England and Wales are no longer Christian nations...

Craig R said:
No. An agnostic is still open to the idea and that we can't know either way.

An atheist goes further by not believing at all, based on the current evidence. However if new evidence were to come along we could change our stance.
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So atheism is a temporal belief system?
 
Agnosticism comes from the word gnostic, which means knowledge. Generally it is used to refer to what you know, and theism/atheism is what you believe.

Seeing as knowledge is a subset of belief, and you can believe things without knowing them but you can’t know something working without believing it, there are various combinations depending on how you want to define it.

I’m an agnostic atheist - I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I don’t believe the claims that there is a god. You could be a gnostic atheist - you know there isn’t a god and thus you also don’t believe in it, but as mentioned it suggests you have knowledge outside of the universe that a deity doesn’t exist, which is impossible to have.

At the end of the day it’s all definitions, but it’s handy to be on the same page when discussing these things and agree what they mean before you start.
 
Penfold101 said:
So, one version of them:

1 - "You shall have no other gods before me.

2 - "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

3 - "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

4 - "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

5 - "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

6 - "You shall not murder.

7 - "You shall not commit adultery.

8 - "You shall not steal.

9 - "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

10 - "You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

The first four are about god being his narcissistic self and making it all about him. Nothing to do with our laws there.

The fifth is a bit meaningless.

We have to get to the 6th one before he decides that maybe killing eachother isn't a good thing, something humans had figured out WAY before the books of the bible were written. There were civilisations with their own codes of law over a thousand years earlier.

Also strange how our own legal code is unimaginably huge comapred to these few things the apparently CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE decided were the most important, without things like saying sexual assault is bad, or don't touch kids. Nope - mustn't work on sundays and only believe in me!
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I just realised that technically I am allowed to covet my neighbour's husband... noice!
 
Penfold101 said:
Agnosticism comes from the word gnostic, which means knowledge. Generally it is used to refer to what you know, and theism/atheism is what you believe.

Seeing as knowledge is a subset of belief, and you can believe things without knowing them but you can’t know something working without believing it, there are various combinations depending on how you want to define it.

I’m an agnostic atheist - I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I don’t believe the claims that there is a god. You could be a gnostic atheist - you know there isn’t a god and thus you also don’t believe in it, but as mentioned it suggests you have knowledge outside of the universe that a deity doesn’t exist, which is impossible to have.

At the end of the day it’s all definitions, but it’s handy to be on the same page when discussing these things and agree what they mean before you start.
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I like that explanation. And you're right it's all about definitions and interpretation. Unfortunately this often causes issues in itself!
 
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Penfold101 said:
Atheism isn’t a belief system - it’s the answer to a single question on whether you believe a good exists. It says absolutely nothing about any other subject.
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Yes but Craig mentioned that until there's evidence to the contrary. So I assumed it to mean that an atheist denies the existence of a god but would change their mind based on compelling evidence.

But I think it goes back to your very well crafted post that explained it rather well about agnosticism etc...
 
Craig R said:
No. An agnostic is still open to the idea and that we can't know either way.

An atheist goes further by not believing at all, based on the current evidence. However if new evidence were to come along we could change our stance.
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A Gnostic Atheist, or a Strong Atheist are the most commonly used terms to describe a positive belief that there are no gods.

A lot of people use the term Antitheist to describe that position also, I do often too; although technically an Antitheist is someone who is opposed to the belief in a God or gods (they think it's a bad thing); so that would make me both an Antitheist and an Agnostic Atheist.

Being an Atheist simply means that you reject the positive claim that there is a God. It says nothing about whether or not you believe that there is no God; in the same way that being found not guilty does not equal innocent, instead it simply means that the positive guilty claim has not met it's burden of proof.

Usually when people use the term Atheist, they mean that they are Agnostic Atheists i.e, they do not believe that a God exists because the claim has not met it's burden of proof, but also do not hold a positive belief that a God does not exist, because it would be impossible to prove.

Most Agnostic Atheist's tend to feel that given the lack of evidence for one, it's incredibly likely that there are no gods, but also acknowledge that right now, we do not have the capability to prove that one does not exist, in the same way that we cannot prove that the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus or Bigfoot do not exist.

Agnostic Atheism is probably the most intellectually honest position, even if like myself, you happen to also believe that a very good case can be made for there being no Gods.

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Having said all of the above, people do tend to use these terms quite interchangeably, so it's always worth asking someone precisely what they mean when they apply these labels, as you can never be certain they're defining them as you are.
 
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Freefaller said:
Yes but Craig mentioned that until there's evidence to the contrary. So I assumed it to mean that an atheist denies the existence of a god but would change their mind based on compelling evidence.

But I think it goes back to your very well crafted post that explained it rather well about agnosticism etc...
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Absolutely - if evidence arises which convinces someone then they will be a theist. The amount of evidence required will be different for every person, and my personal tipping point would probably be at the same level as KNOWING it existed, like the celestial turning up at the end of Eternals. Other people are convinced with far less evidence.

Part of this is due to the concept of a god in the first place which I find very odd, thus my evidence requirement is very high.

To give you an example - I believe that aliens exist. My evidence is that life exists on our planet in many diverse forms, and we have a fairly good idea about how it came about and ended up like we see today. There’s countless planets out there in the known universe, so the chances of conditions like ours existing elsewhere are quite high - there’s no reason to think we are in any way special. Thus I believe that life has arisen somewhere else in the universe. I don’t know it, and can’t prove it, but there’s enough evidence for me to believe it. Maybe there isn’t any, but we don’t know either way.
 
Freefaller said:
So atheism is a temporal belief system?
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no, atheism is the lack of a believe in God, so has exactly zero beliefs. For example, some people might think there is a giant pink elephant floating around the Andromeda Galaxy (theists), others require proof and without evidence simply don't have a belief about it. There are exactly an infinite numbers if things we could have a belief in, but it is pointless thinking about them
 
Penfold101 said:
Absolutely - if evidence arises which convinces someone then they will be a theist. The amount of evidence required will be different for every person, and my personal tipping point would probably be at the same level as KNOWING it existed, like the celestial turning up at the end of Eternals. Other people are convinced with far less evidence.

Part of this is due to the concept of a god in the first place which I find very odd, thus my evidence requirement is very high.

To give you an example - I believe that aliens exist. My evidence is that life exists on our planet in many diverse forms, and we have a fairly good idea about how it came about and ended up like we see today. There’s countless planets out there in the known universe, so the chances of conditions like ours existing elsewhere are quite high - there’s no reason to think we are in any way special. Thus I believe that life has arisen somewhere else in the universe. I don’t know it, and can’t prove it, but there’s enough evidence for me to believe it. Maybe there isn’t any, but we don’t know either way.
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Agreed re other life forms / aliens. From a purely mathematical (based on our existence and interpretation of mathematics that we invented to help understand the world) probability the chance of us being unique or alone is really hard for me to accept. But I have no proof so I "believe" in other lifeforms in the universe. It'll undoubtedly be never proven in many many generations if ever. However I'm convinced until it's been absolutely proven to be impossible without using jargon or complex interpretational mathematics!
 
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D.P. said:
no, atheism is the lack of a believe in God, so has exactly zero beliefs. For example, some people might think there is a giant pink elephant floating around the Andromeda Galaxy (theists), others require proof and without evidence simply don't have a belief about it. There are exactly an infinite numbers if things we could have a belief in, but it is pointless thinking about them
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Actually the explanation has been really well described by both @Penfold101 and @GordyR - so that's not quite right. However as described by them it's down to explicit use of language
 
Freefaller said:
Using terms like sky lizards and pixies and so on is pure provocative language in my opinion.
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In the context of this discussion, words are nothing. How about the untold misery and suffering caused by the actions of people over what they believe in? Not exactly comparable, is it?

edit: not sure why I used the word untold. A lot of it is widely documented. :p
 
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marc2003 said:
In the context of this discussion, words are nothing. How about the untold misery and suffering caused by the actions of people over what they believe in? Not exactly comparable, is it?
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Not sure how that's relevant. A lot of awful things have also happened with nothing to do with religion... but personally I don't go out of my way to try and be provocative just because I don't believe or understand something. I just find it equally tribal to behave antagonistically towards concepts that we may disagree or don't believe in.

What happened to being nice to one another and maybe respective other people's beliefs/views but not necessarily agreeing with them?
 
Freefaller said:
Actually the explanation has been really well described by both @Penfold101 and @GordyR - so that's not quite right. However as described by them it's down to explicit use of language
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No, my explanation is essentially the same as Gordy's.

Theism is a beleif, and atheism is a lack of a beleif,not the beleif in the negation. Beleif that there is no God would require some level evidence, but atheists don't make that claim. So atheism is essentially zero beleif.

The confusion comes from many theists who incorrectly claim atheism requires as much beleif as their view, when it is the opposite
 
D.P. said:
No, my explanation is essentially the same as Gordy's.

Theism is a beleif, and atheism is a lack of a beleif,not the beleif in the negation. Beleif that there is no God would require some level evidence, but atheists don't make that claim. So atheism is essentially zero beleif.

The confusion comes from many theists who incorrectly claim atheism requires as much beleif as their view, when it is the opposite
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Yeah, it is somewhat nuanced.

"I don't believe there is a god" is not exactly the same as "I believe their isn't a god".
 
Freefaller said:
What happened to being nice to one another and maybe respective other people's beliefs/views but not necessarily agreeing with them?
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I often side with people who are devoutly religious over people who are devout atheists. Some atheists seem to really rub me the wrong way with their 'all knowing' attitude and the pleasure they get from mocking people who follow religion.
 
Junglist said:
I often side with people who are devoutly religious over people who are devout atheists. Some atheists seem to really rub me the wrong way with their 'all knowing' attitude and the pleasure they get from mocking people who follow religion.
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Funnily enough I tend to be that way inclined. But I also don't know any aggressively atheist elites either. The majority of my friends and family who aren't religious are much more in the agnostic area rather than vehemently anti religion.
 
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