Agnostics: Get Off the Fence

[TagliatelliMonster]

I am not a theist. To be a theist means that you have faith that God exists. I do not have faith that God exists.

Then you are an atheist.

I am not an atheist. The be an atheist you have to have concluded (have faith) that no God exists.

Not at all.
The position of atheism is sometimes further divided into strong atheism and weak atheism.
Strong atheism means that you positively believe/claim that no god exists.
Weak atheism means that you don't believe the claim "a god exists", and that you also don't claim that no god exists.

Some people, even atheists themselves, seem to have problems with understanding the position of weak atheism - while in my experience practically all atheists that I encounter are of exactly that position.

I cannot exclude the possibility (and you cannot either).

The question of theism/atheism isn't about where you can demonstrate it to be true or false. It's about wheter or not you positively believe a god exists.

And before any twits here start labelling me with “strong atheist”, or “atheistic agnostic”, or “weak theist” garbage. Just know that all that blubbering is just garbage

It's not garbage. It's logic and accurate. And both are important.
Not believing claim X to be true, does NOT mean or imply that you'll necessarily accept the claim of "not X" as true.

Get over yourselves and your claims of knowledge. You. Don’t. KNOW.
You have faith. I am faithless in this regard.

Nobody knows. That's kind of the thing when one makes claims about unfalsifiable entities. They are unknowable by definition.

 

[night912]

It is not the case. I have been on this forum for many years and have kept the same signature that you see below.

I don’t know, and neither do you.​

I am not a theist. To be a theist means that you have faith that God exists. I do not have faith that God exists.

I am not an atheist. The be an atheist you have to have concluded (have faith) that no God exists. I cannot exclude the possibility (and you cannot either).

And before any twits here start labelling me with “strong atheist”, or “atheistic agnostic”, or “weak theist” garbage. Just know that all that blubbering is just garbage. Get over yourselves and your claims of knowledge. You. Don’t. KNOW.
You have faith. I am faithless in this regard.

I’m very comfortable “on the fence” as you say. The rest of you live with your beliefs.
I will keep watching what is, because I don’t think that we’ve learned everything that the multiverse has to show us yet.

There’s plenty of room up here, and all are welcome.

You're an atheist. The difference between me and you is that, I know that you are an atheist and you don't know that you are an atheist.

You have too much faith in believing that you are not an atheist. Time for you to drop the faith. One cannot gain knowledge if one already has faith in their belief of being faithless. Hence, your ignorance of atheism and your claim of not being an atheist.


Does not having the knowledge that you are garbage, not make you garbage? Or is it that you have knowledge that you are garbage, and that makes you garbage?

I don’t know, and neither do you.

When you have faith in believing that you don't/cannot know, you start believing that you know that you don't know. That's when the other person knows that you don't know.

The first part of your saying, "I don’t know," is only good to use when and if you don't know and have a faithless belief that you don't know. But once you have a faith based belief, you use then believe that it's good to use the second part, "and neither do you." Once you believe that the entity of the whole thing is a good thing and/or good saying, that's when your belief have been taken over by your faith. That's what someone with a faith based belief will say, and not be able to see the reason as to why it isn't so wise.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Some people, even atheists themselves, seem to have problems with understanding the position of weak atheism - while in my experience practically all atheists that I encounter are of exactly that position.

Certainly every atheist is in that position with regard to every god they've never heard of.

Insisting that an atheist has to explicitly reject gods AND that atheists really exist ends up with implying that people can have opinions about things that have never even crossed their minds.

 

[tayla]

Do you consider yourself to be an atheist? Why?

Theism means there is a supernatural God or gods. I see no evidence for such a thing and am therefore: a-theist, non-theist.