I haven't read it but Craig cites him as the toughest opponent to theism in recent times. I really wish he was alive - would make a great debate.

I haven't narrowed it down to fit under either of those. By "creator" i mean created all of matter that we know of. Honestly, its something i spend no time thinking about because i can't wrap my head and the how, why, where, when parts of it, which makes it meaningless to me. I only bring it up for the sake of others in discussions

I can't find anything in my post that would lead you to thinking i'm asserting that.
Nevertheless, to answer your question, of course not.

We're working with different definitions and I don't care to attempt to bring those closer together. All i'll add is I never have and never will claim to know anything about what we can know in the future.

Seems he's an associate of Plantinga, a Jesuit trained philosophy professor at Notre Dame. Here's another Times article of his:

http://pblosser.blogspot.com/2010/08...and-faith.html

That should be rather obvious from the given capitalization.

But ok...the difference between God and god would something ala the difference between K.I.T.T and an artifically intelligent car.

I don't have any reason to suspect there is an artificially intelligent car though I admit that it is an inherentely unknowable position to say "there is/are no artificially intelligent car(s)", however I have very strong reasons and compelling evidence to suspect there is no K.I.T.T.

I have no reasons to suspect there is a god though I admit that it is an inherently unknowable position to say "there is/are no god(s)", and I have very strong reasons and compelling evidence to suspect there is no Jahve/Yahwe/Jehova or w.e you guys call her these days.

Many debating believers unfortunately love to jump from god to God in a heartbeat during debate, which if you translate the terms into my example leads to absolutely ridiculous arguments.

I'd tend to agree. Gnosis is knowledge, so it doesn't seem proper to call it a belief. Knowledge is knowledge, not belief. Whereas in my mind, theism is a belief and atheism the lack thereof.

Plus, iirc, Aquinas was pretty clear on the distinction between knowledge and belief/faith; that knowledge is superior to belief; and that we can't have a belief and knowledge of a thing simultaneously. Not that that's necessarily true, but I'd imagine most theists would take it as such.

Yeah. I think the following argument is a prime example:

The perfect being exists necessarily.
God is perfect being.
Therefore, God exists necessarily.

A perfect being in the major premise is an abstract concept, like 'god,' where you really can't extend it to a particular. Whereas in the minor, 'God' is a particular. You and I are beings, but I can't say that tame_deuces is being, only that you are a being, i.e an extension of the abstract concept being.

Just to be clear, this is not how I use the terms "belief" and "knowledge." The distinction I referred to earlier was a conceptual distinction, not a way of saying that the two are mutually exclusive. By "belief" I mean the mental attitude of taking some proposition to be true. So, I believe that France is a European country. The proposition is, "France is a European country." And I have a psychological attitude towards this proposition of taking it to be true.

Knowledge adds an additional element. To "know" that France is a European country," I must have good grounds for this attitude. That is, if I have correct or good grounds for having this psychological attitude (e.g. good reasons for taking it to be true, such as looking at a map of Europe and seeing France located there), then I know that France is a European country.

Obviously this means that I disagree with you that we can't "know" and "believe" a proposition simultaneously. In fact, I would say the opposite, that while we can believe a proposition without knowing it, we cannot know a proposition without believing it (having the mental attitude of taking it to be true). This is because knowing that p is just having the mental attitude that takes p to be true and having good grounds for this attitude.

I agree with Gutting that theism is not so improbable that it should be ignored. Thoughtful and informed people can reasonably believe that there is a God, in the ordinary sense in which that is meant. This distinguishes theism from, e.g. believing in unicorns or fairies. I don't think it follows from this that only agnosticism, not atheism, is justified.

This is interesting to me. Why do you think that your fellow atheists on this site would disagree with you? In other words, where do you feel that your views differ from theirs that allow you to come to a pretty radically (if you ask me) different conclusion? (I would say that believing something is rational or not rational is radically different)

This is fine, as long as "god" is a meaningful word. Otherwise, my objection remains:

So back to "agnostic atheism," you want to say you are agnostic with respect to god, but atheistic with respect to "God" (where you have in mind specific representations of God, and not just any god).

Thanks for the link. I'll try to make some time to read it.

I've had a similar gut feeling that I've never worked out, either. I don't know what your specific objection is related to (I don't recall reading that discussion), but mine is related to the slipperiness of what the atheists mean when they say they hold "no" position.

I agree that the word is not "properly" used in that context. But language is sometimes like that.

I can't accurately generalize about why other people on this forum disagree with me. They no doubt have many reasons. Here's a couple of common differences I have with other atheists. I think the case for materialism is weaker than many others do. I also reject the strong empiricist assumptions of many atheists. Also, I tend to have a liberal attitude towards what counts as a reasonable view.

I think that knowing a proposition without believing it is possible. The phrase "I don't believe what I just saw" is actually a meaningful one. It creates a cognitive dissonance that people can sometimes spend years struggling with as they attempt to resolve it.

This often happens when Christians convert to and from Christianity. There is some event, some piece of knowledge, something that they "know" is true about themselves or the world around them that is in conflict with their mental attitude towards the thing. They know something but don't believe it. The resolution to the conflict has many forms:

* Some people end up rejecting what they "know" and hold to what they "believe"
* Some people take what they "know" but learn to "know" it from a different perspective that makes it consistent with what they believe (they change their understanding)
* Some people change what they "believe" to make it more consistent with what they know (they adopt different mental attitude) -- this can be a small adjustment to the belief or an outright rejection of it

I assume that you could get the same effect with any sort of religious/intellectual experience. But these are the ones I'm most familiar with.

Well, people use these terms such that what you say might be possible with other meanings (though I'm doubtful). However, as I defined it, it is logically impossible for someone to know that p, but not believe that p. This is because belief that p is a necessary condition of knowing that p on my definition (which is the fairly standard philosophical one).

I'm talking only about the cases when we use "belief" in relation to propositions. This is not the sense we mean when we say to our kids, "I believe in you." You can think of this as belief that, rather than belief in. So in your example, what is the proposition that the person knows, but doesn't believe? That he saw what he saw? He probably actually does believe that. He might not understand what he saw, but that is irrelevant.

As for your Christianity example, what I would say is happening is that sometimes people believe that p, but don't want to admit, even to themselves, that they believe that p. I wouldn't say that in these cases they "know" that p, but don't "believe" that p.

The other way around.

Or in plainer terms; Revealed religion's God is just fantasy because it is a claim that aren't knowable (agnosticism), and I don't believe there is a god (atheism).

My observation was more psychological than philosophical. Psychologists say that we're ultimately driven by emotion, not rationality. While the "mental attitude towards" idea is internally coherent, I'm just not sure whether it fits how people actually operate.

Even the language "not wanting to admit p to oneself" is a curious mix of "mental attitudes" where you're drawing lines between one and oneself.

I have a hard time making sense of your use of "fantasy." It sets up a barrier between reality and unreality that is based on knowledge, which I don't think is appropriate.

What I'm stating is the standard concept of "believe that" in philosophy. My claim is that this refers to a particular psychological attitude that we take towards propositions. I'm not making any claims about what kind of effect this attitude has on our actions.

Also, it might be that there is no such mental attitude--that the claim that there is one is based on bad psychology. This is a not uncommon view in philosophy of mind known as eliminative materalism. But in that case, we should say, not that my understanding of "belief" is incorrect, but that there are no such things as "beliefs."

The argument is that while belief is entertaining the possibility that p is, it is implicitly allowing for the possibility that p is not. Hence, the possibility that p is not is incompatible with the knowledge that p is.

I agree that we can have a belief without knowledge, however, with the contents of our mind, what we know we know. I know I have a memory of the school I attended as a child and the implicit element of belief, that possibly I don't have that memory in the content of my mind, is inconsistent with what I have knowledge of, namely the memory. So at least in the instance of the contents of my mind, belief is inconsistent with knowledge.

Further, I'd think that incompatibility would hold equally true with any beliefs we happen to hold. (Not the truth of the belief, but the knowledge that we are holding the belief.) If I believe it will rain tomorrow, I can't say that it is possible that I'm not holding that belief. It seems to me that once the mind illumines what is, there's no possibility that it is not.

Again, this confuses several different ideas. I know that my best friend's name is Jessica, but I also believe that it is possible that I am wrong. In other words, my knowledge that p doesn't imply that my belief that p is infallible. Furthermore, even if her name really is Jessica, I know that it is possible that it could be different (if her parents had decided on a different name).
I don't agree. Many things we think we "know" we actually don't. For instance, it is not that unusual for people to have false memories. You might remember something happening to you when you were younger that actually happened to someone else, or happened very differently from your memory.

Anyway, it seems to me that you are using "knowledge" and "belief" inconsistently, so it would be helpful if you provided a definition for these terms.

You are talking about special cases of knowledge. So, following Descartes, many people have claimed that our knowledge of our mental states is infallible. So, let's say that I belief that the sun is shining. Descartes pointed out that while we could be skeptical about whether the sun really is shining, we couldn't be skeptical about whether we are having an experience of sun-shining.

I am doubtful of this claim, but regardless, this is certainly not true of our beliefs about things other than our own mental states, such as whether or not God exists, or whether the sun is shining.

Well I'd agree with you as to the sun shining, but I'm not so sure in regard to whether or not God exists. Basically, theists believe that by believing in God's existence they'll eventually come to know God. Now, I'm not sure if that coming to know would be an objective or a subjective experience, but it sure sounds like the latter, especially when you factor in the non-corporeal, spiritual nature ascribed to him.

So if by their terms, the knowledge of God occurs within the content of their minds, I would think that's the position the term atheism would need be defined as nullifying, not disproving a physical or objective existence of God. Doing the latter would just be setting up a straw-man.

To me the term atheism stands to theism like being apolitical stands to being political. It's not an issue of standing against like anarchy would stand against politics; it's just the refusal to accept or the rejection of a certain belief system, ideology, tenets, etc…

As I said before, belief is a mental attitude. Thus, by definition, it happens in the mind. My belief about the existence of God is a mental attitude. My belief about the sun shining is a mental attitude. All beliefs are mental attitudes, and so all beliefs are subjective. However, the content of the belief, what the belief is about, is not always about what is going on in my head.

For example, I can have a belief about the sun shining. That is not a belief about what is going on in my head, but about whether there are clouds in the sky. I can have a belief that I have a belief that the sun is shining. That is a belief about what is going on in my head. I think it is pretty clear that the belief that God exists is not about something going on in my head. Rather, it is about whether the being God actually exists. If God actually exists, he exists as more than just a phantasm of my mind.

Also, your claim that "theists believe that they'll eventually come to know God" is about a different meaning of "know." Again, I am only concerned with knowledge relating to propositions. So I can say, I "know" my brother. This means that I am familiar with him, I can predict what he'll do or say in various situations. That is the sense of "know" that you are talking about here, but it is not the sense that is relevant.

And as for the analogy between atheism and apolitical, that's fine. There are many different ways you could understand atheism. For instance, you could describe atheists sociologically, or historically, or whatnot. What I'm concerned with is describing the philosophical commitments of atheism. That means, what is it that someone must believe (or not believe) in order to be an atheist?

this is what you get when you delve into philosphy. a bunch of long winded conversations about meaning, and meaning of meaning.

so boring.

And near the end, Dying Actors anxious to tell everyone how boring he finds it.