Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

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pokeegeorge
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Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #1

Post by pokeegeorge »

Agnostics say "We cannot know if there is a God."

Atheists say "We know there is no God."

Their main line of defense of this premise so far to me here is that, "There is no evidence there IS a God, therefore there is no God."

Then the naysayers of the naysayers say "Prove there is no God."

Then the Atheists say, "YOU have to prove there IS a God; I don't have to prove there ISN'T a God." Why? Since we are making a claim of something, THEY only resided in Unbiased Land.

Not true. Atheism ASSERTS there is no God. It is in fact a stance of CERTAINTY.

Agnosticism says no one can be certain. My family was agnostic, and I grew up in this milieu. I don't understand Atheism and this is why. Please correct or inform.

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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #2

Post by 10CC »

pokeegeorge wrote: Agnostics say "We cannot know if there is a God."

Atheists say "We know there is no God."

Their main line of defense of this premise so far to me here is that, "There is no evidence there IS a God, therefore there is no God."

Then the naysayers of the naysayers say "Prove there is no God."

Then the Atheists say, "YOU have to prove there IS a God; I don't have to prove there ISN'T a God." Why? Since we are making a claim of something, THEY only resided in Unbiased Land.

Not true. Atheism ASSERTS there is no God. It is in fact a stance of CERTAINTY.

Agnosticism says no one can be certain. My family was agnostic, and I grew up in this milieu. I don't understand Atheism and this is why. Please correct or inform.
Will theists ever understand atheism, I mean we understand theism, why do they get it wrong absolutely every time? I mean EVERY time!! #-o
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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #3

Post by pokeegeorge »

[Replying to 10CC]

Learning workshop 101, sir. Didn't I just say I DON'T understand youall?

So inform and correct. I am raising my hand, teacher.

I'll even bring you an apple. Without a worm in it.

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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #4

Post by 10CC »

pokeegeorge wrote: [Replying to 10CC]

Learning workshop 101, sir. Didn't I just say I DON'T understand youall?

So inform and correct. I am raising my hand, teacher.

I'll even bring you an apple. Without a worm in it.
Well let's start with what you believe or disbelieve.
Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl , Huitzilpochtli, Baldr, Freyr.
Do you believe that these gods exist?
Do you lack a belief that these gods exist?
Do you believe that these gods don't exist?
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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #5

Post by Divine Insight »

pokeegeorge wrote: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism
With respect to what?

This whole thread is basically a dishonest thread, although I'm sure it wasn't the intent of pokeegeorge to be dishonest, but I'll tell you why it's a dishonest thread.

It's dishonest in-part because it is posted in "Christianity and Apologetic" which is a section of the forum that presumes that the term God means the Christian God, yet the OP is playing on a more abstract notion of "God" that cannot be proved or disproved.

We must ask the question, "Is is possible to disprove the existence of God?"

Well, when we ask that question we must also then ask, "What do you mean by God? How do you define God?"

It's my stance that if a person defines God as the jealous persona described in the Christian Biblical Canon, then yes it's extremely easy to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that this God does not exist.

Why? Because the Christian Biblical Canon proclaims so many contradictory attributes and behaviors of the Biblical God that they cannot all be simultaneously true anyway. The Biblical Canon disproves its own claims of what its own authors claim that God ought to be.

Therefore, I can state with absolute confidence that the Biblical God as described by the Biblical Canon cannot possibly exist. It's simply not possible. This God (if it did exist) would contradict the very character traits that its supposed to possess. But that means that even if it did exist it would violate its own definition of existence which is an impossible oxymoron. Therefore the God portrayed in the Christian Biblical Canon cannot exist.

So with respect to the Christian God I am total convinced that this God has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt to not exist. So the prove is conclusive, IMHO.

~~~~

Now can we talk about other possible descriptions of a God concept that could potentially exist? Sure. And I am agnostic to those possible descriptions. Because some of those descriptions cannot be proved to be false.

But the God described in the Bible is proven to be false by the Bible itself, as well as by the scientific knowledge of the real world. For example, we know from observing the real world that death, disease, natural disasters, and a dog-eat-dog world existed before humans appeared on planet Earth. Forget about evolution. This would still be true even if humans were magically created from this dust of the earth. Yet the Bible claims that it was humans fall from grace that brought death and sin into the world. That is clearly a lie. So the entire Biblical mythology is based upon a lie from square one. Not only is it based upon this lie of trying to pin the blame for "evil" onto mankind, but that is also it's major theme. In fact, in Christianity Jesus is meaningless if not acting as the sacrificial lamb to pay for this fall.

All of Christianity rests entirely on the foundation of the "Fall from Grace" being paramount in the relationship between men and God. But that "Fall from Grace" cannot be true. It's a lie from the get go. There are self-inconsistencies within the story itself that also prove that it's necessarily false even if we didn't know the truth that death, disease, and all manner of imperfections and yucky stuff existed prior to humans.

So, yes, with respect to the Biblical fables of God, I am absolutely Atheist. And there is nothing dishonest about that because the proof that the bible is false is overwhelming, and most of that proof comes straight from the fables themselves.

So, IMHO, the bible has been proved to be false, without a doubt.

Now if you want to talk about some more abstract God-concept that cannot be disproved such as many ideas offered by various Eastern Mystical philosophies, then I must remain agnostic with respect to those ideas because I cannot prove them one way or the other.

But with respect to the Christian Bible (or the Abrahamic picture of God in general), I'm a complete atheist and IMHO those pictures of a jealous personified God who is chomping at the bit to cast anyone who disobeys him into a state of eternal damnation are indeed false. For certain. There is no doubt of this in my mind at all.

In other words, I hold that the Biblical God has indeed been proved to be false time and time again. With no hope of ever being salvaged. And to be quite honest about it, I can't even imagine why anyone would even want to try to salvage this picture. The only motivation I can imagine is that they can't face a secular existence, and they have ruled out all other possible scenarios of God.

In other words, Christians need to be hardcore atheists toward all non-Christian pictures of God. So they need to be the greatest atheists of all time ironically. They need to believe that all other God concepts other than their own are false.
[center]Image
Spiritual Growth - A person's continual assessment
of how well they believe they are doing
relative to what they believe a personal God expects of them.
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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #6

Post by pokeegeorge »

[Replying to Divine Insight]

You are quite right a secular existence is uncomfortable and hellish to me.

But remember I grew up AGNOSTIC, so then I am quite happy to be where I am in relation to where I was.

Which was by the way in INVESTIGATIVE mode, which is the next step out of Agnosticism.

And so you are making a distinction which you say I did NOT make regarding the God of Theism, the Judeo-Christian God.

But in fact this God is NOT only rejected of Atheism but ANY God. So then I am more accurate than thee as far as I can tell.

This is all beside the fact that the CANON of scripture has a cohesive God. The EVOLUTION of the Christian religion is a whole nother matter. You can prove this to be false in another one of your lengthy posts, I will disagree and present my short and sweet (simple) refutes.

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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #7

Post by pokeegeorge »

[Replying to post 4 by 10CC]



Gah. Is that an answer?

Gah, no, they exist. Or gah, yes, they do not exist.

In other words, I DON'T CARE if they exist, since they are elohim or imagined elohim.

MY elohim is YHWH Elohim. Amen.

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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #8

Post by 10CC »

pokeegeorge wrote: [Replying to post 4 by 10CC]



Gah. Is that an answer?

Gah, no, they exist. Or gah, yes, they do not exist.

In other words, I DON'T CARE if they exist, since they are elohim or imagined elohim.

MY elohim is YHWH Elohim. Amen.
Yes I didn't think that you were interested in learning what atheism is.
So you claim these gods....Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl , Huitzilpochtli, Baldr, Freyr. are just other names for your god? Yes?
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and LOVE is all he said

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pokeegeorge
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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #9

Post by pokeegeorge »

[Replying to post 8 by 10CC]


You whiffleballed me on both assertions. I am a LITTLE interested in what Atheism is.

And no, the One True God has a definitive name. YHWH Elohim is his name. Said in Ex 3 to be for all generations.

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Re: Agnosticism is more honest than Atheism

Post #10

Post by pokeegeorge »

[Replying to post 2 by 10CC]

I got the Urban Dictionary online and referenced Atheism:

1.) A person who lacks belief in a god or gods. People who use this definition categorize atheists as either negative (or implicit or weak) atheists or positive (or explicit or strong) atheists. Negative atheists, while they don't believe in a god, do not positively assert that no gods exist. Positive atheists, however, do.


So then instead of your ongoing polemic, why don't we start here? There is according to this reference, two kinds of Atheists, I did not know that.

Negative Atheism is akin therefore to Agnosticism. LACK of belief but NO ASSERTION that there is no God.

POSITIVE (meaning CONFIDENT) Atheism says "Certainly there is no God."

What say you, teacher? Is this correct?

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