Okay, so I have been exploring the biggest Book Festival in the U.S. the last couple of days: The Los Angeles Times Book Festival.

I attended today the panel which featured Vincent Bugliosi talking about his book, DIVINITY OF DOUBT: THE GOD QUESTION.

He uses his lawyer's logic to address the question of the existence of god.

He concludes that the only rational answer to the question of god is agnosticism. Except, he says, he is atheistic on the existence of the Christian god. The Christian god doesn't make sense according to him because god cannot be both all powerful AND all good. Those two qualities mutually exclude each other. Therefore, the Christian god does not exist.

He has read all the atheist writers, including Hitchens and Harris.

He claims that these guys only reason in non-sequiturs.

Anyway, it all made sense to me because I have been agnostic for years.

When I was 19, it occurred to me that the mormon god did not exist. I quit church at that point.

Years later (why did it take me so long?), I realized that all human made definitions of the word god are metaphor, that humans are trying to describe/define the unknowable.

So, I was at the table and was telling him I was an agnostic. (Evidently there aren't proportionally that many agnostics compared to theists and atheists). I mentioned that when I was 19, I had the insight that the mormon god did not exist.

OK, here is where is got really weird for me. I teared up!! I felt this surge of pain. WTF!!!! WHere did that come from?

God damn mormon church! I am still after all these years angry. Hurt.

I am interested in reading that book when payday comes around. Sounds good and sounds like he agrees with me on the big 4 atheists.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html

To claim that Agnosticism is the more rational choice is a logical fallacy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 01:29AM by MJ.

that VB takes this position SOLELY because it is the middle position, with no other reasons. Have you read his book to know this is the case? If it were, why write a whole book on it?

Besides, when is "not knowing" the middle position between two strong opposing stances of "knowing"? It would seem to be the opposite of "knowing," regardless of their opposing content.

One Strong positions I know A exists.
One Strong position I know A does not exist.

Middle ground "I don't know if A exists or not"

Silly me, seems agnostic fits right in the middle between the two strongly held positions, at least to me and I am sure to a lot of other people not trying to argue from dogmatism .

If the author of the book uses "lawyer's logic" as is claimed, then he is not using the logic of rational thinking. Lawyer logic is used to WIN A CASE, not derive the truth. The author of a book is using flawed logic to make a case for the middle ground.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 02:33PM by MJ.

Amen, MJ.
He doesn't really want to know either if he is using legal reasoning -- if he really wanted to know there is plenty of science to explain the Truth. And the truth is, there is no need for god.

Oh yeah ... they are only agnostic about the christian god.

All other gods are make believe.

Yeah .. that's it. That's the ticket.

I am 100% sure that a Christian god could never be plausible.

However, I don't feel that we can rationally prove or disprove notions such as a general creator, or the idea that nature is god, etc.

Therefore, I am Agnostic.

You are, in a sense, atheist about the Christian God and probably a lot of other Gods, but are willing to be agnostic in regards to some God ideas.

In a sense, I am atheist in regards to the two gods you mention because a) Nobody can say how a god of creation was created and b) I see no reason to redefine nature as a God in order to try to hold onto a concept of a God.

I see it now. I don't think it is necessary to make people believe that nature could be/is a god figure, but it is something I haven't been able to rule out.

Still, it seems to me that I could be considered generally Agnostic since there is at least one vision of diety that I can't completely disprove.

At least that is how I see it :)

How come you arrogant smug so called agnostics refuse to answer my question ?

Unless the answer is, "I don't know."

Not being smug here, just admitting that I don't have enough of an opinion formed to even respond. I am admitting lack of knowledge, not purporting to have it.

And you really do not have even a clue as to why they may shrug you off and not bother to answer you?

Could also be they have you sussed out as someone who already has all the answers, so is not worthy entering into debate with?

I don't understand your hostility man. You have serious issues.

I answered your question. If you wish to continue with further dialogue, please explain to me how I can help you more. Otherwise, you are just an irrational curmudgeon that should be avoided.

snb Wrote:
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> I don't understand your hostility man. You have
> serious issues.
>
> I answered your question. If you wish to continue
> with further dialogue, please explain to me how I
> can help you more. Otherwise, you are just an
> irrational curmudgeon that should be avoided.


You haven't answerd my question from another thread. If you won't answer me and others, why on earth do you expect others to answer you?

Are you talking to me? I need to clarify.

snb Wrote:
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> Are you talking to me? I need to clarify.

No, that was addressed to Dave. I asked him for the names of the scholars, a majority he said, who support his position. I have asked repeatedly and not heard a word other than personal insults meant to deflect the question. Could it be that he doesn't know what he is talking about?I certainly agree that he has issues.Sorry.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 07:15PM by bona dea.

I was quite confused.

This thead will probably close before he can.

Bona Dea. I like you. I like your posts. I think you are inspirational.

How can one answer a question when one does not know the answer?

I could not debate you any better than I could debate MJ. Ours is a position of, "I wish I knew what to say."

Take it easy on Snb. He, like I, do not know what side to take, or if we even should take one.

-With all due respect,
MiB

The Man in Black Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This thead will probably close before he can.
>
> Bona Dea. I like you. I like your posts. I think
> you are inspirational.
>
> How can one answer a question when one does not
> know the answer?
>
> I could not debate you any better than I could
> debate MJ. Ours is a position of, "I wish I knew
> what to say."
>
> Take it easy on Snb. He, like I, do not know what
> side to take, or if we even should take one.
>
> -With all due respect,
> MiB
My comment was addressed to Dave and he knows what the question is. Sorry about the mix up.

I do appreciate that :)

However, I feel like I have a side. I would answer, but I have no idea what question bd is talking about.

I also feel like I already answered the irrational Atheist's question too.

Really, I'm just very confused at why people keep on telling me I'm not answering questions.

Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. One can be agnostic and a theist, or agnostic and an atheist. Personally, I consider myself an atheistic agnostic.

But if I were to have to state only one, I would be Atheist.

Agreed. Agnosticism is an epistemological view which is about "all" knowledge. It is NOT specific to the "god" question.

If you are agnostic, and have no god belief, you are an atheist agnostic.

If you are agnostic, but have a god belief, then you are an agnostic theist.

HH =)

Frankly, people can label themselves any way they want, but to claim the right to label someone else's beliefs a certain way seems the epitome of arrogance.

He doesn't understand the words atheism and agnosticism well enough to be telling other people that they are one or the other.

I'm agnostic about Santa Claus, because there really COULD be a Santa Clause but the gifts he gives are metaphysical.

Prove there ISN'T a Santa Claus!

That's why this back-and-forth is so ridiculous. The short-hand method of describing one's belief obviously doesn't work, and someone who's signing books should be intelligent enough not to fall into the trap of trying to pin vague definitions on people because he can't logically grasp the vagaries of human language.

For that matter, I can't prove I exist. I might be a software simulation in some futuristic supercomputer, and my electronic instantiation included data which my instantiation interprets as "existence".

So, I am agnostic about the existence of anything in the universe.

Or not.

While RFM could be a very complicated delusion that I am having, I consider that so vanishingly unlikely that I am willing to say "I know" that RFM actually exists out in the real world, and, for that matter, I know there is a real world.

If you can only say you "know" something when there is zero possibility of being wrong, then you can never use the word "know", and it effectively loses its meaning.

I'm glad he has read some books about atheism, but I don't know if he really gets it. Atheism cannot be a fallacy, as it's simply a lack of belief. It's not saying "There is no god." It's saying "I have no belief in god." There is no assertion - only a lack of assertion. I know that may sound confusing, but all atheism is is a lack of belief.

I'd put atheism (especially the strong kind) under disbelief, which means taking a position against the existence of something (god), rejecting someone else's claim and actively refuting any so-called evidence. It is definitely a conviction and is not the "state of nature" (our innocent position at birth) that atheists would maintain. On the other hand, Lack of belief is more akin to agnosticism: having no convictions one way or the other about the subject.

I know, atheists contend that their thinking on this subject is not a position on it, and that seems disingenuous. It is a semantic ploy to appear "natural" and therefore pristine and pure.That claim itself calls for scrutiny and deconstruction.

The one definition of Atheism that covers ALL atheists is a lack of belief in God. If you are going to talk about atheism as a WHOLE, then that is the definition you need to use. If you want to try an use "disbelief", well, then, you are only talking about a PORTION of atheists, not all.

An agnostic has no belief in deity. An atheist, on the other hand, has rejected, and actively denies, the existence of deity.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/#3

One can be an agnostic atheist or one can be an agnostic theist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism

So, yes, my definition would have to cover agnosticism.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 05:27PM by MJ.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 05:48PM by MJ.

It's fine to define atheism as a lack of belief, but that does not (as you admit) eliminate the distinction between a lack of a belief and a rejection of belief. Those are distinct positions regardless of the labels attached to them. On the one hand, you reject Bugliosi's position of adopting "agnosticism" as more rational than "atheism" as an appeal to the middle ground (which admits a distinction between the two), then in the next breath you define atheism to include "agnosticism" - making Bugliosi an atheist. That's a an interesting exercise in semantics, but it never gets to the merits of Bugliosi's position.

Your post assumes that Atheism == agnostic, it does not.

In actually, in context of this thread, the logical (using scientific logic and reasoning) stance would be atheist, the non-belief in God.

In science if someone puts forward a theory that makes a claim but has absolutely no evidence to back up their claim, the scientific community would reject that theory because there is no evidence to justify the belief that such a claim is true. They have a non-belief in that theory. They do not have to prove it wrong, they simply have no reason to believe it. They have a non-belief in that theory, in a sense, they have an atheistic view of that theory. These scientists do not claim "I do not know" they say there is no reason to believe this as true, thus it is rejected as a valid theory.

The same thing happens when the idea of God is examined with scientific logic an reasoning, There is no empirical evidence to support the claim there is a god, so there is no reason to believe there is a god, thus the non-belief in the claim of god or the non-belief in God (atheist) is the default logical conclusion.

rejection of Christianity based on the evidence against it, and lack of belief as to the existence of some supreme being based on the lack of evidence to prove or disprove its existence? Are you saying it is more logical to take a negative position, as opposed to a neutral position, on a proposition as to which there is no evidence? That seems to legalistic, rather than scientific, reasoning.

The person that wrote that lost all credibility with their first sentence on Atheism. "‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God."

The first part I completely agree with, "'Atheism’ means the negation of theism" but negation of theism does not necessitate denial of God. Theism is the 'belief in God', the negation of 'belief in God' is non-'belief in God'. Thus the negation of theism is the non-belief in god or Atheism.

Non-belief in God, atheism, includes those that do not believe but DO NOT DENY the existence of god as well as those that do deny the existence of God.

So, the first part of that first sentence contradicts the second part of the sentence.

Negation essentially means opposite. The opposite of an active belief is an active disbelief (a positive idea that something is untrue, i.e., the rejection of that something), not the lack of belief.

That is your problem. The negation of Apple is everything that is non-apple. The negation of human would be anything that is non-human. One does not need to deny that there are apples and humans to say "That is a non-apple or that is non-human"

And your "reasons' have been dismissed by using scientific reason and logic.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 06:19PM by MJ.

that you misread calls your own credibility into question.

Why do you insist on using such UNSUPPORTED claims rather than address where my points are wrong?

And when that sentence is a fundamental premise on which everything he wrote in the article was based? I more that certainly say that he lost credibility in regards to what he wrote.

And he lost credibility as a philosopher in my eyes as well.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 06:33PM by MJ.

To negate means "the deny the existence or truth." Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

Negation means "the action or logical operation of negating" or "something considered the opposite of something positive." Id.

Therefore, Smart's use of the term "negation" is, at best for you, defensible, or, at worst for you, unambiguously correct.

Makurosu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm glad he has read some books about atheism, but
> I don't know if he really gets it. Atheism cannot
> be a fallacy, as it's simply a lack of belief.
> It's not saying "There is no god." It's saying "I
> have no belief in god." There is no assertion -
> only a lack of assertion. I know that may sound
> confusing, but all atheism is is a lack of belief.

Actually, Mak, atheism CAN be a fallacy, if it is based on a fallacious premise. Years ago, the BBC was interviewing an atheist who said: "I became an atheist when I heard a voice speak clearly to me. The voice said: "There is no God."

So, he based his atheism on a voice in his head. And that would be fallacious, I think.

However, atheism based on perceived scientific evidence -for example- would not be fallacious.

If you define atheism to be an assertion that there is no God. That would be "strong" atheism. However, like MJ said the overall idea is that it is a lack of belief.

Makurosu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you define atheism to be an assertion that
> there is no God. That would be "strong" atheism.
> However, like MJ said the overall idea is that it
> is a lack of belief.

But that chap made me laugh, because he was not really an atheist, IMO (someone who had no religious belief) he actively believed God did not exist because he had received a personal revelation to that effect!!!! ;oD

That's really funny!

My dear Hitch: there has been much wild talk, among the believers, about your impending embrace of the sacred and the supernatural. This is of course insane. But I still hope to convert you, by sheer force of zealotry, to my own persuasion: agnosticism. In your seminal book, God Is Not Great, you put very little distance between the agnostic and the atheist; and what divides you and me (to quote Nabokov yet again) is a rut that any frog could straddle. "The measure of an education," you write elsewhere, "is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance." And that's all that "agnosticism" really means: it is an acknowledgment of ignorance. Such a fractional shift (and I know you won't make it) would seem to me consonant with your character – with your acceptance of inconsistencies and contradictions, with your intellectual romanticism, and with your love of life, which I have come to regard as superior to my own.

The atheistic position merits an adjective that no one would dream of applying to you: it is lenten. And agnosticism, I respectfully suggest, is a slightly more logical and decorous response to our situation – to the indecipherable grandeur of what is now being (hesitantly) called the multiverse. The science of cosmology is an awesome construct, while remaining embarrassingly incomplete and approximate; and over the last 30 years it has garnered little but a series of humiliations. So when I hear a man declare himself to be an atheist, I sometimes think of the enterprising termite who, while continuing to go about his tasks, declares himself to be an individualist. It cannot be altogether frivolous or wishful to talk of a "higher intelligence" – because the cosmos is itself a higher intelligence, in the simple sense that we do not and cannot understand it.

Anyway, we do know what is going to happen to you, and to everyone else who will ever live on this planet. Your corporeal existence, O Hitch, derives from the elements released by supernovae, by exploding stars. Stellar fire was your womb, and stellar fire will be your grave: a just course for one who has always blazed so very brightly. The parent star, that steady-state H-bomb we call the sun, will eventually turn from yellow dwarf to red giant, and will swell out to consume what is left of us, about six billion years from now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/24/amis-hitchens-world

...the latter is willing to hold onto at least a little of an unproved supposition -- that some type of sentient force controls the universe. But why that supposition rather than some other? Because it's part of the dominant culture. Atheism says, "I'm sorry, the god thing is a popular notion, but it has yet to be proved. Until it is, it's just myth."

I take the opposite view. Agnostics seem to be more open-minded about the possibilities of the universe, whereas Atheists seem constrained to take the opposite tact of the prevailing religion. Atheism's very existence seems rooted in disproving countervailing theories, not in independent exploration on its own.

Thank the flying spaghetti monster for MJ and Makurosu. Reason and logic for the win...

Atheism takes the position that because you can defeat any one god, all and any form of God or creator must be false.

Christianity is easily discredited by its own history and by its own roots in Judaism. Judaism looks suspiciously like its "pagan" contemporaries that have been largely discarded.

Atheism then leaps forward that because religion has failed to describe credibly a creator and afterlife, it is impossible that either exist. I see no evidence for such an extrapolation and therefore reject it as an unproven theory. Many atheists seem to be acting more in reaction to their Christian opponents instead of building a credible philosophical independent of modern religions.

You sir, are a liar. Atheism does not "leap forward" to say that neither a creator or afterlife can exist. This kind of irresponsible framing is more appropriate in a ray comfort kumbaya sing-along video, not a rational discussion.

Atheism is merely the rejection of theistic claims that a specific god exists, since no theistic claim has ever.. ever.. EVER... been supported by evidence.

Atheism is the default position. That's it.

Atheism does not make any claims of its own. Atheism is NOT the assertion that there are no gods or afterlife. Atheism is not a negative claim. Stating that atheists leap forward to assert something is at best ignorant, at worst malicious.

Now, go ahead and show me the alleged evidence for the supposed existence of this "God" and I will decide for myself whether it is compelling or not.

Oh, and define what you mean by "God."



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 07:12PM by steve benson.

...and once you've presented your so-called "evidence" for your god, don't forget to stop by the James Randy foundation for your million bucks!

I am god. The evidence is based in the fact that women love me.

Can you, Steve Benson of prophet and cartoon fame deny this? I didn't think so.