Earlier you were VERY clear that there are only 2. Myself and many other users complained about this several times.
So the way I see:
Maybe you could help clear the air by telling us which is the case (and if it is case 4, maybe you could provide more info)?
Well I don’t
Same broad area of the believer making fatuous claims about naturopathy and homeopathy. IE that each is a form of medicine. She will not be swayed by science nor empirical evidence. I suspect that may be due to not actually understanding either concept.
@ bloopynoopy : You do not seem to have grasped the meanings of the words (1) ‘atheist’ IE one who disbelieves in god(s) . The most common reason is a lack of empirical evidence. (2) the other term is agnostic. IE one who doesn’t know. The word can be used for just about anything. Eg I’m agnostic about say biochemistry, alien visitations, plus many thousands more topics.
Simply put; the word ‘atheist’ is about belief. From the Greek worth ‘atheos’= godless/ without a god .
The word Agnostic is about knowledge. Again from the Greek a=without gnosis=knowledge. As I’ve mentioned the term isn’t restricted to knowledge of god(s0
The things I have tried to explain:
1. I that there are 3 answers, to one question. (so choosing two answers/being an atheist agnostic is a contradiction).
AND
2. That if anything within the realm of known truth can be described as God, it is what we don’t know.
Two things that I know to be reasonable ideas.
I’ve tried to be civil, but you all have a very ‘zealot-esque’ mentality. So here is what you are missing:
If I can understand you’re points and you cant understand mine. It might be because you are so blinded by righteousness you cant see when you are wrong, or even attempt to find a middle ground. Some of you might identify as part agnostic, but you clearly don’t practice it, hell, you don’t really have any ability to practice faith, which if you understood what faith was, you would know is possible outside religion or god. You all seem to think faith or belief is opinion, but its not. I am a Practising Agnostic and to some extent I am a Practicing Atheist and a Practicing Theist. But if you need to be an atheist or a theist then you don’t practice faith, your only speak opinion, a lot of which quite ironically is stolen from philosophers and mathematicians who probably did have an understanding of the differences of faith and opinion as it faith is required to come to these conclusions.
All I will say is this: If your bible is a dictionary you will never understand theism. I understand what god is and so I understand what no god is, I have earned a right to assess the question and give an answer.
Have any of you?
Yeh, I have read all your posts and you come across as
a) a wackdoodle or
b) a pernicious troll
I have studied your “answers” to erudite posts and I have earned the right to assess the question in your posts and so I understand the alternatives, I have earned the right to give an answer. Have you?
Arrogant, smug, faux intellectual dribble.
Did you mean to say ‘drivel’? No matter, both words suit.
Dribble, drivel. babble, bubbles…no matter, it is meaningless twaddle whatever the epithet. .
That’s because despite several posters explaining it to you exhaustively, you still don’t know what atheism means.
One more time then, its NOT an answer to the question does a deity exist.
Try again.
Cor blimey, you’ve soiled yourself again.
1.How can what we don’t know exist within known truth ffs?
2. How can anyone expect to be taken seriously, when they make assertions about the unknown?
No you don’t, sadly you are so fucking muddled, you don’t know what you don’t know. Now your idiocy has me using tautologies.
You’re the one making irrational claims, that contradict even basic word definitions, and refusing to even acknowledge that. You make claims to knowledge and refuse to acknowledge requests to evidence them.
You’re the one exhibiting dogmatic zealotry here, the only remaining question is whether you’re even aware of this fact.
Every one here has understood your claims, you’re just wrong, and too closed minded to even try and see it.
How exactly does one practice not knowing something? It’s one thing for you to be illiterate, it’s quite another for you to refuse to accept the dictionary definition of a word, which is not decided by anyone here.
Ding ding ding, theist alert…oh brother…why the fuck would an atheist or an agnostic require faith? Faith is the vapid excuse theists use to believe a claim without any rational or empirical reason.
Faith is precisely unevidenced subjective opinion. Belief can be either subjective opinion or based on knowledge, derived from objectively validated data.
More evidence if any were needed, that you are still refusing to understand the definition of atheism.
Theists don’t practice faith now, that is a colossally stupid claim.
Words are meaningless without a dictionary. Again the erroneous and incomprehensible guff you’ve posted prove this.
Then by definition you’re not an agnostic.
This is a public debate forum, is that another concept you cannot grasp?
So a direct contradiction in the same post. I can’t be alone in noticing his theistic tendency to roll past objections and requests for evidence with impunity?
PASCAL’S WAGER: The story of Doubting Thomas: " Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29. The Bible encourages you to Believe whether or not you Know. Believe first and knowledge will come to you…
Looks like your problem is that you do not understand what the word “Know” means. Knowledge is belief when you know it to be true. Knowledge that you do not know is unknown so you can not believe it. In short… all you have is belief.
Knowledge is best described as justified true belief. If truth is out there, it is largely unknown. We can never be 100% certain of anything. Belief is everywhere and most of what we believe requires no evidence or thought what so ever. But if you are going to start making reality claims, you need some facts to back them up.
No, you do not “DECIDE” to believe in no gods. You are either convinced or not convinced. It is not a decision. Can you make the decision to believe in Zeus right this minute? Can you choose to believe the Easter Bunny is real? You are not choosing beliefs. Beliefs are a culmination of your thoughts and ideas about the world around you. And as they say… “Garbage in, garbage out.”
“All Known things is God.” OH FUCK! My asshole is god. The bugger up your nose is god. The turd shit floating in the gold fish tank is god. Could you be any more fucking amorphous? Join a Hindu sect. God is just playing hide and seek with himself. It is all the unfolding of Shiva. Fuck me… It does not matter because we are all just minds in vats anyway.
Your beliefs sit square in the middle of Theist. How is that not obvious. “Everything is god.” You believe in a form of God. You are a theist. It’s not that difficult. Does everything exist? Well, everything we know of exists anyway. I call that everything I know of and you call it “god.” You are a theist’ Mystery solved. Bye.
Nah - I prefer the idea we are just in a VR simulation 
The problem I realise is a difference of approach to the question. Yours is a more literal/ semantic one, more focused on the various definitions of the words, ‘Atheist’, ‘Agnostic’, ‘Know’, ‘Believe’, ‘Opinion’ etc.
I however take a more mathematical approach to theistic and philosophic discussion, using, algebra similarly to modern philosophy. The biggest misconception or misunderstanding I’ve found here is the idea that imagined things can’t be ‘real’, when, we live in a society built on imagined concepts, with things like banks and governments all using these things to function. If what you call ‘real’ is built on the pillars of the imagined and imaginative with concepts, like money and law what is it that people also equally trust faith, god and religions, as I don’t believe all believers have been brainwashed, exploitered or misinformed, and know people who gain a lot from their faith.
Second was an argument against the collation of agnostic and atheist as there is an important difference as I would say agnosticism is the belief that god’s existence cant be known as apposed to the idea that gods existence isn’t known.
If we say “we cant know if god exists”, or if we rephrase it, “the existence of god can’t be known” , or, “the knowledge of gods existence is something that cant be known”. We are of the belief there will never be proof for, or against god, as the nature of what is god is undefinable. (This is what I would describe as an agnostic)
If we say “we don’t know if god exists”, or, “the knowledge of gods existence is something that isn’t known”. It suggests a belief that it’s objectively impossible to find proof for god or that god doesn’t exist until their is evidence, so you would know the answer if you could know everything . (This is what I would describe as an atheist)
This is quite a distinction as the latter suggests that the question could be answered if you were all knowing, the former suggests the answer can never be known.
The last point I was making (as just an idea/personal belief) about god was that if as an agnostic thinks " the nature of god is undefinable", maybe we could also argue that, “god is something(or anything) that has no definition” similarly to what god of the gaps is arguing, however using this to try and understand the appeal of faith.
In response to
You see if you think of the question as a math problem you can learn from the unknown.
How to you know what is unknown? In algebra/ math we use unknowns like ‘x’ all the time. To calculate what you don’t know all you you need is an equation,
If what we don’t (yet) know is = ‘u’
and what is known = ‘k’
then everything that can be known must = k+u
so if we use what this to make an equation for the value ‘u’ as
u= (k+u) - k
or in other words what is unknown is equal to, everything that can be known, excluding what is already known.
God is unknowable because there is nothing that you could know that would fairly prove god or disprove god as some gods have omnipotence which means theists have the ability to evade the logic of any argument by saying a god has a power above that or any logic. If all knowledge is based on fact and evidence you can never know something that lives beyond fact, you will only ever be able to make an assumption about god/ the existence of god.
Hope this clears the misunderstanding.
‘u’ is gibberish
Same problem with ‘u’.
New problem in that this relies on a hidden assumption (the assumption that everything can be known, which seems VERY dubious to me).
It didn’t; at all.
Sadly, when I skimmed this post, I saw reference to mathematics, algebra, and I saw the variables and a equation or two. I thought it was going to be something profound; it isn’t.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear but ‘u’ is a representation of what you don’t known what isn’t known, wasn’t intended to be profound only an explanation as how to understand/ comprehend something you do not know. If you read what I have already written though the rest should be self explanatory. Also I’m not a troll just have a different perspective of things.
Basically you stated that since there is stuff you do not comprehend, without any causal link, you invented a god.
That is the argument from ignorance.
no I was only trying to describe the concept of ‘god’ in a way that doesn’t rely on proof, as if theists believe in a god, despite evidence, so there must a way to define ‘god’ without evidence. The realisation is that if you define god, not as a deity, but instead as what a god is to us (as people) we see that, as explored with god of the gaps, that ‘the gaps’ or the unknown best describes what a god is, not a being/deity, but that’s what a god really is, the human explanation of the unknown. This makes the question ’ does god exist’ more answerable as it makes it a debate of facts not, belief or opinion.
Let’s try it:
You are planning to flip a coin (or insert random event here) next year. You don’t know what the outcome will be. The outcome seems to be a member of your set u (what you don’t known).
Now lets use your equation:
everything that can be known must = k+u
Since the outcome of a future random event is in u then it must also be in k + u. Meaning the outcome of future random events is part of the set of things that can be known.
That seems VERY wrong.
By renaming things that already exist and are known. You are making up your god. Like every other theist ever. Except they wrote it down and that was their “evidence”…
You might find this a bit weird but I sometimes think of my favorite Fievel Mousekewitz stuffed toy as a god.
If any deity were to exist with a heaven to go with it my heaven would be to have my own entire universe. Fievel would be real and would be whatever age I want him at certain times. There would be times he would be over 18 and times he would only be 5. But if it is my heaven I could also myself be whatever age I want to be.
I wont join any religious groups as I don’t personally believe in it. I am not going to cherry pick something I refuse to believe in.
My Two Cents
let me ask you a question. if there is no evidence for god, why do people choose to believe in god, what’s the appeal or incentive of believing in a god?
Realise that even if a religion is made to trick, brain wash, scam people there would need to be some incentive. as you can only scam someone who if you make them believe they are going to get some thing in return. When the Nigerian Prince sends you an email, he says he’ll send you gold or money more valuable than the buy in rate. So what’s religions ‘Gold’?
The promise of an eternal afterlife.
