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Atheist Q and A

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Original post by Plantagenet Crown
An agnostic atheist.


So an agnostic atheist, why do some people say they are atheists then if they can agree on the fact that they can never be 100% sure there is no God?

Shouldn't the term atheist be done away with?
Original post by Racoon
How can you be 100% certain that there is no God when science does not have all the answers.


Following reasons for me:
Existence of God doesn't give all the answers either.
Science has given more logic towards most arguments.
Events around the World which shouldn't have happened if there were a God.
Events which were performed 'in the name of God' etc. e.g. the Crusades which break some of the beliefs of the religions that were performed by them.
So many depictions of a God(s) in different religions.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by leavingthecity
Numbers are real things. Novels can be reduced to numbers. Sorry if that's a crap and unexciting response, I'm not a philosopher and struggled with that!


Haha ok well thanks for engaging.

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Original post by Racoon
So an agnostic atheist, why do some people say they are atheists then if they can agree on the fact that they can never be 100% sure there is no God?

Shouldn't the term atheist be done away with?


Because, like I said before, of the unlikelihood of one (especially a non deistic one) existing and lack of evidence to support it but a lot of evidence to support the contrary people choose not to believe
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by StrawbAri
Agnosticism is merely a lack of knowledge. It doesn't state your beliefs. Believing something is different from knowing or having complete knowledge regarding that thing. A theist could also be agnostic. So for most people who are atheist there is no need to add the label 'agnostic' as it is already assumed.


That's a rather modern deviation of what agnostic used to mean. If I'm not mistaken, the first use of the word agnostic in the context of God was non committal, which is still what it is taken in to be in other contexts.

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Original post by leavingthecity
Come on. Please don't try and effectively put a comma where I didn't type it.

I'll break it down if your struggling with my sentence structure;

We could know everything. If we could exist for long enough as a race experimenting and exploring. Likelihood is that we will become extinct before we understand absolutely everything.


Also, shows that you do not know the meaning of the word theory or how it is used in science - separate note there.



I didn't intend to effectively do anything, so thank you if I did.

Once again you do not know you would know everything were you to live long enough, how ever long that would be. That's an assumption.
Original post by StrawbAri
That is a misunderstanding of atheism.
It is simply the lack of belief in a god or gods because of its unlikelihood. No (informed) atheist would ever claim to be 100% certain that a deity doesn't exist rather that is something (claiming that their God exists 100%) that theists do.


This doesn't make sense. Most philosophers are atheists in that they actively believe there is no God and are pretty confident of it. I doubt they'd fall under your idea of informed vs non informed

Furthermore, that goes against basic epistemology. An atheist doesn't need to be 100% certain to say God doesn't exist; merely having something asymptotically close to '1' is enough to say 'there is no God' or for the opposite too

Also, that's not what atheism means, nor agnosticism. The latter is a perfectly fine belief to have on its own
Original post by Racoon
So an agnostic atheist, why do some people say they are atheists then if they can agree on the fact that they can never be 100% sure there is no God?

Shouldn't the term atheist be done away with?


No, because an agnostic atheist is someone who lacks a belief in god (atheist), but who is sensible enough to admit that he/she cannot be 100% certain that there is no god.
Original post by Leviathan1741
We can't really be 100% sure that there is no god, however we can still lack belief in one, hence agnostic atheism (not believing in god but not claiming to know that god doesn't exist) :smile:


This is what atheism is, which I think is why some religious believers/agnostics are confused by the principle :smile:
Original post by Scrappy-coco
Haha ok well thanks for engaging.

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Ha disappointing I know.

Numbers are real.

Novels are abstract ideas, as one thing.

The components of a novel are numerical values.

Actually I'd say that ideas and therefore thoughts can be reduced to numerical values.
Original post by YesAllMen
This doesn't make sense. Most philosophers are atheists in that they actively believe there is no God and are pretty confident of it. I doubt they'd fall under your idea of informed vs non informed

Furthermore, that goes against basic epistemology. An atheist doesn't need to be 100% certain to say God doesn't exist; merely having something asymptotically close to '1' is enough to say 'there is no God' or for the opposite too

Also, that's not what atheism means, nor agnosticism. The latter is a perfectly fine belief to have on its own


Firstly I suggest you take a closer look at the definition of both agnosticism and atheism.

Secondly, I am also an atheist that believes that a god doesn't exist that doesn't mean I am 100% sure that one doesn't. If I am only 80% sure then I can't go around declaring 'yeah god definitely doesn't exist' that doesn't make sense.
Not even Dawkins claims to be 100% sure.
Well no, it's not enough. The point of being 100% sure is that the value is exactly one and not tending to one.
(edited 8 years ago)
Cool, I'm happy I found this thread as I was just about to make a completely different one for this question.
What do you (or atheists in general) believe about the origin of the first living cell/object?
Original post by Racoon
I didn't intend to effectively do anything, so thank you if I did.

Once again you do not know you would know everything were you to live long enough, how ever long that would be. That's an assumption.


You literally misread the sentence entirely. Go back and try again.

It is highly likely, given our track record that we would remain without answers....if we die out before the answers happen, this does not change the fact that by Bayesian Inference we would have got there eventually.
Original post by StrawbAri
Firstly I suggest you take a closer look at the definition of both agnosticism and atheism.

Secondly, I am also an atheist that believes that a god doesn't exist that doesn't mean I am sure that one doesn't.
Well no, it's not enough. The point of being 100% sure is that the value is exactly one and not tending to one.


I suggest you follow your own advice here. Huxley never defined agnostic in this sense, and was often critical of the subject of atheism itself. Most modern dictionarys define the definition like that and the more relevant sources (for example the IEP) follow my definition too. See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2za4ez/vacuous_truths_and_shoe_atheism/cs2qkka

Of course it's enough. Sorry, but the relevant experts disagree with you on here and you've done nothing to discredit the literature that's gone into this.
Do you believe that Jesus was a special man in any way or 'just some random human'?
Original post by champ_mc99
Cool, I'm happy I found this thread as I was just about to make a completely different one for this question.
What do you (or atheists in general) believe about the origin of the first living cell/object?


I'm not an athiest, but I'll take a stab at the what I think an atheist would say and then see how close I get when atheists actually answer.

Most atheists will be committed to some sort of naturalism or materialism and argue that the origin of life was a natural process. They may refrain from saying exactly how the first cell originated due to the distance science has to go yet, or they may allude to some of the more promising theories such as the RNA world hypothesis.




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Original post by YesAllMen
I suggest you follow your own advice here. Huxley never defined agnostic in this sense, and was often critical of the subject of atheism itself. Most modern dictionarys define the definition like that and the more relevant sources (for example the IEP) follow my definition too. See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2za4ez/vacuous_truths_and_shoe_atheism/cs2qkka

Of course it's enough. Sorry, but the relevant experts disagree with you on here and you've done nothing to discredit the literature that's gone into this.


PRSOM


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Original post by Scrappy-coco
That's a rather modern deviation of what agnostic used to mean. If I'm not mistaken, the first use of the word agnostic in the context of God was non committal, which is still what it is taken in to be in other contexts.

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Agnostic is literally Greek for 'without knowledge'
So I can be a theist that says 'I believe a god exists for personal reasons and experience but due to lack of knowledge I cannot say for sure that one does definitely exists.' That would be an agnostic theist.
On the matter of deities, I don't see any truth in any holy book or religion. If there is a god, he has little or nothing to do with our delusions & excuses. That being said, I don't think there is much objective reason to worry about the existence of a God.

Original post by Racoon
I didn't intend to effectively do anything, so thank you if I did.Once again you do not know you would know everything were you to live long enough, how ever long that would be. That's an assumption.
Better to assume you will learn the truth in time rather than assume there is truth in a delusion. I mean it is an assumption, but it's an assumption based on the progress we've made so far and the rate of that progression.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Trapz99
Do you believe that Jesus was a special man in any way or 'just some random human'?


What is special supposed to mean here?

He was a man who defended women who had committed adultery and hung out with prostitutes, because he was compassionate and essentially saw them as human beings, which was radical at the time. And if he didn't do these things, whoever wrote them down stuck their neck out to do so and effectively aligned themselves with his radical views on women. Which is cool.

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