Agnosticism

[Thumpalumpacus]

A full explanation would require adding extra dimensions, such as mass and/or time.

Yes, as I said earlier, motion is required for time to be meaningful.  

Also, I'm unsure why mass is not simply an area of the three geometric dimensions with an above-average number of atoms.  I'm not trying to be obdurate, I'm just not well-educated in the matter.  How are any extra dimensions required?

[Asmodean]

How are any extra dimensions required?

I'm not really good at explaining this, but I shall try.

Imagine you have a cube. To describe it geometrically, you would need to place it in three dimensions, as it has a certain height, length and width. Now, when you want to assign other properties to it, for example degrading mass, you can not express that attribute meaningfully within the LWH-dimensions, so you would need to add another system of coordinates which represents mass over time, thus adding a couple of dimensions to the three. You may not SEE the changes in the cube, but that doesn't mean they are not there. Mass, for instance, has in general (and very crudely presented) one property: it's "heavy". By the same, you can have a point in space which has another property, the main attribute of which is "imaginary"

A somewhat lacking explanation, for which I apologize, but I DID sleep through some lectures on this matter.

[Stevil]

Pardon me for saying so, but your bias is showing.  Agnostics of the sor described above believe that there can be no knowing one way or the other, i.e., they believe that they can be no evidence at all, either positive or negative.  "No boundaries" does not mean no testing is available.  I can think of several tests which may shed light on the question, although they cannot provide defintive answers.

My point is that anything that interacts with our reality can be subject to analysis, given the proper conditions, and that is why this "hard agnosticism" is to my mind a faith-based position.

LOL, I certainly do not attest to being perfect. I do struggle to understand how something that can do anything, (which has no rules, physical, logical, moral or otherwise to bind it), can be proven outright to not exist. However I won't go so far as to say this is impossible, maybe someone can come up with a test that has not been thought of yet that everyone including theists would agree that a certain re-creatable consistent result would prove categorically that God/s do not exist. Seems unlikely though, but then again why did the world forgo the belief in the Greek Gods, was it  proof driven?

[Ivan Tudor C McHock]

Over two weeks now since I started this thread and not one agnostic has addressed the key points.

Not one.

Not surprising either, given the fact that their position is untenable.

So I must answer on their behalf. I suspect that agnostics sit on the fence for exactly the same reasons that believers swallow the god story. That is, fear, greed and stupidity.

Fear:  The threat of hell has got them just a little spooked so they figure maybe they'll play it safe and hedge their bets. Maybe the magic poof will go easy on them if they don't flat-out reject him.

Greed:  The promise of heaven has got them just a little moist. Hmmmmm.......everything forever courtesy of the big cheese who looks just like us. Sounds pretty sweet..........better climb up on this fence.

Pascal - 1  Agnostics - 0

Stupidity:  The fact that agnostics use the term "agnostic" to describe their position on matters of faith but not on every other work of fiction shows us that they have made an exception for the greatest crock of shit ever told. But not for much, much smaller crocks of shit. They will confidently dismiss the tooth fairy and the easter bunny, but show them the most absurd work of fiction in history and all of a sudden they become all wishy washy and open-minded. I hate to say it, but this is garden-variety stupidity.

I suspect that the ad-populum argument sways a lot of agnostics too. I think that if millions of adults believed in the tooth fairy, the poor old agnostic would hop up onto the fence on that subject too.

I don't like to go too hard on the fence-sitters because they are a pretty harmless lot. However, their very fence-sitting lends a credibility to religion, a credibility which they correctly do not bestow on every other crock.

Religion is not deserving of your fence-sitting. It's not even close to deserving it. Don't give it to the bastards.

[Inevitable Droid]

Over two weeks now since I started this thread and not one agnostic has addressed the key points.

Hmm.  I guess your key point was that God and the Easter Bunny are equally implausible, so if we categorically reject the latter, we should categorically reject the former.

The premise is false.  We know for a fact that parents pretend to be the Easter Bunny, filling baskets with candy and hard-boiled eggs.  Nobody sane or competent pretends to be God.  Furthermore, there is no reason for anyone to think the Easter Bunny exists.  No data, logic, or intuition suggests its existence.  It doesn't serve as the solution to any perceived problem.  By contrast, some people argue that there is in fact a reason to think God exists.  They offer as their reason the intuition that biology reflects far too much functional complexity to have arisen without sapient intent.  God serves as the solution to a perceived problem.  God and the Easter Bunny aren't equally implausible.

When someone says to us, "My intuition demands God's existence due to biology's complexity," what that person has said is either true or false, and then, if true, either reasnable or unreasonable, and then, if reasonable, either testable or untestable.  The statement, being a reference to the fact that the person intuits something, can be taken as true, if we doubt the person is lying.  It can be taken as reasonable, since biology's complexity is certainly astonishing in the absence of sapient intent.  But it must be taken as untestable, so long as we denote by the word God something unempirical in nature, since the unempirical must forever elude empirical testing, and empirical testing is the only testing we or anyone can perform.

No one sane or competent says, "My intuition demands the Easter Bunny's existence."  Again, everyone sane and competent knows that parents pretend to be the Easter Bunny; moreover, the Easter Bunny doesn't serve as a possible solution to any perceived problem.

My guess as to why you perceive the Easter Bunny and God to be equally implausible is this: you take it as self-evident that the non-empirical cannot exist.  Pick anything non-empirical, it can't exist, period.  Unfortunately, while it's true that the non-empirical cannot be known, and while it's true that the forever unknowable cannot reasonably be treated as relevant, it isn't necessarily true that the non-empirical cannot exist.  The limits of possible knowledge do not equal the limits of possible existence.  Or, if they do, you'll have to explain why.

[The Magic Pudding]

I wore the Agnostic label for a while.
Don't think I was measurably stupider then.
Agnosticism was avoiding the arrogance of knowing.
Those guys that know do all the harm you know.
Dismissed the worlds religions, bunnies, Santas and Satans as our creations.
I'm not meaning to be mystical.
But I think open is better than closed.

[Whitney]

Over two weeks now since I started this thread and not one agnostic has addressed the key points.

Not one.

Not surprising either, given the fact that their position is untenable.

So I must answer on their behalf. I suspect that agnostics sit on the fence for exactly the same reasons that believers swallow the god story. That is, fear, greed and stupidity.

Or perhaps it is because we don't have any "fence sitting" agnostics on the forum...because that would be a more reasonable answer to why none have responded to you.

Most of our agnostics are also atheist and therefore aren't "fence sitters."

It's only honest to admit that ultimately we don't know if something right to call god exists (we wouldn't even know if a deist god did exist, for example) so there is nothing wrong with agnosticism in general.  You can't compare a generic creator god to an easter bunny and pretend like it's not apples to oranges.

[AverageJoe]

You can't compare a generic creator god to an easter bunny and pretend like it's not apples to oranges.

Why not? They are both the same - BS.

Agnostics who KNOW (how?) that the Easter Bunny is not real, claim to "not know" that God definitely does not exist because it cannot be proven? You can't prove that the Easter Bunny does not exist either. Yet we "know" one is false and "don't know" the other?

Agnosticism seems to be a bit of a cop out to me.

[The Magic Pudding]

Budgerigars are a bird of arid regions.  They can go a few years without breeding, but come a good year and they can breed several times.
Well good times for budgies are here.  I never have seen a wild budgie, maybe one day I'll see a bunch of them.
Sorry if this post make less sense than the preceding one.

[Whitney]

Considering that we don't know how the universe started I wouldn't consider a deist creator utter bs; it's really no less philosophically justified than any other origins theory that has yet to be proven.  The possibility is there since a deist god is philosophically sound (unlike more specific gods which are not) aside from not having physical proof, we just don't have a way to decide how likely one is and there just isn't a reason to actually believe in a god unless one is proven.  A deist god would basically just be a supernatural force anyway...none of that anthropomorphic religious crap.

The Easter Bunny is just a stupid myth made up to amuse children on Easter instead of telling them that eggs are fertility symbols...there no reason to even entertain it as possible because it can't even start to be philosophically justified.  We can reasonably prove that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist by pointing out that parents hide the eggs, where the story originates from and that no accounts of it were in place before x date etc to the point that someone would have to have a child mind in order to still refuse to admit it s not real....much in the same way that the Judeo-Christian God can be shown to be false.

[AverageJoe]

Budgerigars are a bird of arid regions.  They can go a few years without breeding, but come a good year and they can breed several times.
Well good times for budgies are here.  I never have seen a wild budgie, maybe one day I'll see a bunch of them.
Sorry if this post make less sense than the preceding one.

It certainly did.

[AverageJoe]

Considering that we don't know how the universe started I wouldn't consider a deist creator utter bs; it's really no less philosophically justified than any other origins theory that has yet to be proven.  The possibility is there since a deist god is philosophically sound (unlike more specific gods which are not) aside from not having physical proof, we just don't have a way to decide how likely one is and there just isn't a reason to actually believe in a god unless one is proven.  A deist god would basically just be a supernatural force anyway...none of that anthropomorphic religious crap.

The Easter Bunny is just a stupid myth made up to amuse children on Easter instead of telling them that eggs are fertility symbols...there no reason to even entertain it as possible because it can't even start to be philosophically justified.  We can reasonably prove that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist by pointing out that parents hide the eggs, where the story originates from and that no accounts of it were in place before x date etc to the point that someone would have to have a child mind in order to still refuse to admit it s not real....much in the same way that the Judeo-Christian God can be shown to be false.

I agree.

[Achronos]

...much in the same way that the Judeo-Christian God can be shown to be false.

And how is that exactly? You say you can reasonably prove that the 'Judeo-Christian' God can be shown false how so? I don't mean to derail the thread, perhaps you would be willing to discuss this via PM?

[Whitney]

...much in the same way that the Judeo-Christian God can be shown to be false.

And how is that exactly? You say you can reasonably prove that the 'Judeo-Christian' God can be shown false how so? I don't mean to derail the thread, perhaps you would be willing to discuss this via PM?

In short because the only source for knowing about that god, the Bible, has numerous problems many of which should be enough on their own for any reasonable person to drop the belief.  I'm actually not interested in discussing it privately because I'm pretty much permanently burnt out on debating Christianity (not interesting anymore)...there are a lot of threads on that topic here alone in which I've participated and you are free to browse them.  I also participated a lot on the old wwgha forum you can search for "laetusatheos" here:  http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/forum/index.php

[EssejSllim]

In further response to the OP...

Comparing the tooth fairy, or the easter bunny to a generalized god is, for lack of a better word, incorrect.

I can reject the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God or the Greek Gods in much the same way as the easter bunny or tooth fairy. They all have no evidence of existing and mountains of evidence of not existing. You can also trace them all back to a point of human origin.

But I cannot totally reject the concept of God in the same way that I cannot totally reject the idea that fairies exist. Both are un-empirical statements and cannot be proved or disproved beyond all doubt. Therefore, it would be intellectual dishonesty and arrogance for me to say that they cannot exist whatsoever. The fact that there is not evidence for a claim does not make it false, if there is no evidence in relation to the claim at all, it is an unfalsifiable claim, and cannot be proven or unproven. I do not believe such claims should be given credibility, but at the same time, they should not be dismissed as impossible. At some time in the future, we may possess the knowledge to disprove the idea of God, but even so, that time is not now.

As a side note, I do not label myself an agnostic atheist, or an atheist, because I do not see the point of the word. I prefer free-thinker, or nihilist.

Also, you say religion does not deserve our fence-sitting. There is a stark difference between religion and theism.