Thread: Should atheists pull their punches in a debate with theists to spare them losing their faith?

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

About Knowledge:

"Do you believe in God?"

"I'm an agnostic"

"Oh ok, well so am I. But do you believe in God? You haven't answered that question."

See? Agnisticism only concerns knowledge, not belief at all.

About Belief:

"I believe there definitely IS a God." - positive statement that God exists

"I definitely believe there is NOT a God." - positive statement that God dos NOT exist

But this still leaves one more position -

"I don't believe there is definitely a God, but I also don't definitely believe there isn't one." - This is not a positive statement at all.

It's a lack of any belief either way. It's not agnosticism because it doesn't address knowledge but belief. Remember Gnosis is Knowledge and says nothing about belief. So once you say "I'm agnostic" you still haven't answered the question of your beliefs. You can either do that by tacking on a sentence later (as you did in this thread when you finally got around to mentioning your beliefs, or more properly your lack of belief), or you can get right to the point right off the bat and just cover both knowledge and belief by saying "I'm an agnostic atheist". Or if you don't like the term atheist because you mistakenly think it means strong atheist, then you can say "I'm an agnostic, and I don't believe in God". It's the same thing, just takes a few more words.

"Do you believe in God?"

"I'm an agnostic."

"Oh ok, well so am I. Good to know."

See, I can make up conversations too.

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the main difference in our vocabularies in this regard is that you structure yours around explicit statements while I'm perfectly comfortable leaving it implicit. To me, when I say or hear someone say "I'm an agnostic.", it specifically means to me that they're agnostic and don't feel one way or the other about the existence of gods, because if they did then they could have said "I'm an agnostic atheist." or "I'm an agnostic theist." This is why I have no problem simply calling myself agnostic, because I don't identify as truly being on either side, and to me that does include information about my beliefs, or lack thereof. Similarly, you stick to the terms like "strong", "weak", "positive", "negative", while I see this information as fairly irrelevant. Why exactly do I need to know how assertive you are about your beliefs? You've used the term agnostic atheist here, and assuming I'm getting your meaning of that right (agnostic but leaning towards not believing in a god), then I have no problem with that. As far as I see it, on a spectrum from atheist through agnostic atheist, agnostic, agnostic theist, and finally to theist, I can get all of the information I would ever need for this topic.

I'm not saying my way is the only right way, but yours isn't either. I have had many coherent conversations about this in my life and never once heard people use the terms the way you guys are using them here until I opened this thread. I realize that my I have come on strong about the way I use the terms, but you have not shown any signs of backing down either and I really don't see this ever coming to much of a compromise. I've seen the Nintendo Wii two-parter of South Park and I know this doesn't end well. Everyone I know in real life talks about it the same way I do, and if something as trivial as this is going to put up such a big wall for us here then I'm perfectly fine taking my conversations back off the net to people who will understand me.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Alyzarin, this post is entirely dedicated to you

Aw, I feel so special.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Firstly, I hope we can continue the conversation without assumptions. They are natural to be made, but you accuse me of making assumptions (without any clear reasoning behind it) and then you make them about me. Rest assured that I made no assumptions about you (regarding your belief or lack of belief), and that I completely followed your words. You'll see how I've read your own posts even more carefully then you did (it's funny that you said "if you've read my posts carefully), and I'll show you just that expressed in 4 points which show you are objectively, unmistakably wrong (of course, in a respectful way, hope no one in these threads don't see my language as an attempt to mock people, if I sound like it, I apologize!). Let's start!

Just because the reasoning wasn't clear to you doesn't mean it wasn't there. I never meant to do any such thing, I was simply trying to understand your post. I didn't mean to suggest that you were saying something you weren't, I honestly thought that's what you meant.

Objectively wrong, though? I'm not so sure about that.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Point 1: The curse assumption when you in fact didn't read your own post:

No assumptions. I can just as well argue with a theist, an atheist, a polytheist, a person with no opinion, etc etc etc. You surely have to show me where I'm treating you in any way, because I'm merely pointing out things you said, nothing was said about your identity.

This makes me completely right. You've used the "a", which indicates an unspecified entity. When someone says "pick an apple" it means I can pick anything that is an apple. In case you want to state "that's not what I mean, and you knew it!" I will answer (not for the last time): I quoted you exactly and in context. If you don't specify exactly your idea, especially in a subject like this, you become prone to be corrected.

Sorry, but I don't agree with this, and I feel that by calling out the response "That's now what I mean, and you knew it!", you're simply trying to remove that option from me by making it look bad. Notice that I said "I feel", just like I said "it sounds to me like..." before, which is different than claiming that I actually know what you're thinking. However, despite what you've said, that is going to be my response. I've stated my point on this and don't find it to be self-contradictory, and I feel that what I said was clear enough that it doesn't require revision. If you don't think so, that's your opinion.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Point 2: Argues that my argument is useless, without clear specifying why, when the argument stands

Logic is universal. You don't need to search every corner of the universe to know apply that to god. And I just said "imagine you don't know the number of candy in the bottle" which is exactly the same as "not seeing the bottle of the candy"...Meaning that I don't need to see the bottle to see that someone stating something logically impossible is wrong. Now, if you're throwing logic out of the window, that's a completely different things, and at that point, we can no longer have a rational debate.

This I will outright deny, and assert that you are now contradicting yourself. This is the quote of what you posted word for word:

Picture a bottle with loads of candy. If you were asked to say how many candy were there, would you need to know the exact number in order to prove someone wrong? If the person says "2 candies" where you clearly can see loads more, do you need to know the exact amount to say that the person is saying is logically impossible? I thought so.

It is clearly and unmistakably a part of what you said that you can see the candy bottle. If you change it to not seeing the bottle at all, the entire thing falls apart because you can't possibly know whether or not they're right.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Point 3: The wrong definition of atheism. Explained in several examples so there is no more doubt

Agnosticism doesn't have nothing to do with this case, that's irrelevant. Darkmatters already answer this question, but I'll still go over it:

N1: The third option:

The students hear a lecture about god. Throughout the lecture, some start to form believes that god exists, and others don't. In the end, there's not 2, but 3 types of people: the ones who formed a belief that god exist, the ones who didn't form a belief that god exists, and the ones who haven't taken an opinion yet.

N2: The baby

Baby zoth is born to the world. He has never even heard of the concept of god. Can you say that he believes in god? Nope. Can you say that he believes that god doesn't exist? Nope. Poor baby zoth never heard of god, but despite any argument you make, you can never ever say he holds a belief in something he doesn't even can grasp.

This is a cop-out, Zoth. Neither of these examples are "options", they're simply states in which an option has yet to be taken.

Originally Posted by Zoth

N3: The semantics

You said that, so you obviously pay attention to semantics. Theism: belief in a god or gods. Atheism: pre-fix "a" (not, without) + theism= a person without believe in a god or gods. And here we go.

N4: the big weapon xD

Let's clarify things. "I believe in god" or "I don't believe in god" and replace that with "I believe in the existence of gods, I don't believe in the existence of gods"

By this simple sentence, an atheism to you is someone who "believes in the non existence of gods". Do you really think that this sounds right? Also, do you think that a person who doesn't have the hobby of collecting stamps....has the hobby of not collecting stamps?

Yes, I do think it sounds right, other than the horrible grammar you used. But if I simply change it to someone who "believes that gods do not exist", it sounds perfectly fine to me. As for the stamp collecting thing, I'm not even going to address it. If you want to use that kind of argument, at least pick something that makes a little more sense.

Originally Posted by Zoth

Point 4: The assumption 0o

That's funny, I had to read that quote of yours at least 3 times, because I had no clue what you were talking about. When I talked about the yes/no, I was referring to the part where you said "atheism is belief". This makes your argument completely irrelevant, but you could at least ask me or put an "if you're referring to what I said here, then".

Please elaborate then, because your yes/no response makes no sense in response to what you quoted me saying about belief, at least as far as I can tell. The thing that I then quoted, which I did assume you were referring to, started at the sentence immediately following the one you quoted and was part of the same thought. If that's not what you were referring to when you said that, then I have no idea what you were talking about.

Originally Posted by Alyzarin

"Do you believe in God?"

"I'm an agnostic."

"Oh ok, well so am I. Good to know."

See, I can make up conversations too.

Yeah, but you didn't answer the question!

It's like if somebody asks you "Is a marmoset nocturnal or diurnal?" and you respond by saying "I don't like marmosets."

How does talking about knowledge answer a question about belief?

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Yeah, but you didn't answer the question!

It's like if somebody asks you "Is a marmoset nocturnal or diurnal?" and you respond by saying "I don't like marmosets."

How does talking about knowledge answer a question about belief?

It's like giving that sort of response in the way you're used to it, but not the way I am.

As I said, it's implicit. You ask me what I believe about god, and I give a response which says I don't believe you can know. That means I don't have a belief, because how could I if I think you can't possibly know? Now, if I had said agnostic atheist or agnostic theist, that would tip you off that I don't believe you can know for sure but that I lean toward one direction or the other. But I didn't, so the implication is that I don't identify with a belief because of my views. If you just think that I gave a random answer that didn't actually mean anything here, it just makes me feel like you're assuming I'm an idiot. Not saying that that's what you're thinking at ALL by the way, but do you really think I would ignore the question like that? I just answered in the way that anyone I know in real life would, and every time I've ever said that to someone here they've understood what I meant immediately.