Why are you Agnostic?

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

i have to disagre with reach. the entire nature of the realm of belief is that there is no burden of proof to be satisfied. all "proof" for the existence of a higher power is founded upon belief itself. it's up to the individual to decide whether, without the support of empirical evidence but only with the faith-based evidence purported by the believers, the claim of the existence of a god, magic monkey, or bottom-dwelling sasquatch jewpin is plausible or not.

here lies the difference between agnostics and (rational) atheists. agnostics have come to the conclusion that the existence of a god is plausible within the realm of belief, while atheists do not.

[OrganisM]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

So you're taking belief as proof? That's my biggest problem.

Conviction in something concocted out of thin air makes it truth.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

no. you missed the point entirely. belief is accepting something without proof. agnostics say that belief in a god is plausible, not absolute because people believe in it.

[devonin]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

Okay, many replies in one. Surely tl;dr but hey, I'll take the chance.

I am not agnostic...and no I am not going to preach to you. Being agnostic has many reasons some of which actually have a good point. I just wanted to state that evolution is wrong. YOU ARE ALL SHEEP!!!

You can't make such a strong claim with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. The body of evidence supporting the theory of evolution is immense, and you'd pretty well have to conclusively disprove each and every bit of it to forward your claim. Further, belief in evolution doesn't necessarily require you to have one or another religious stance. I can reconcile evolution with theism and atheism easily.

Kids are taught that life can evolve given enough time.
This is a false statement without any scientific support.

We turned wolves into chihuahuas and great danes just within a few hundred years. Clearly life can evolve and change.

They are taught that a monkey at a typewriter could punch keys at random and would type Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet if given enough time. This is nonsense. These government educated kids(at least, some of the more "mentally challenged") actually believe this nonsense, just ask one of them. Time does not make impossible things possible.

Er...for one, this proposal has -not one thing- to do with evolution, and for two, is intrinsically correct and provably so. The situation you're describing is phrased such that the monkey has an -infinitely- long amount of time to work. Given an infinite amount of time, every possible string of outputs will eventually come up, because no matter how unlikely each output string is to occur, over an infinite amount of time, the probability becomes '1 in 1'

As an example, a computer was programmed in an attempt to arrive at the simple 26 letter alphabet. After 35,000,000,000,000 (35 trillion) attempts it has only arrived at 14 letters correctly.

Proof please? Further...a computer running through all 35 trillion attempts did so, I'm sure, rather quickly. Given more time it could easily have finished. Also...If you're going to compare this experiment to evolution, the correct way to do it would have been that once it got those 14 letters (Comperable to a strong evolutionary choice was that carried through generations) that means the next time you run the test, you -start- from "N" so now you only need 12 more correct letters to be done. Evolution doesn't start from scratch.

What are the odd that a simple single cell organism could evolve with the complexity of more than 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations all in the correct places?

Rather high, but not impossibly high.

Never in eternity.

Go spend eternity trying, see if it works, then you can make this ridiculous claim.

Evolution in the long term has been proven false. Simple as that.
If you need more evidence I will post it.

Yes post it. Do so in Critical Thinking in a thread entitled "Conclusive proof that Evolution is false" and see how it goes for you.

Moving along

Put it this way. If god exists, and never does anything to intervene in our world, then what does it really matter?

The claim has been forwarded that God -has- intervened in the world, but having seen the problems with doing so, now simply left a set of guidelines to follow, and has left us to exercise our own free will.

If god doesn't exist, then it will never do anything to intervene in our world anyway. Now, if god exists and did something to intervene in our world, how would we really know?

Depends on the type of intervention I suppose. Fifty foot high words of flame appearing in the sky would be a pretty solid play from a God wanting to reassert its existance.

Therefore theres no purpose to believe either in god, or not to believe in god, because neither is more beneficial than the other, so it doesn't really matter.

As Reach pointed out, and Pascal stated quite nicely, the "safe" view is in fact exactly the opposite. If there is no god, it doesn't matter what you do. If there is a god, you risk eternal damnation as opposed to eternal paradise, so acting as if there -was- a God is the better choice.

I'm going to make a claim. I claim that there is a magic monkey in the corner of my room that dances at night. Only I can see him, and only I can confirm that the magic monkey exists. He is not testable so the monkey cannot be proven or disproven.

So, are you agnostic towards the dancing monkey? What about the giant harry version of jewpin that lives at the bottom of the ocean? Are you going to remain undecided about that as well?

There's a flaw in your attempted objection here though. You stated as a condition of the exercise that the existance of the monkey is not testable, and cannot be proven or disproven. If you'd -only- said "There's a magic monkey in my room that only I can see" there are -all kinds of ways- to test whether it exists or not.

Strong Agnostics say that it doesn't matter whether you could prove or disprove Gods existance, because God, if real, would exist outside the human ability to comprehend anyway. Weak agnostics say "Just because we have no proof -now- doesn't mean we never will"

That's where the problem arises. Can you really be undecided about everything that isn't testable? The answer is no, and you rightfully shouldn't be, because of the burden of proof.

Once again, just because you can't think of a way to test for the existance of God (Nor can I) doesn't mean nobody will ever develop one. And weak agnostics are prepared to wait and see. To conclude that something is false simply because it hasn't been proven true is a logical fallacy.

i used to just believe in god, and i used to try and "trick" him by praying for something and seeing if it happens. nope.. now im athiest because i said to.

Prayer: "A request that God suspend the rules of the universe on behalf of the petitioner, confessedly unworthy."

If God grants mankind free will to do as it wishes, and then turns around and directly modifies the world because you asked nicely, that necessarily removes free will. Prayers for intercession are functionally impossible to have granted, and it amuses me to no end how many very devout christians will defend that God gave them free will, but constantly ask God to interfere on their behalf.

[Reach]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

Being agnostic isn't making a claim, unless you consider "both sides of the argument are plausible" as such. You can't make an argument against it with solid fact because there is no solid fact. The very nature of the argument targets the unknown. Saying "there is definitely no god" is the exact same blind grope at nonsense as "there is definitely a god".

You can't say "burden of proof lol" when I observe that an absolute answer cannot be grasped while living. If you disagree with me, you're going to be wrong, or you're going to have some very revolutionary evidence on your side.



You believe the opposite is true. Note that you don't know the opposite is true.

That's faith, genius.

The claim is being made by the religious people. I said nothing about a claim being made by agnostics.

And you missed my point entirely. The problem here is you still don't quite get the point of faith and the burden or proof. Simplying not knowing for certain is not faith. In order to have faith in something there has to be acknowledgment of a claim that cannot be substantiated. There is no claim in atheism because it's a negative, essentially (weak atheism, according to this thread. I was talking about weak atheism all along, if that changes anything). I can prove to you that this is true.

When you are born, do you have faith in say, the fact that the boogyman doesn't exist? And the tooth fairy? And the ect ect ect. The answer is no because you havn't yet acknowledged any of these entities and your absence of recognition isn't faith. You're born an atheist (a weak one anyway).

I quite clearly stated that God could exist, but this is entirely different from whether or not the claim is absurd. What I did do from here is apply the very logic we depend on for our existance to the existance of God to suggest that you have no good reason to believe in it...because the claim is absurd. Not only on the basis on the burden of proof, but on the basis of it violating occam/parsimony in order to maintain its supernatural status.


As for the second point, I can apply the burden of proof. Religious people are making a claim and I can give the burden of proof to any claim. The fact that you can't know while living is a part of the supernatural aspect of God that makes the claim unfalsifiable.

Once again, just because you can't think of a way to test for the existance of God (Nor can I) doesn't mean nobody will ever develop one. And weak agnostics are prepared to wait and see. To conclude that something is false simply because it hasn't been proven true is a logical fallacy.

It's true I can't state for certain, however what you're saying violates occam. Another reason why we *shouldn't* believe even though we cannot acknowledge for sure that it doesn't exist.

So...ok, since nothing can be known for certain I am essentially uncertain about the dancing monkeys testability from my example...so it's possible there could also eventually be something to test for it too. And everything else you can possibly imagine.

Simply inventing things ad nauseum to suggest that you can't know for sure is in plain violation of occams razor/parsimony. You're just increasing the number of assumptions you have to make and thus you increase the absurdity of your claim.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

As an example, a computer was programmed in an attempt to arrive at the simple 26 letter alphabet. After 35,000,000,000,000 (35 trillion) attempts it has only arrived at 14 letters correctly. What are the odd that a simple single cell organism could evolve with the complexity of more than 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations all in the correct places? Never in eternity. Time does not make impossible things possible.

Your ridiculously incorrect claims about statistics aside, you are SORELY mistaken if you think this is how evolution works. Of course life wouldn't exist if random chance is the mechanism that caused it.

Good thing the Second Law of Thermodynamics exists. It allows for beneficial processes to be selective and continue on while weeding out errors (read: like evolution).

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[toxicninja]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

agnostic because theres no proof of anything.

[Tokzic]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

The claim is being made by the religious people. I said nothing about a claim being made by agnostics.

You said all that in response to a post about being agnostic. Also, you repeatedly referenced agnostics.

[jewpinthethird]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

I am shocked to actually agree with a Tokzic post ...

Atheism is faith. Extreme faith actually. As extreme as any bible thumping zealot on TV shouting about their flavor of the day.

Not quite. Atheists have empirical evidence to back everything they say...or at the very least, an international community of scientists who, for the most part, agree

Atheism is not so much a disbelief in God as it is a disbelief of a "Godhead." I have no problem saying the God of the Torah/New Testament does not exist. Why? Because historical evidence proves that the stories in the Torah are symbolic poems of nomadic monotheistic people passed down from generation to generation orally.

Humanity once believed in multiple Gods to explain natural events. As our understanding of the world grew, the less Gods we needed, until we were left with one...the One who explains all the mysteries of life. Science came along and said, "no, no, no, there is no guy with a white beard in the sky. there is not hell below us, and there is no heaven." But God is a crafty devil, able to transform and distort himself, dodging whatever EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE we throw at it.

Compare that to the extreme criteria a scientific theory has to met to be considered valid, and even then the resistance it meets from other competing theories. Only those that remain falsifiable, yet still prove to be true, survive.

[devonin]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

It's true I can't state for certain, however what you're saying violates occam. Another reason why we *shouldn't* believe even though we cannot acknowledge for sure that it doesn't exist.

Occam very carefully uses the word "usually" when putting forward the principle of the razor. Plenty of things that are correct are in fact very complex, sometimes quite needlessly so. Regardless, all I said was that you can't rely on the fact that God's existance hasn't been proven to conclude that God's existance his been disproven.

So...ok, since nothing can be known for certain I am essentially uncertain about the dancing monkeys testability from my example...so it's possible there could also eventually be something to test for it too. And everything else you can possibly imagine.

You stated as a condition of the thought experiment that the existance of the monkey was completely untestable. Given that assertion, you have no need to be uncertain about whether you can test for the monkey, because you stated that there could be so such test.

Simply inventing things ad nauseum to suggest that you can't know for sure is in plain violation of occams razor/parsimony. You're just increasing the number of assumptions you have to make and thus you increase the absurdity of your claim.

Occam's Razor/Parsimony aren't the universal objective guiding forces of the world you seem to think they are. In -MANY- cases, the principle of Occam holds true. Not all cases. Further, the people who are willing to consider the possibility that someone might someday prove the existance of God are hardly 'inventing things ad nauseum' In fact, you might say they are doing the exact opposite, but refusing to believe in the existance -or- nonexistance of God without plenty of confirmable proof.

[lord_carbo]

Re: Why are you Agnostic?

I am not agnostic...and no I am not going to preach to you. Being agnostic has many reasons some of which actually have a good point. I just wanted to state that evolution is wrong. YOU ARE ALL SHEEP!!!

The reasons people believe the theory of evolution originate in the school education system. Kids are taught that life can evolve given enough time. This is a false statement without any scientific support. They are taught that a monkey at a typewriter could punch keys at random and would type Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet if given enough time. This is nonsense. These government educated kids(at least, some of the more "mentally challenged") actually believe this nonsense, just ask one of them. Time does not make impossible things possible. As an example, a computer was programmed in an attempt to arrive at the simple 26 letter alphabet. After 35,000,000,000,000 (35 trillion) attempts it has only arrived at 14 letters correctly. What are the odd that a simple single cell organism could evolve with the complexity of more than 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations all in the correct places? Never in eternity. Time does not make impossible things possible.

Evolution in the long term has been proven false. Simple as that. If you need more evidence I will post it.

Never? Statistically speaking, by your "evidence" it is not "impossible," it's just very very small. See, you're forgetting the anthropic principle. Contrary to what creationists may believe, the anthropic principle greatly hurts their argument for creationism. Ask yourself: if we didn't exist, would you be able to observe your lack of existing? E.g. you can't make a bet that your $200,000,000 sculpture won't get stolen over the course of a year if you don't have that $200m sculpture! No matter what the chances of you getting it are. It is only when you get a $200m sculpture that you can make this bet.

This is quite possibly the easiest way I can say that you're wrong. I can get some sources that show that the chances aren't as low as you may think (those "60,000" proteins aren't all necessary for life), but quite frankly so long as there is a chance even inconceivably above 0 (e.g. 1*10^-100%), then the chances don't matter.

Oh, and don't give me that whole "statisticians say that anything below 10^-50% is deemed impossible" crap. What keeps them from saying 10^-50%+1? Convenience: it's just that the chances are so low that its insignificant in almost any situation, but frankly it doesn't matter in this case! There's a difference between the impossible and the overwhelmingly improbable.

The chances of life existing or not only matters when you're trying to find life outside of our planet which already has life.

Occam's Razor/Parsimony

I agree somewhat, but Occam's Razor has a place in the argument. It can be used to justify a probable nonexistence of a deist currently secular God, i.e. one we don't know about. Sure that God may exist, but whatever he does to us after we die concerning our belief in him is quite possibly indeterminate because such a god has never revealed himself. He may have antlers, and punish all who don't believe he has antlers, or it can go the other way around. He may punish those who even believe in any God! He is irrelevant, so it violates Occam's Razor, thus I have justification to assume he doesn't exist so long as I remember why Occam's Razor usually holds true. That, great disbelief in religious doctrine, and the logical contradictions of omnipotence are sole reasons why I am atheist and not agnostic.