My position is probably closer to Bertrand Russell's line of agnosticism than anything else.

I don't think it's possible to design an experiment that could provide evidence one way or the other, hence another degree of uncertainty

depends on your conception of god. some conceptions of god are analytically shown to be contradictions in terms. some conceptions of god are empirically testable. myself, i am clearly an atheist on a subset of god(s) and an agnostic on a subset of god(s) and a theist on a subset of god(s). in the last case, when someone tells me god = love, and if i believe in love, i by definition believe in god, well, i guess....

A bit off topic, but perhaps one of you can answer, or point me in the right direction. We have a Sage sparrow that built a nest in the monastery, and Bro. Juniper questioned how "innate" or "instinct" or "inborn" skills, such as nest building, first get into the DNA code. We note that the fledgling sparrow isn't "taught" nest building, yet upon maturity they masterfully do build nests.

Shalom,
Bro. Bartleby

I realize this isn't the direction this post is going, but I'd say that the fact that women use "cunt" and "pussy" and black people use "nigg-er/a" doesn't make the terms any less offensive or sexist/racist. It just means the woman was either unaware of or choosing to avoid the implication, which in my reading is that people with vaginas are weak not just in the physical sense, but also in terms of having convictions. Probably she feels as she's using the term that she is disproving its implication because being non-PC is considered non-pussy in some circles, but I think that tactic is relatively weak because I sort of read it as her having been bullied into avoiding feministic rhetoric for fear of being pigeon-holed into the extreme stereotype. I still think it's kind of mean to say that women aren't capable of having convictions, even if that makes me a pussy.

If certainty is a comfort and it's less enjoyable to be harassed by two groups than by one, then being agnostic isn't as "weak" a position as people like to claim.

There IS a big purple dinosaur and he has a name.

Offensiveness issues aside, what kind of idiot made something as wonderful and powerful as a vagina a synonym for weakness? This leads me to the conclusion that anyone who uses those words in that way must be gay.

"It just means the woman was either unaware of or choosing to avoid the implication, which in my reading is that people with vaginas are weak not just in the physical sense, but also in terms of having convictions."

Wow. I always called people "pussy" because CATS are such wimpy little animals, unlike DOGS who are tough and stand up and bark and bite... But I guess you can take it any way you like.

Just out of curiousity, if you were under attack and had a choice between 100 random men or 100 random women who would all be willing to physically defend you, which group would you choose?

Don't pussy-out in your answer!

Bro. Juniper questioned how "innate" or "instinct" or "inborn" skills, such as nest building, first get into the DNA code.

Bro. Bartleby, I think the usual answer is: "A little bit at a time".

Remember that many biologists believe that birds are descended from a variety of dinosaurs. And I believe there is quite a bit of evidence that some
dinosaurs already built nests on the ground. So it may be more a question of many birds evolving the ability to do in trees, what their ancestors might already have been doing for a long time on the ground.

On the ground, nest-building is a skill that could have evolved gradually as a result of the constant need to incubate and protect eggs and newly-hatched young.

Birds are very persistent- but also can be very dumb- in their nest-building. They will continue to build in a location that human beings are periodocally cleaning.

hence - "birdbrain"...

I wonder if "pussy" came from pusillanimous?

Bro. Juniper questioned how "innate" or "instinct" or "inborn" skills, such as nest building, first get into the DNA code.
Bro. Bartleby, I think the usual answer is: "A little bit at a time".
----------

Hmm, can the "nest building" code be found in a bird's DNA? If it doesn't exist, then "Houston, we have a problem."

I mean I guess I could run around screaming that my shoes aren't purple (really, they aren't). Which is also an irrelevant fact.

to my knowledge no one has ever blown someone else up because they believed their shoes were purple.

Bro Bartleby said: "Hmm, can the "nest building" code be found in a bird's DNA? If it doesn't exist, then "Houston, we have a problem."

I wrote some things about the evolution of religion
here and here if interested. It MAY apply. Kind of an evolutionary psychology thing. I know a lot of folks have a big problem with it, and I'm not saying I don't. I'm (forgive me for getting back on thread here) quite AGNOSTIC on the issue!

Hmm, can the "nest building" code be found in a bird's DNA? If it doesn't exist, then "Houston, we have a problem."

Indeed we would have a problem then, Bro. Bartleby.
Although the coding of complex behaviours in the DNA could be very subtle.

But then, it is the nature of science, that it exposes itself to falsification whenever theoretical predictions encounter observed facts. This is close to being the Popperian definition of "science".

Brother Bartleby

I see your difficulty. I too find it difficult to grasp how such behavior could be DNA encoded. But you may wish to consult Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene pp. 60-2 [beginning "Honey bees suffer..."]. it describes the Rothenbuhler experiments with "foul brood" bee behavior. Incredible as it may seem, the experiments show that the "instinct" in question breaks down into components, each of which shows the traditional mendelian characteristics.

" Pusillanimous comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, from Latin pusillus, "very small, tiny, puny" + animus, "soul, mind.""