My definition varies depending on your definition of God. So what should i call myself if i say i dont believe in any of the human Gods but im not sure and dont know if the universe had a creator God.

Agnostic. Theism is not specific to any particular understanding of God, but rather simply an understanding of God. (And as long as you don't mutilate the language and start going down the lines of "Are the natural laws of the universe God?" then this will make sense.)

Yeah i still wouldn't want to call myself that as it implies (under some definitions) an affirmative belief that the God question cant be known, and idk that.

Also calling myself an agnostic for most of my life and telling people i didn't believe their God exists lead to to many problems of them telling me i was an atheists.

the funny thing about demanding more philosophical rigor is that there are soooo few theistic philosophers these days. i dont recall a single theist professor while getting my degree in the subject (and that includes the philosophy of religion professor.) the closest i can think of was my ethics professor, Richard T. Garner. he might be buddhist.

he wasn't demanding more philosophical rigor out of the philosophy community, but out of Dawkins.

Do you base this on anything more than the philosophers at your particular institution? I'm quite certain that there are MANY theistic philosophers doing philosophy in things that aren't the question of theism.

Edit: http://philpapers.org/surveys/result...1&grain=coarse

All respondents:

PhDs and professors:

Presumably, "Other" would qualify as agnostic of some sort. 16-18% of the population is not a trivial amount.

He didn't specify to simply theism calling Batair agnostic leads to confusion, as he mentioned, when he will tell a christian he "knows" their god is not real.

Obviously disagree...we can't explain something, and dismiss god without sufficient evidence to explain that something. How is this even in question? You thought that guy was an atheist and got excited for a second didn't you

*Shrug* If you tell me that you don't believe in my God, but you're open to the idea of there being a god (and by open, I mean that there is some plausible idea of a god), then I would say that this is agnosticism. And someone who doesn't think so is probably ill-informed.

However, if you believe in the possibility of a god, but you reject any description of a god that can be given, then I don't think you're being honest with the idea of a possibility of a god.

What do you mean by "plausible idea of a god"? And there's no reason i can see why we need to give such a broad label to someone in our positon. Especially when the overwhelming majority of the population would have a false understanding of our position.

Anything that would qualify under the usual notion of a god.

Ask the overwhelming majority of the population whether they think the ancient Greeks were theists because they believed that Zeus exists. If they get this wrong, they're confused. If they get this right, then they should have the cognitive capacity to believe that you can reject their god but still be open to the idea of some other god being out there.

Suppose I use, for example, the first-cause argument to claim I believe in the possibility of God, but refuse to go any further than that. Is that being inconsistent or dishonest? I would think not.

I'm taking your point to be that we have to render some sort of judgement about God, whether as a first-cause, necessary being, etc. in order to have any credible claim to believing in the possibility of God. Simply stating I believe God is possible, without saying anything about God, is not a statement of belief. Am I reading you correctly?

No, this is fine. Once again, as long as you don't then go on to say that god is some mathematical equation or simply the physical laws of the universe, or something like that.

You are reading this correctly. If you say that you that god is possible, but you reject basically every notion of god that can be put forth, then I have a hard time understanding what you mean when you say that god is a possibility.

For example, if you say that you believe it's possible that god exists, but god did not create the universe, was not a first-cause, is unnecessary, is not a spiritual being of some sort, does not have any omni-anythings (omnipotence, omniscience, whatever), does not have any supernatural capacities, is not some superior being... then I have to question your notion of god.

Aaron, IYO does {theists, atheists} include all people? IMO it should...because it's just the way prefixes work.

I know you had three classes -- theist, agnostic, atheist -- which makes {theists, atheists} not include all people, but maybe you've changed your view after what Original Position said?

Thanks.

The only description of "god" that i'm using when i say im a weak atheist is "created the universe". That's it. How could i attribute qualities beyond that to something i have no knowledge of?

No, I don't think so. I think this is an oversimplification. I would not treat "atheist" as "not theist." Otherwise, you "not atheist" would also include people who don't profess any particular belief one way or the other.

{theist, atheist} includes all people who hold a belief regarding deity. But not everyone holds a belief regarding deity, and those people are agnostics. The brief discussion with Original Position had to do with how one characterizes the terms. Some people just don't know what they believe, which is a valid position to hold.

I think talking about agnosticism in terms of possibility is ultimately more confusing than helpful. In contemporary philosophy, possibility is understood as a metaphysical, not an epistemic notion. That is, if you believe that it is possible that God exists, that means that you believe that there is a possible world in which there is a God*. This is just a way of saying that it is not in some way logically impossible for god to exist.

It is however fully coherent to believe both that it is logically possible for god to exist (there is a possible world in which god exists), and that no gods exist in the actual world. Furthermore, there is no connection between the content of this belief and its justification--you might have very weak grounds or the equivalent of scientific proof that god doesn't exist in the actual world and it wouldn't affect the content of this belief.

Where I think your point is correct is that some people on this forum want to use "God" without any (or practically any) content. It is difficult to see what these people mean when they talk about the existence, or the possible existence, of god.

*This issue gets even more complicated by Plantinga's argument that if God exists, then God exists necessarily, and thus if God doesn't exist, then God necessarily doesn't exist.

Are you asserting the impossibility of obtaining more knowledge regarding deity?

Either way, this seems clearly agnostic to me. It's not clear yet whether you're taking a strong form of agnosticism (setting aside the possible creation of the universe, there is nothing else that can be known about god), or a weak agnosticism (you simply don't know whether god can be known in ways other than the creator of the universe, if he exists at all).

When you say "contemporary philosophy" about what time frame are you thinking?

Also, the idea of agnostic that I'm referring to is what is commonly used in gathering demographic information, which may be inconsistent with the contemporary philosophical notion, but is not a notion that is totally ungrounded in the use of the word.

Edit: Being fully aware that wikipedia is not an authoritative source...

Im not saying your wrong in calling me an agnostic under your definition of agnosticism. But your definition of agnosticism isn't the only one. If you want to disregard the aspect of agnosticism that says we can't know God (if there is one) then it would best describe me.

But that gets into the problem. Whether i chose to call myself an agnostic or an atheist i will not fit under some definitions of those words.

This doesn't make sense unless you think some versions of agnosticism are inherently dishonest. As one of the definitions of agnosticism is that there could be a God but it is unknowable so no description can be given.

I think it also makes deism inherently dishonest as they say there is a God but any description of it is unknowable.

The difficulty here is then about what it means to "create the universe." For instance, let's suppose the Big Bang is an accurate description of the beginning of the universe. Does this mean that if the Big Bang was caused, then whatever caused it is a God? I.e., does this mean that your atheism commits you to a view that the Big Bang was uncaused? Or, do you mean by "create" something closer to the sense in which it is used by the ID people of being designed--that there was some kind of intelligence that created the universe? If so, then you already have another attribute that is essential to the concept of God, that of intelligence.

I agree that you won't be able to fit all possible descriptions of atheist and agnostic. These are the categories I grew up with, and I think they work well enough in most situations. Whether you don't know or can't know, they both fit my sense of agnosticism because you don't claim to know whether a god exists or not.

I consider it dishonest because it shuts down the conversation. How do you know that you can't know anything about this god that might be out there?

Yes. The deist wants to make a claim, but when he makes the claim, there is no room for any form of conversation regarding his claim. So the deist asserts the existence of god, covers his ears, and walks away from the conversation.

A non intelligent God is dismissed by most as a non God so intelligences is kind of a given.

Alright.
I dont know thats why i dont call myself an agnostic. I just think no one knows and i admit its a guess.

Alright fair enough.


Its really not important to me what im called i just take the path of least resistance, which in my experience is calling myself an atheists.

Since Kripke's Naming and Necessity, so the early seventies.

A while ago I had a row with tame_deuces and All-in Flynn on the proper distinction between agnosticism and weak/strong atheism. I haven't fully worked through my own views yet, but I suspect that the view held by most people on this forum about the meaning of "atheism" is incoherent. However, I wasn't able to convince anyone else, so you should take what I say with a grain of salt.

The problem is that the word is often misused because people don't distinguish correctly between belief and knowledge. This makes it impossible to make sense of the ordinary usage of the term. Of course, we can understand what people are trying to say--similar to how we can understand what causes people to make common mathematical or logical errors. But that doesn't change the fact that what they are saying doesn't make sense.

Notice how the wikipedia entry illustrates this error. What it calls the "Agnosticist" position makes no reference to knowledge, but rather is a pure description of what beliefs we hold. Thus, we would say that anyone who does not have a belief about god's existence or non-existence is an "agnosticist" according to this definition. This is what most here refer to as "weak atheism." An example: I am agnosticist about whether there is an even number of stars because I do not have any beliefs about whether there is or is not an even number of stars.

However, the definition of both weak and strong agnosticism refer to our ability to currently know that god exists or does not exist. However, we can believe that p while admitting that we do not know that p. Thus, neither weak nor strong agnosticism imply "agnosticistism," and "agnosticistism" doesn't imply either weak or strong agnosticism. However, since most people conflate these two categories, the ordinary usage of "agnosticism" is incorrect.