ACt

You seriously don't get it. You told us that "disbelief" doesn't not mean "do not belief". While there are a few minor altered definitions and adjusted meanings to the word "disbelief", they pretty much all rely on the based definition which is "do not or refusal to believe". Seriously, if you don't understand that your word choice makes you sound like complete idiot, I can't help you. Choose different words and you could easiliy clear up some of these confusions.

But as I said, you're one to rather argue that your definition is valid rather than try to elucidate your point. Your disrespect for anyone you are "discussing" with in this respect is pretty low.

If you are trying to make a point, it is your problem if people don't understand. I'm glad you are not a teacher.

Oh, and a fence sitter is an agnostic in this case. Not an atheist at all. And yes, I do understand that you like to exist in some sort of amorphous area where your opinions and ideas and discussions are completely unassailable and free to exist without challenge. I think the crux of this whole thread is pointing out that you are wrong - no place should or does exist.

Yeah, regardless of what you think you are doing, what remains is that you refuse to believe that "beliefs and opinions can be wrong". So anyone who response to "I don't believe you" with "you think I'm a liar" only means anything if you believe they don't actually believe that. People can believe in things that are incorrect and when the world is run by people who have beliefs, it is in societies best interest to weed out the wrong opinions so we don't live in the wrong. It's why we did away with slavary.

I missed you saying that, so I apologize. I was genuinely interested to see if your brainworldview had anything to do with your work. Like I said, I was mildly worried you did anything with teaching (though you might be an interesting philosophy teacher) but health care worker is pretty solid. Hope you enjoy it.

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It's amazing to me that, unlike in the real world, people on the internet will wear "everyone thinks I'm a moron" as a badge of honour.

Numinous

I'll just correct something in your post, ACt:

A person is only strictly agnostic about God's existence if said person doesn't know the concept of God.

As soon as the person acknowledges it, s/he becomes theist (believes in God) or atheist (doesn't believe in God). That's why call bullshit on people claiming to be only agnostics, because that doesn't make sense if they know what the concept of God is.

Now sure they can be agnostic theists or agnostic atheists (they don't know if God exists or not, but they either believe it or not), but the fence between theists and atheists only exists outside of the knowledge of the concept of God.

AW claimed to not believe in God, he's an atheist. He can cry all he wants about the word, but that's what he is.



Context, HR, context. That definition of disbelief isn't applicable to what's being discussed because it's not in the same context. The context is disbelief being lack of belief.

That doesn't help because it's wrong. Agnostic atheists and gnostic atheists is what you described in order, but both are still atheists.

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ACt

Exactly - if you are not willing to take sides, aka fence sitting, then you are a pure agnostic. You utterly refuse to enter the debate and are willing to just find out because it doesn't matter to you now. It clear is not what AW is, but it is the fence sitter in the god debate. At least, that's how I see it.

I also fully disagree with such people and like to kick them off the fence. The only time you should ever fence sit is on the truly inane topics. You can fence sit on whether or not blue is a good colour, for example.

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It's amazing to me that, unlike in the real world, people on the internet will wear "everyone thinks I'm a moron" as a badge of honour.

almightywood

Well my understanding of the term agnostic is one who does believe in a higher power of some sort, but thinks that it's nature is unknown. I neither believe, nor disbelieve in god, so neither one quite fits. I have been known to say in the past. I am either an atheist or an agnostic, it depends on the day. In reality I am neither.



I do actually. I can't say I find it rewarding exactly, but I do care about the people that I take care of.

Numinous

And that's wrong. Agnostic comes from the term gnosis, which means "knowledge", therefore someone agnostic is someone who doesn't know or isn't sure of the validity of something.

In this case (existence of God) there are two types of agnostics: agnostic theists (what you described) and agnostic atheists (who aren't sure of God's existence but don't believe in it). Pure agnostics only exist when those persons don't know what a God is in the first place, which is very difficult in the age we live in.

And that's bullshit. Once you acknowledge the concept of God, it only takes pathological apathy to not believe and not disbelief at the same time, since it's pretty much a yes or no question without the possibility of maybe. Since you made it clear with caps on that you don't believe in God, it seems you lack that apathy, so stop backpedalling and assume what you did.

So... if you're neither an atheist or an agnostic, are you a gnostic theist? But I thought you said you don't believe in God? Make up your mind!

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Miburo

Your understanding is wrong. If you don't believe in god then you don't believe in god. Atheist. Good job.


The term agnostic is retarded. Everyone is technically agnostic since it deals with actual knowledge; not belief. Which makes it completely fucking useless. People that pretend it's some middle ground are just idiots who ironically think they're taking the most rational stance. In reality, they're just being dumb pussy fence-sitters when asked what they believe. You can know what you believe, and if you answer "I dunno" to that question then you're a fucking moron.

It's a dumb term that has no place in any discussion among intelligent people. The second someone calls himself an agnostic I know that he's pretty fucking stupid.

Edit: Posted this before reading anything other than the few posts above, because holy fucking shit. Read it now. Num knows what he's talking about. Part of my post is criticizing the over-complication of this stupid god shit. No one is actually gnostic; anyone who labels themselves as such is stupid. Everyone is actually agnostic, which makes it a useless term to even bring up. It's like saying you're a human atheist or theist or whatever. No shit. It's not something that should even need to be stated. Even the term 'atheist' shouldn't be necessary since it's really just skepticism. We don't make up terms for people who don't believe in unicorns and shit like that, after all. But since the belief in god(s) is so prevalent it's a bit different than other random fairytale shit, so I guess that's understandable. But seriously, it's not a topic that should be treated like it's something special that warrants most of these retarded labels. It's in the exact same category of discussions as the belief in leprechauns and ghosts and similar magic supernatural shit.

almightywood

This is my biggest problem with you. You refuse to acknowledge any understanding or belief in a concept or a way of thinking other than your own.
You state that such a thing is a certain way, when the only person that has the right to make that assessment is the person making the statement. If you think diffferently, that is fine. As soon as you try and tell someone they are wrong about any of this shit, you are, not them. Whether you like it or not, I am neutral on the subject, this isn't backpedaling, this is me not letting you force your beliefs and understandings on me.

Every time you all do this, you aren't enlightening me on anything. I immediately discount what you are talking about because you aren't actually telling me anything.

Every time you tell me what the majority understanding or opinion is, I could care less. I already know what is "known".

I know that we don't know everything. Every day there are things that we "know" that are discovered to be wrong. Unless you can prove that my belief in something is impossible. it isn't wrong. Telling me what everyone else "knows" will never make me change me mind on anything ever. Even something as simple as recognition of the label of a particular tint of color. I could care less about group mentality or group knowledge because I find it way more likely to be wrong than individual knowledge. Maybe not however long ago they came up with the concept of group knowledge, but people are idiots, every last one of them is an idiot. What a whole bunch of us come up with together is usually less interesting than what one person came up with on their own. Breakthroughs are usually discovered by one man. Someone hears about something that happened to someone, and this is the story that everyone tells, no one hears the story from the guy it happened to, and on this forum, he would be ridiculed because his experience hadn't been published somewhere and then talked about on the internet.

It's a retarded way of thinking in my opinion. I'd much rather hear the story from the horse's mouth, than the horse's ass. Unless the knowledge is coming from personal experience, it ain't from the horse's mouth.

You might be able to make it a lot farther down the road by taking other people's words at face value, but chances are you are operating under a whole bunch of misconceptions.

ACt

Fun with quotes:

Now, if only I could simply sum up my point... aahhhh, yes:

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It's amazing to me that, unlike in the real world, people on the internet will wear "everyone thinks I'm a moron" as a badge of honour.

almightywood

Doesn't really fit since the topic at hand is what I think.
If this was a more general sort of discussion then it would be fitting.

ACt

Actually, I think it is rather apt for this entire thread. You may forget, but a lot of people have attempted to have you explain your position and understand where you're coming from and you've talked yourself completely in circles while giving us nothing. Now you are steadfast holding your ground on issues that pretty much all evidence/literal definitions contradict you.

Then you go ahead and do that post where you go against your own words in the next paragraph under the heading "You refuse to acknowledge any understanding or belief in a concept or a way of thinking other than your own."

That's a vague and simple explanation but seriously, you have made no attempt to understand our positions, very logically laid out, except to denounce them without reason save "my opinions are unassailable". Which is exactly the point we differ on, yet "you refuse to acknowledge any understanding or belief in a concept or a way of thinking other than your own."

Hence, kettle.

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It's amazing to me that, unlike in the real world, people on the internet will wear "everyone thinks I'm a moron" as a badge of honour.

Numinous

That is wrong. I'm perfectly capable of accepting views different than my own, they just need to be valid. Yours isn't because you don't even know your English (and logic) and you spout silly stuff.

Let's replace the concept of God with the concept of chocolate. Once you taste chocolate, your form an opinion: yes, you like chocolate or no, you don't like chocolate. There's a plethora of states of (dis)liking chocolate, from being a chocaholic, liking chocolate very much, liking it but not that much or the inverse, disliking it but not that much, disliking chocolate very much and even despise the damn thing. But one thing a person cannot be is someone who tasted chocolate and neither likes it nor dislikes it (unless they lack tasting buds, but I digress).

You see, ideological fences do not truly exist once you acknowledge something because the brain will automatically make a choice due to evolutionary promotion of resolving problems on the spot (or else you'd die) and you know damn well what choice you made. Of course you can change your mind and adhere to the other side of the dichotomy, but you never go through middle ground because such middle ground is ignorance of that something. To proclaim you're in middle ground and still acknowledge something is to consciously deny the choice you automatically made to avoid negative pressure from the side that isn't your choice.

Of course you can proclaim to be on the fence about some stuff, like when people ask you if you like more Twilight or Glee, because it's perfectly okay to not give a shit about trivial stuff that could deter you from acknowledging something more appropriate to your tastes, but that's not the case with the existence of God. People kill and die for God, people devout their existence to it, there's even theocracy in the present days. To say you're on the fence of that makes you either a morbidly apathetic person or a giant pussy.

Theist or atheist, this is a not a matter of what you are, it's a matter of you affirming something IN CAPS and then denying with a big pile of nonsense that is easily refuted.

The rest of the post is just shit, so I won't bother, but...

Double standards much? What makes you different than us? Are you the second coming of the FSM so your own words don't apply to you or what?

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Human Rasengan

Wait I thought Agnostics believed but had doubts and atheists just don't believe period?

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for those of you who don't understand.. I'm coming from an illogical perspective so your logic won't fit my argument .. it'll only give you a headache.. remember ..belief doesn't require a co-signer There Is A Fine Line Between Genius And Insanity , I Have Erased This Line ! If I were you I'd hate me too.. I am the HUMAN RASENGAN!!!

The power of despair is great in you.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlzx4...&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3qkz4WfOto

LOL I'M DYING BACK HERE

almightywood

The whole point of the statement is the topic at hand. I was asked to present my beliefs, I never once asked you all for yours. I never claimed my way of thinking was law for the universe at large, just for me. I have never attempted to detail my beliefs because I don't wish to spread my values to people that would obviously be better off with their own. If my beliefs would be workable for you, I wouldn't have had such a hard time conveying even the simple messages I have conveyed. I posted them because I wanted to find variations of my beliefs with people that have similar ones, not because I wanted to argue about them with the person that asked for them. I have only ever denounced mistaken interpretations of my words, or attacks against my stance, never anything that was presented as a belief or understanding in and of itself. I have said things, like: it doesn't matter, it doesn't apply, it doesn't change anything.

You all have said things like: it doesn't fit, that's wrong, etc.

There's a difference between not subscribing to something and not acknowledging it. You all do not acknowledge (though the majority of this lot jump directly to denouncement which is a step farther yet), I do not subscribe.


That's pretty much my understanding except that atheists do believe: that there is no god.

Numinous

Sorry for the language, but fuck you. Both of you. After I gave not one but two explanations of what agnostic and atheist actually mean in English in a manner anyone can comprehend easily and you still prefer to go with the misuse of the words?

Check the dictionaries, go to blogs, call the fucking pope if you want to, (a)gnosticism is about knowledge and (a)theism is about belief, they are interchangeable and you are a pair of morons to think otherwise.

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almightywood

I thought I made it pretty clear that I believe your understanding of the english language is as limited as you think mine is flawed.