Atheist or Agnostic?

You call yourself agnostic just so people won't be upset with you?

I did that for a while, too.

As a great man once said, an agnostic is just an atheist with no balls.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:05:47 AM by Roman

Either term is correct, but using popular definitions, I am more of an agnostic anyway. Even if I go gung-ho and think using the term atheist is okay, it's still less intellectually satisfying.

Well. The laws here dictate that apostasy is punishable by death. Mere two weeks ago people were bludgeoned to death for having submitted to slightly funny creeds. I am largely apathetic towards religion now, would be folly to trade all my life for "u got no balls" talk.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:12:58 AM by Catalogue

It's a joke/ reference. It's not always true, and even when it is, there's no shame in being conscientious.

What really turned me over from agnostic belief was when I was asked the hard question of, "Even if you believe there may or may not be any Gods, what would you do if you did find a God that was destructive and soul consuming? If you were given the choice between stopping that God or letting it continue onwards, you'd take the former choice. In doing so, you'd be denying that God's right to be a God. Thusly, if you can't accept the God before you as God even if it remains a God, then you can't be agnostic."

I couldn't argue against it as that was how I really felt, so I ended up changing soon after.

"If God Is Evil, I'd rather believe that God doesn't exist at all."

Is that what you meant?

edited 13th Mar '11 12:23:05 AM by Grain

"If God Is Evil, than my will to destroy it would be such that would be impossible for me to believe it was beyond destruction," was how I took it.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:26:21 AM by Roman

But if you do find out about God, by definition you cease to be an agnostic.

Also, we're toying with the definition of God here.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:28:02 AM by Catalogue

Although technically "no balls" part is true for this one=)

There's also a similar one from I think Diderot: a deist is a man not living long enough to be an atheist.

If God is evil he will run against Obama.

/trolling.

Agnostic theist? So a theist who isn't sure?

It's more or less based on the idea that if the God you're witnessing in front of you isn't a God you want to exist, then you can't be wishy-washy about it. But that does get a bit wordy in the instance of a God actually appearing.

Though that does become a bit of a paradox. Because even if I don't accept the God as God, that doesn't stop it from being God. Hmmm...I'll have to think this over a bit.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:39:30 AM by SubtlyinyourMind

If your definition of god does not necessarily include anything about not being evil, then what "right" goes it have anyway? Why can't you stand against it while accepting that it exist? Again, being agnostic/theist/atheist has nothing to do with worshipping any gods.

edited 13th Mar '11 12:40:24 AM by Beholderess

Exactly. If Cthulhu was standing in front of me I'd probably accept him by the strict definition of being a God, just a God I'd be more then happy to try to destroy.

So I guess the idea is, even if a God DOES exist, the question of whether or not you worship it can still put you in the label of an Atheist? Or would there have to be a new definition for refusing to worship said God? (Heathen/Pagan wouldn't be a good term for a number of reasons)

edited 13th Mar '11 12:44:51 AM by SubtlyinyourMind

Misotheist

edited 13th Mar '11 12:45:38 AM by Roman

Misotheism. Also related to maltheism.

Ninja'd

edited 13th Mar '11 12:53:15 AM by Grain

I was ninja'd by a second...! But yeah we have terms for everything.

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

This one considers herself agnostic theist. The reasons for this were explained earlier in the thread. Also, this one is irreligious and displays an (un)healthy dose of misotheism sometimes.

Lol, that's complicated. To be more specific

• This one agrees with some philosophical arguments for existence of supreme being (as in, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, perfect, creator of the world)
• But this one does not considers herself qualified enough in the fields of philosophy and logic to think that if some proof is enough to convince her, it must be true. This one is known to be irrational and accept ideas because of their beauty.
• Even though this one believes that supreme being exists, this one is sure that it is impossible to recognise it, or to prove that any creature claimed to be "god" is The God. The reasons for that is that infinity and perfection are damn difficult to demonstrate. Any demonstration of power, for example, does not demonstrate omnipotence - only sufficient power to do what just been done. Omnibenevolence is even trickier, because if God is the standard by which we recognise what is good, which standard will we apply to him/her/it without being self-referential? And if we accept self-reference and "I said so" as justification, then we might as well consider Great Cthulhu an epitome of goodness. So, even if The God exists, proving that any being we know of is The God is impossible.
• Abrahamic god and gods of other religions do not demonstrate omnibenevolence, so even if I accept the existence of supreme being, it does nothing to prove existence of there gods to me, for they are not supreme being.
• There is no evidence of specifically Abrahamic god or gods of other religions, so there is no reason to consider the possibility of their existence even as sufficiently powerful beings
• Even if there was evidence of their existence, it would only mean that they are sufficiently powerful beings. It does not in any way mean that they are worthy of worship.

Well, admittedly, Beholderess, they inherited their technology from the previous Citadel civilisation anyway.

Does not stop them from being Enkindlers for us

I consider myself a strong atheist, because while I'd be hesitant to say 'I know there is no God' I'd quite happily say something along the lines of 'in my opinion, the chances of there being any kind of sapient, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being are so small as to be negligible'. I just...It doesn't make any sense to me how anyone could believe in said sapient, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being. I don't mean that as an insult to those who do believe in God; I mean it in the same way that I genuinely don't comprehend how any intelligent person over the age of about thirteen could enjoy Pixar films, but I also know that many people do, that there's nothing wrong with that, and that I'm clearly missing something there.

I gave up on Christianity at the age of ten, which sounds like the start of a story about how I found Jesus again in my teens and never left. I'm hoping it isn't, because I suspect it would require a drastic change in my personality before that could happen, and I quite like myself at the moment. I was also a deeply sceptical child; I have a very vivid memory of being about four years old and having my mother beg me not to tell my older brother that there was no Santa Claus.

I also think that if there were a God, it would be more of the celestial watchmaker type who creates the universe and goes to have a lie down, and not the kind who actually gives a crap about anything we do.

edited 13th Mar '11 3:27:26 AM by cityofmist

"Atheist or agnostic" is a false dichotomy. Also, neither of them are belief systems. They're just beliefs. Finally, humans have proposed the existence of many different entities called "god". My answer to "Does god exist?" is "That depends on precisely what you mean by god". I therefore am a type 1 Ignostic. Only once the attributes of the god under discussion have been defined can I determine the extent of my belief in their existence/knowability.

I alternate between the labels "ignostic" and "atheist". In a relatively casual discussion wherein I lack the time or inclination to explain the concept of ignosticism, or when a particular god concept has already been specified, I call myself an atheist, since I have turned out to be either a strong or weak atheist with regards to every god concept proposed to me so far.

I'm at first an agnostic here. After that, I'm an atheist. So it's, as someone else has mentioned, not exclusive. Agnosticism is more a kind of metabelief - a belief about the nature of belief.

I am a little annoyed though that (non-agnostic) weak atheists tend to label themselves as agnostic only because they don't want to be associated with strong atheism :/

Agnostic. I don't know and I don't think that it's vastly important.