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That's why what you describe as "speaking strictly" is pointless. Throughout your life, you have to make decisions. You can make these decisions entirely randomly, or you can base them on something. If you base your decisions on something, you can choose to base them on religion and evidence (theism) or on evidence without religion (atheism).

Agnosticism is a convenient position to take intellectually, but as a world view it's somewhat hypocritical, since it's totally useless as a decision-making tool.

While it is true that one could theoretically develop an ethical framework without religion, it is simply naive to assume that any ethics system in place in modern society is devoid of a religious influence and therefore ethics and religion are definitely linked together.

This is an odd assertion. In the first place, you don't have to look hard to find a system of truly atheist ethics. Consider, for example, any of the atheist existentialists. Names like Camus and deBeauvoir (not to mention Sartre) are not exactly unknown to people who study ethics.

Next keep in mind that the average Joe on the street has more or less 0 knowledge of the theological basis to religious ethics. The elements of ethics transferred from religious prophets, scholars, and even authoritative texts (scripture) are only the most simplistic shadows of their original statements.

This same process has been operating for quite some time from atheist philosophy to the mainstream. Your average godless materialist has probably not read "Ethics of Ambiguity", but certainly employs some kind of watered-down remnant of atheist ethics. So while I'd agree that it's hard to talk about ethics without even mentioning religion, there are already competing non-religious ethical systems that have been around for quite some time (decades, generations).

Finally, and most importantly, you have to realize that people who take ethics seriously and are religious are still going to (for the most part) discuss ethics in a religion-neutral view. The evangelicals get all the press because they are so loud and out-there. Their idea of an ethical discussion is convince you to accept Jesus as your personal savior first, and then have you believe everything their pastor tells you that Jesus said second. But a lot of religious people debate their ethical and philosophical viewpoints without trying to convert you first (or at all).

In short, not only can any serious discussion of ethics take place without requiring people to assert a particular dogma (atheist or some variant of theism), that's how most serious discussions of ethics actually work.

-stormin

Have you never heard of the field of philosophy of religion? In it theists outnumber atheists considerably

And in the study of Marxist philosophy, Marxists probably outnumber non-Marxists considerably. So what?

Most non-Marxists and most non-theists simply don't see anything worth significant study or debate in those respective fields.

General theism is extremely defensible by reason

Please, summarize such a reasoned argument for theism.

and Richard Swinburne has of late proposed a number of arguments for specifically Christian concepts that are presenting quite a challenge to his atheist colleagues.

A quick look at the the papers on his home page show nothing but the same warmed-over arguments with no explanatory power. Nonsense like this: "These arguments seem to me to have a common pattern. Some phenomenon E, which we can all observe, is considered. It is claimed that E is puzzling, strange, not to be expected in the ordinary course of things; but that E is to be expected if there is a God; for God has the power to bring about E and he might well choose to do so. Hence the occurrence of E is reason for supposing that there is a God."

In other words, "there's stuff we don't understand, therefore God exists". A common argument, but a weak and disappointing one.

I understand your viewpoint, but at the same time would you say that people who don't believe in Sasquatch are just as faith based as those who do? Most atheists I know of consider atheism the default viewpoint and don't consider it a matter of faith.

Also, agnosticism is really separate from atheism and theism. I would consider myself a weakly atheistic agnostic, i have friends who are theistic agnostics. I'm not sure what you mean with the reference to Unitarianism. That would be an altogether separate theistic division.

All religion is inherently a bad thing, even when "good" things are done in it's name, because it is based on a falsehood, i.e., a superstitious belief in the supernatural

Have you never heard of the field of philosophy of religion? In it theists outnumber atheists considerably, and atheists tend to go over to the other side, as Anthony Flew famously did a couple of years ago. General theism is extremely defensible by reason, and Richard Swinburne has of late proposed a number of arguments for specifically Christian concepts that are presenting quite a challenge to his atheist colleagues. See his The Coherence of Theism (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1993) on general theistic arguments, and The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford University Press, 2003) for his tour de force application of the Bayesian theorem to Christian claims.

Conway and Kocken probably shouldn't have used the phrase "free will", it is far too loaded and misleading of a phrase here. The way they defined it is so minimal that it is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. It does *not* even imply or require underlying non-determinism in physics.

I agree "free will" was a poor choice of phrase in terms of being as descriptive as possible, but I imagine they picked it for the publicity. However, their definition of free will does imply non-determinism, in the context of the Copenhagen interpretation (Many-worlds is cheating, for reasons I'll explain later). Take another look at their paper if you don't believe me.

Much of the rest of your post is devoted to a rebuttal to some imagined attack against atheism. In saying The rest of your argument was the equivalent of nothing more than saying "Jews drink babies' blood", you've surely triggered some corollary of Godwin's Law. My post was most certainly not an attack on atheism. Non-determinism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a meaningful objective morality, and both are independent of the existence of god. I am very aware from personal experience that atheists can believe in an objective morality and are often very nice people. You don't need to argue with me about that.

There are two major interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Oxford Interpretation.

Actually, there are substantially more than two interpretations (e.g., pilot-wave, plus all sorts of variants on Copenhagen with different theories of measurement), but really only the Copenhagen Interpretation is mainstream, if by mainstream you're referring to what a plurality of professional physicists believe.

The Copenhagen Interpretation involves non-deterministic random events that could open a doorway for the sort of Free Will you are arguing for, however the Oxford Interpretation also accurately accounts for all known physics and involves absolutely deterministic physics.

For someone who apparently rejects the idea of a single, unverifiable god, it's terribly ironic that you seem to believe in the Oxford Interpretation (aka Many Worlds). If believing in one unverifiable god is ridiculous, then believing in an uncountably infinite number of unmeasurable alternate universes must be truly, mind-blowingly absurd.

If you want to have a flame war, be my guest, and we can argue Copenhagen vs. Oxford Interpretation, but let's not get into the theism vs. atheism debate.

I, frankly, believe that thie entire debate concerning "Intelligent Design in Classrooms" is rather ludicrous. It is a biology classroom. If the teacher deems it pedagogically beneficial to discuss the philosophical interpretations of evolutionary theory, then why not let her? Are parents -- or, perhaps, more accurately, politicians -- so worried that their impressionable children are going to be irreparably corrupted by such dangerous ideas that they must be legislated out of the classroom altogether? If these classrooms are like most biology classrooms, the students are merely memorizing terms, in any case. Likewise, if a teacher deems it pedagogically irrelevant to discuss potential philosophical implications in the classroom, then that is his prerogative. I think that the kids deserve more credit for being able to make up their own minds about these things. What is a "scientific theory"? There are some very interesting denotations available. The fact of the matter is that one side of this debate wants theism to be admissible into scientific discussions; the other wants naturalism to be the de facto standard. Now, I personally think that making any worldview a standard by default is mistaken and arrogant. I do not believe in dispassionately assimilating information, but I also do not like the idea of a teacher shoving a worldview down the throat of a high school student. This is all about political correctness, and it is nothing new. There is absolutely no reasonable justification for a teacher to be banned from bringing up the philosophical implications of the information being presented. I would argue that one is doing a disservice by omitting this critical part of education. People are so afraid of someone "forcing" a view upon the students that we have taken items for discussion out of educational institutions. However, if the teacher has the disposition that things like intelligent design are inappropriate for a biology classroom, then that is also the teacher's prerogative. I happen to think that intelligent design is important to discuss, but that is just my opinion. Either there is a designer or there isn't. There are intelligent people who believe both. The only people who believe otherwise are guilty of bigotedly caricaturing people with whom they disagree.

Being a theist is a barrier for accepting scientific knowledge for some people. It is not a barrier for others. It all depends on their brand of theism. I wrote that to illustrate why being a theist is a barrier for some people.

You are correct that both of us used ambiguous language. We sold have used words like "all," "necessarily," and "for some," but we didn't.

I have heard multiple people reject scientific knowledge based on their brand of theism. These are the same people who vote on how to spend public money. These are not people most would call "zealots." If you intended to say "for some number of people, some scientific knowledge can be accepted while accepting some brand of theism" then nobody can argue with you. But your general sentiment seemed to be along the lines of "theism isn't bad for science." There are many documented, compelling cases that are directly at odds with that sentiment.

Strongly disagree. I have a Christian theist family on my mother's side and an atheist family on my father's side. My mother's side distinctly dislikes science. Whenever I talk curiousity about anything in the way the world works, their interest quickly bottoms out with something like "God made it that way and we can't understand with our little human brains". They are completely satisfied with knowing nothing. They also directly fear science because they think science is responsible for the decline in Christianity. What decline? The US is more Christian now than ever. Of course that's a factual point so even bringing that up is too scientific, they want to go by their guestimation.

I'm not saying all theistic people are like that. I understand that a large part of early science was motivated by the desire to understand the mind of God. I understand that most scientists are theists (because most humans are theist). But I have witnessed theism hamper people's interest in science as well, something I've never seen atheism do.

Cheers.

We're all without knowledge, though. Theists, atheists... doesn't matter. No one knows; some people believe.

Agnostic doesn't quite have the usual etymology. When Huxley coined the term agnostic, he was being flip; He said he did it because of the self-professed "gnostics" in the church who claimed to "know everything." He was saying he didn't know anything.

I've been reading this and I am sorry to jump in

By all means, no need to apologize.

I can honestly say I do not know.

Ok, you don't know... what? You don't know if you believe or not, or you don't know if there is a god or gods?

If you don't know if you believe, then it is time for more contemplation. I don't believe because I only believe things that I can find evidence to support. Perhaps the question to ask in this case is, what is required for you to enter into the state of belief?

If you don't know if there is a god, well, you're in the same position as everyone else. No one knows, because there is no evidence. Theists don't know -- they can claim they do, but what they have is belief god exists, not knowledge, unless they can prove otherwise, and of course, they can't. Hard atheists don't know god or gods do not exist -- they can claim they do, but what they have again is belief, not knowledge. There is no knowledge of this issue, either way. That doesn't mean we can't reach some very firm conclusions about what we should believe (more on that below) but it does mean no one can definitively know the answer to the question.

The question of belief stands apart from knowledge. I can give you an example to prove the case. For instance, children believe in Santa and the easter bunny. They do this not because they have knowledge, but because they have been lied to; in fact, they believe because they do not know the facts. This (rather sad) example shows how belief is about an inner position that may be taken on no more than opinion or trust in someone else's opinion. Of course, one could believe in Santa after having met the man, which would be a case of justified belief, however, again, this makes my point -- belief can exist with or without knowledge, it is not really connected to the idea of knowledge.

But... if you want to talk about knowledge, consider how humans usually figure things out:

List A:
A List of proofs that Santa exists:
[empty list]

List B:
A List of proofs that Santa does not exist:
1) See List A

In other words, when we can't find anything to support an idea, we don't tend to grace it with belief, even if, as is the case with Santa, it would be nice if it were true. Those precise same two lists apply to god or gods.

Revisiting why one would give credence to the empty list for proof of belief in god or gods is worth doing for anyone. Sure, socially, atheism is poison. Is that a good reason to believe? Sure, it's fun to have a community, as in church on Sunday... Is that a good reason to believe? Sure, it's nice to have a set of canned morals and ethics laid out for you so you don't have to work at figuring out what is right and how, or if, context is important... is that a good reason to believe? I don't buy any of those, myself.

The question of theism is delineated by faith, by belief. "Theist: One who believes in a god or gods." It isn't "One who knows there is a god or gods", which would be something else entirely. The polar opposite is one who does not believe in a god or gods, the prefix "a" meaning without, and "theism" meaning belief in a god or gods. Often, people misread (and misapply) the word atheism to mean "disbelieves in god or gods" but this is neither a sensible etymology for the word, nor consistent with similar words (a:moral = without morals, a:gnostic=without knowledge, a:theism, without belief in god or gods.)

Atheists will accept you as one of them if you say that you do not believe in a god or gods. It is not required to either disbelieve, or to profess knowledge.

Theists will accept you if you say that you believe in (their particular version of) god or gods. It is not required to profess knowledge.

It's a weird feeling and frankly if I could just be done with it and state

Ah. I see. You're an atheist -- without belief in god or gods. Not an agnostic at all.

Yes, I am an agnostic. Breaking agnosis: a, without; gnosis, knowledge. Agnostic, one without knowledge. That precisely describes me, I am without knowledge. The one area I may, or may not as I don't have the belief, disagree with other Agnostics is that it is unknowable if god(s) exist. I don't know if that if one or more exists it is unknowable. I suppose you could say I am both atheistic and agnostic as I have neither the belief nor the knowledge of the existence of any diety.

. There's a distant member of my family that had a bicycle accident, name of David, who also suffered a TBI.

That's what happened to me, I was riding my bike from the campus of the college I attended after class when I was hit by a moving van, one of those apartment mover types. The driver had a history of causing accidents, he was diabetic but didn't take care of it. The thing about my injury was that my head wasn't even hit, I had my backpack on my back and the van's sideview mirror hit the backpack. The TBI was caused by the sudden violent movement when I was sent flying then hitting the ground.

No I do not believe there is any supreme diety. Nor do I believe one does not exist. I have no belief one way or the other

Ah. I see. You're an atheist — without belief in god or gods. Not an agnostic at all.

An agnostic attempts to stake the "middle ground" by claiming there is no way to know; obviously, you've already figured out that the evidence doesn't call for belief, and you don't have any as a result. The reason why you don't fall into a center position is because you don't even give lip service to the agnostic case. Good for you; this is the sensible position, intellectually speaking.

Sorry to hear about your TBI. There's a distant member of my family that had a bicycle accident, name of David, who also suffered a TBI. I've corresponded with him, a very sad situation indeed. You have my best wishes.

First, do you hold any fraction of a belief that there is a god, or gods? In other words, do you believe there is a deity or deities, anywhere, of any type, regardless of how closely they might or might not cleave to the various religious ideas prevalent today or in the past?

No I do not believe there is any supreme diety. Nor do I believe one does not exist. I have no belief one way or the other, though I would like to know.

Second, as (presently, it appears to me) you seek to hold onto the central position between there might be a god or gods, and there might not be a god or gods, can you tell me why you find the odds for the two cases to be relatively balanced?

I don't seek to maintain this central position you describe, as I've stated before I want to know if a supreme diety exists or do not exist. Nor do I find the odds of one existing or not to be balanced. Actually if I had to choice either way with the I have I'd have to say one does not exist as I sense no evidence one does exist. I won't even use Pascal's Wager to say a supreme diety exists. What was left out is what version of one or more exists. There's a multitude of different gods each with different characteristics so how can a person decide which one to believe in? And remember some of them are jealous and don't want any other diety worshipped. So you're up shit creek if you pick the wrong one. Actually as far as I'm concerned any "God" or gods that requires faith to be "saved" isn't worth being worshipped much less respected.

can give me the reason(s) that you think it is essentially, equally likely that there is, or is not, a god or gods, that in turn showing how the comparison to the invisible pink unicorn presumably fails.

Can you show me where I make this comparison?

I've really not encountered very many agnostics who are open to discussion; that does tend to get them thrown into my prefab "agnostics are copouts" box, but in those cases, I don't feel very apologetic about it... they just feel like people who have taken politically correct behavior to an intellectually dishonest extreme to me.

Maybe it will be easier to understand my position by knowing where I come from. Though my mom was and is Roman Catholic and we went to church at least some when I was little, I don't recall how much though, I considered myself myself as having converted to Buddhism before entering my teen years. I continued studying not just Buddhism but most other major religions including comparitive religous classes in college, even though my major was Computer Engineering. Eventually I came up with my own beliefs made up of Buddhism, Christianity, and Wicca along with other Pagan beliefs. However a little over ten years ago I had a serious accident in which I wasn't expected to live but ended up surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI. Afterwards, though I still recall what they were I no longer believe in the beliefs I had prior to the accident. And because spirituality was important to me I've been seeking to learn if there is anything there, metaphysically. I even kept up going to a spiritual groups I was a member of before the accident which was located at a small metaphysical bookstore. And I was most comfortable or at ease there than in many other places, the only place I was as comfortable if not more was where I was getting therapy in a neuropsycologist's office.

Atheism asserts that there is no god/gods - a doubly unprovable assumption because of the inability of physical evidence to distinguish between atheist and theist theories of the universe, and the logical incapacity to prove a negative (by disproving an infinite number of theist theories). Atheism thus dependes strongly on faith, because its tenets can't be proven - to hold onto them thus requires something other than physical evidence. Naturalism has a similar problem with provability.

Rationalism would probably be the lack of belief, not either theism or atheism.

1) absence of evidence != evidence of absence

2) Strong atheism makes a claim that no god(s) exist. Theistic religions make the claim that a god(s) exist. While only one of these claims can be true, both are falsifiable (you can't tell between a godded and a godless universe based on physical measurements), the default is not atheism but lack of knowledge (because if measurements can't see god(s), absence of data doesn't mean anything w/r/t the hypotheses).

Strong atheism and theism make competing claims - because of the limitations of knowledge, lack of proof of one doesn't constitute proof of the other. They have to be proven on their own. Because of this, strong atheism has a bigger logical problem than strong theism because it is based on an assertion which can't be proven even if a measurement to determine the presence of a god(s) is available. I believe that this is why Dawkins et al. are dissmissive of the "weak theism" argment (the presence of god(s) can't be disproven) and place the burden of proof upon theists - they do not want too much attention paid to the unprovability of their own hypotheses.

If I'd known you don't believe in absolute truth or universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic--I wouldn't have wasted my time trying to reason with you. What is the point? I mean, why don't I just adopt the logical convention that says "Theism is true" and then just declare myself the winner of this little slashdot debate?

If you were being honest with yourself you would probably realise that that is essentially what you started out by doing: you have essentially made it axiomatic that God exists from the outset. You should also realise that, as much as you may wish to adopt that particular logical convention, there is no compulsion for anyone else to accept it. If no-one else accepts it then the only person you are convincing that you've "won the debate" is yourself - and I think you were convinced of that before we began, and will be long after we cease arguing.

Yes, logicians differ and prove things using different methods, but that doesn't mean that logic is merely convention. You don't treat it as if it were a convention when you disagree with a colleague, calling a statement irrational.

On the contrary, I do. The reason I can object is because we share a particular convention. It is entirely reasonable to point out when a person contravenes a logic that both they and I accept. If they don't agree with that particular logic, well nothing I can say is going to change their mind, not unless I can convince them of the effectiveness of the logic in question first. The point of logic, particularly, say, classical logic, is that it has near universal agreement: almost everyone accepts it (People who have more experience dealing with logic, of course, tend to be more inclined to quibble - but then they can make the case for the greater efficacy of their preferred logic for the particular case). With that near universal agreement it is entirely possible to discuss things, and object to contravention of the convention. Logic doesn't have to be absolute for this to work, merely very widely accepted. And I've already given good reasons for wide acceptance - that logic is constructed from experiences of a shared common external world - that don't require any absolutes or eternal Platonic forms.

You have admitted that within your worldview (your presuppositions that you take as self-attesting) knowledge isn't truly possible.

On the contrary, I have admitted that absolute knowledge is not possible in my worldview. That still allows knowledge, it's just that it becomes contingent knowledge. Of course contingent knowledge is hardly something new - us mathematicians (who I suspect you would argue are playing in the world of eternal platonic absolutes) have been dealing with it ever since the questions about foundations got seriously explored. Take the Continuum Hypothesis - that there is no cardinal number between the number of natural numbers, and the number of real numbers - it is neither true, not false, in any absolute sense; it is independent of ZFC, and is, if you like, a contingent truth: it is either true, or false, depending on what assumptions you wish to accept and either case is as valid (and as consistent) as the other. This is, of course, hard for people use to thinking in terms of absolutes to accept - surely there either is, or is not, such a cardinal number? Not in the mathematical universe, no - it is a choice that can be made and there simply isn't an absolute truth either way. Once you get used to dealing with such contingent truth (the axiom of choice and any results that follow from it, for instance, are such a truths) in your everyday work it doesn't seem so bad. We've been trained to think in absolutes so it takes some practice, but it is easy enough to get the hang of it.

You have a pragmatic approach to logic: it works, but if it stops working, the laws could change in the future. That assumption about laws of thought and reason make this debate

I along with other agnostics have declared we don't believe, but we are willing to believe or disbelieve when we are given proof, or at least strong evidence either way.

As far as the atheist community is concerned, based on that statement, you are a declared atheist. Of course you'd believe if someone proved it to your individual satisfaction. So would anyone else, including me and every hard line atheist on the planet. The alternative is belief based upon faith, and that, of course, is what theism is. You specifically don't believe in god. That's what makes you atheist. You can, of course, call yourself anything you want.

The issue is the likelihood of such proof being shown. You -- I guess, correct me if I'm wrong -- think that it is just as likely that you'll be shown such proof as it is that you will not, hence you feel the need to attempt to straddle a line squarely placed between evidence and no evidence. Me, I observe the complete and utter failure of any religious person to come up with any evidence over all the thousands of years of human history, and I see no need, or even hint, that such straddling is called for. I'm not sitting here, waiting for evidence. I don't expect any, based upon past performance (that is to say, none.) I've very, very high confidence that superstition is that form of storytelling where the storyteller accepts the story despite a complete disconnect from reality, and I'm not particularly concerned with the rationalizations that underlie such a choice, and that stands regardless of the number of people who are so taken with the story as to believe it is true.

As for the latter, there are plenty of people who DO believe there's no god, so what do you call them if not atheist?

The term those people use within the atheist community is "hard atheist." They in turn call the rest of us "soft atheists." We often call them "naive atheists", mostly as wry commentary on their falling into the trap of using faith to attempt to refute a faith-based idea.

Atheism (just like theism) has room for many divergent outlooks beyond the basic idea of being without belief in a god or gods. In other words, just as Christians are reasonably likely to want to dunk you in water, and Muslims are not, some atheists actively disbelieve, and some do not.

It is important to realize that the argument for what atheism means isn't "my" argument. It is the argument of the atheist community in general. And just as you would probably think that taking a Christian's word for what Christianity means is more reasonable than taking an atheist's word for the same, I submit to you that you're better off taking the atheist's word for what atheism means than you are taking anyone else's.

Do I believe in god? No. Not even a little bit, not a shred. That is what puts me squarely in the atheist camp. I am not "agnostic", that is "undecided" based upon lack of knowledge; I am without belief and there is no doubt of it. The cup of evidence is completely empty, just as it is for dragons, fairies, Santa, Harry Potter, pink unicorns and the spaghetti monster. The fact that humans can imagine something has long been associated with the idea that such things need have no counterpart in reality; the fact that large numbers of people believe in something likewise has long been known to have absolutely no correlation with the truth or falsehood of that belief. I consider the claim of "no knowledge" to be the same claim as "no belief", technically speaking. At that point, it is more interesting to observe why such a claim might be made. If I ask, do you believe, and you answer, "I don't know", what are you saying? Are you saying you don't know if you believe? In such a case, is your mind made up of fog? Or are you saying, I don't know if there is a god or gods? In that case, I remind you, I asked about belief, not about knowledge. People believe with and without knowledge, therefore the issue of what you know is irrelevant. I just asked what you believe, and this is based on the same "it takes faith" argument the religionists make. So I can ask "do you have any faith there is a god or gods?", it is really the same question. If you have any at all, you're a theist. If you don't, you're atheist by the atheist community's definition. In the end, you can call yourself anything you want. But there are really only two major camps, and they split over the issue of belief in god(s), or the lack thereof.