Is an agnostic a cowardly atheist?

[johnson1010]

That mention of coincide in my last comment was not aimed at your post Interbane.

[Saffron]

It is a refusal to take things on faith. By extension, it is reasonable to say most atheists are Agnostic.

Johnson1010: Words are always being co-opted. It does not make them illegitimate. Words also have multiple means. I think your suggestion adds confusion. The following is copied from Wikipedia and seems a reasonable justification for using the term to mean someone who feels unable to definitively say yes there is or no there is not a god. Atheist by contrast believe there is no god.

'Agnostic' was introduced by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1860 to describe his philosophy which rejects Gnosticism,

[johnson1010]

Agnostic is the word to use in this post, no doubt, but there is a bit of seasoning attached to it that is commonly unrecognized in it's popular use.

Agnosticism is a rejection of belief.

It is something like using the word victorious. Use of the word implies a certain prestige to a conflict. It imparts accomplishment.

I beat them.
I won.
I was victorious.

No one should feel any amount of shame for being an agnostic. There is a great deal of merit in the concept. I am an Atheist and an Agnostic, i would even go one further and say Anti-theist.

There is an un-deniable stigma attached to Atheism that seems to make it synonymous with amoral. Given this, many people who should rightly call themselves atheists have hedged with the use of the word agnostic when they are probably both.

If you know you are an atheist and tell people you are agnostic to avoid social discomfort you may feel some inner turmoil. Maybe you feel like you are not living up to your own standards?

I hedged for years. "God is the universe." "I dont believe in a man in the clouds, but kind of a posiiive governing force" "God is the good in life"

Eventually you will run out of excuses for him.

I lent "A brief history of time" to a teacher i respected. a few weeks later her returned it. I asked him if he enjoyed it, and he said he hadnt read it.

"Why not?" he was a computer programming teacher and i respected his intellect.

"I shouldn't say in school"

"No really, why not?"

"Well, where does god fit into all of it?"

I was shocked. He rejected the pure joy of opening new avenues of thought for an abstract man in the clouds.

My answer, He doesn't.

[Saffron]

Agnostic is the word to use in this post, no doubt, but there is a bit of seasoning attached to it that is commonly unrecognized in it's popular use.

Agnosticism is a rejection of belief.

Language is a shared endeavor. One can not make up ones own definition to replace or enhance commonly accepted definitions for a word. This leads to bad communication and confusion. I readily admit that each person has idiosyncratic understandings, connotations, emotional experiences to individual words, but when we use them we expect others to use them "correctly", as in how they are commonly understood or defined in a dictionary.

Here are several definitions for agnostic. Please, note that in each it is not a rejection of belief, but rather a sense that the existence of god is unknowable.

Merriam-Webster:

Etymology:
Greek agnōstos unknown, unknowable, from a- + gnōstos known, from gignōskein to know — more at know
Date:
1869

1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable ; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god2: a person unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

Dictionary.com

1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

The Free Dictionary

n.
1.
a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
adj.
1. Relating to or being an agnostic.
2. Doubtful or noncommittal: "Though I am agnostic on what terms to use, I have no doubt that human infants come with an enormous 'acquisitiveness' for discovering patterns" William H. Calvin.

Just because someone considers him/herself to be agnostic does not mean that they are really an atheist that is afraid to come clean. I see no cowardice in declaring, "I don't know." In fact, do any of us really know, with 100% certainty, if god exists or not? How do you know? Are you sure you know what you think you know? Isn't is the slightest bit possible that with our limited human brains we can not comprehend what god actually is? Can not understand the evidence that is right before our own eyes? I would say there must be some percent of chance that this is the case. Try this: imagine what is beyond the universe. Can you do it? What is nothingness? or What is the stuff that is beyond the universe that is not our universe? Can you do that? If you said yes to any of those questions, what do you think the chances of your imaginings being anywhere near correct?

[Interbane]

Saffron: "In fact, do any of us really know, with 100% certainty, if god exists or not?"

Much of the question hinges on how you define god. A bland deist belief in which there is a god, but he has no hand in our affairs, is much different than the personal god who fulfills prayers and performs miracles. The second definition is able to be examined, and it fails. The former is where agnosticism would truly apply, but the idea can still be measured for validity. It's a non-parsimonious scenario, so reasoning weighs against even the idea of a deity. We can formulate answers even when there are infinite factors. We can use an abstraction of infinity in math, we can harness various points on the infinitely variant EM spectrum, and we can say a word or two about Earth, sitting in the middle of an infinite star ocean.

[Frank 013]

Saffron
Just because someone considers him/herself to be agnostic does not mean that they are really an atheist that is afraid to come clean. I see no cowardice in declaring, "I don't know." In fact, do any of us really know, with 100% certainty, if god exists or not? How do you know?

My question is this… if you don’t know than what is it that you believe? If a person does in fact hold a belief on the topic.

If there is no belief because of lack of evidence “you just don’t know” than the person is also an atheist.

On the other side of the same coin is belief in “I don’t know what… but something” this seems somewhat awkward to me.

All of the atheists I know will readily admit that we cannot know for sure weather there is some sort of god out there… but the defined gods… Zeus… Odin… Allah and the Christian god are all well defined and all fail (as Interbane said) when examined rationally.

When confronted with an irrational proposition a normal person will expel it as ludicrous upon normal rational standards “pink unicorns live on venues” for example is a terribly ignorant statement even though it is not currently un-provable.

The same is true of most claims made about gods, even though we cannot be 100% certain.

So saying that “you do not know” does not normally coincide with a belief on the subject, but you are correct there is no shame in saying so.

Saffron
Atheist by contrast believe there is no god.

A common misconception, but for the record the term atheist does not mean that the person “believes” that there is no god… it only means that we do not accept the definitions placed before us to date and see no reason to believe or worship such a being... or even that it would want us to.

In fact due to my enormous luck, ability, happiness and success I would have to say that if there is a god he is providing a poor example letting me (a heathen) reap the benefits of this world while the vast majority of his sheeple follow behind me… many of which live in misery gilt and hypocrisy.

At any rate…to not accept a claim does not necessarily rule out all possibilities… but without some evidence on the subject a rational response is one of skepticism, especially when it concerns how a person is supposed to live ones life.

I do not believe in any god or gods because I have seen no evidence of them… however I would never make the claim that there are defiantly no gods or that there cannot be a god, because as you said we cannot really know.

Now seeing the problems bureaucracies such as organized religion often cause and considering them antiquated and unnecessary is a belief, but it has nothing to do with the possibility of weather there is a god or not.

Later