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> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. Surprising for someone with his background to not understand the difference betwee

> it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic. Surprising for someone with his background to not understand the difference between atheism and agnosticism, and obviously not understanding that these two are not mutually exclusive. > "I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” That's absolutely not what atheism is. Atheism is a single position on a single claim. The claim is "There is a god", and the position is "I don't accept that claim". How can this be even remotely against the scientific method? It's not even a claim, let alone a hypothesis. This person seems to be so confused about basic epistemological definitions.

reaperducer 8y ago
My understanding from theology classes a long, long time ago is as follows: - Atheist: Believes there is no God. - Agnostic: Doesn't know/isn't sure/doesn't care if there is a God. - Anti-theist: Is against the mere idea that there is a God. That may have changed in the intervening decades, and with the rise of the internet, the term "atheist" seems to have changed in popular culture, often to suit a particular person's views or vocabulary. A lot of internet atheists strike me as anti-theists. But that's not a common term.
- skissane 8y ago
  I was about to say more or less the same thing. The way people define the word "atheism" has changed. Traditionally, most people understood "atheism" to mean a positive disbelief in God – either, you are certain God doesn't exist, or at least you think the non-existence of God is significantly more likely than God's existence. People who are close to 50-50 on God's existence would call themselves "agnostics" not "atheists". In the last few decades, there has been an increasing tendency to define "atheism" as a mere absence of positive belief in God, so that the 50-50 folks get classified as "atheists" as well. To read Geisler's remarks charitably, I think we have to keep in mind that he is likely using the older definition of "atheism" rather than the newer one.
  - rgbrenner 8y ago
    No, atheism does not mean: I have proof of gods non-existence. This is a position put forward by theists who wish to push the burden of proof off of their side. Theists put forth a claim: god exists. They need to prove that claim. It's not up to anyone else. Atheism is simply looking at the evidence that has been provided for the claim. It is non-existent. Therefore it cannot be said that god exists. You need to prove the claims you put forward. Note, it's not 50/50 (like agnosticism says). Atheism doesn't say: one side says a teapot exists out in space, and another side says it doesnt.. so it's 50/50. If there's no evidence of the teapot, there's no reason to believe it is there. That's atheism.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      The dictionary definition of atheism is a belief that there is no god. This is a long lasting definition.
      - rgbrenner 8y ago
        You posted this all over the thread. I already responded to one of your other posts.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      They need to prove that claim No, they don't. The whole point is believe without proof. It's called "faith."
- hota_mazi 8y ago
  Absolutely not. Atheism is about belief, agnosticism is about knowledge. They are complementary. You can be atheist/agnostic, theist/agnostic, atheist/gnostic, theist/gnostic. It's a matrix. Also there are two flavors of atheism: those that believe there is no god (a minority in my opinion, and that position requires a burden of proof). And there are atheists who simply reject the claim that there is a god. They say there might be a god, or maybe not, but that people who claim there is a god have not presented enough evidence for that claim to be accepted. If I look at a grass field and tell you there is an even number of blades of grass in that field, you are not going to accept my claim. Does that mean you think that number is odd? No. You're just saying I have not provided evidence for my claim, and therefore, you do not accept it. But you are not taking any position yourself. That's atheism.
  - waserwill 8y ago
    This is a common set of colloquial definitions; nothing wrong with that. Philosophical writing, particularly with regards to theology, refers to atheism as the belief that there is no God [1]. As such, it is easy to interpret the article as saying: "the belief in no God [rather than the lack of belief in God] is inconsistent with the scientific method." 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
  - DanBC 8y ago
    This doesn't match any dictionary I have. Atheism: belief there is no god. Agnosticism: we don't, we can't, know whether a god exists or not. > They say there might be a god, or maybe not, This by definition is not atheism, it's agnosticism.
    - mindcrime 8y ago
      Not a dictionary, but how about an encyclopedia? Wikipedia shows that there is a distinction within the group of people who can be called "atheist", regarding how strong/affirmative a claim they are making. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
- gamblor956 8y ago
  The problem is that the common meaning of "atheist" has always been someone who does not believe there is a God. "Anti-theist" is a specialized term. It's sort of like the issue with "hypothesis" and "thesis" meaning different things to scientists than they do to the rest of us.
- rgbrenner 8y ago
  Athiest: Believes there's no god because the hypothesis was "god exists" and insufficient evidence has been put forth to prove it. It's completely consistent with the scientific method.
- wumms 8y ago
  "Doesn't care" now seems to be considered Apatheism. Said to be coined around 2003: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/489221/word-for-a-person-who-has-no-opinion-about-whether-god-exists https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/489221/word-for-...
zaksoup 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree with you. By my understanding an atheist would accept the claim "there is no god" An agnostic rejects both "there is a god" and "there is no god" I do like the way of framing these belief systems as "what claims do you accept as true", though, I'm going to start using that to help me describe and frame my own beliefs!
- DanBC 8y ago
  Weird you get downvoted when you're using the mainstream definitions in use in many dictionaries. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+atheist&t=ffab&atb=v100-3&ia=definition https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+atheist&t=ffab&atb=v100... We have to go all the way down the page, to Wikipedia, to find a link that suggests atheism is anything other than the disbelief in god.
  - jeremysmyth 8y ago
    Is wikipedia wrong? I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make.
deleted 8y ago
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rdruxn 8y ago
> I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. He seems to understand it perfectly whereas you seem to be mischaracterizing his words
- Latty 8y ago
  His point is bunk because it is fundamentally mischaracterising the argument of atheists. It isn't about there being literally proof of no god, it is about how we act in our daily setting. The classic counter is Russell's teapot. You can't prove to me that there is not a teapot, undetectable by our current tooling (tiny, invisible, etc...), orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. That said, if I were to ask you "does this thing exist", you'd say "no". Sure, there is technically a chance, in the way we can't prove gravity won't suddenly stop working tomorrow, but there is no evidence for it, and no reason to act like it is there. An atheist is not saying that there absolutely is no god, but rather "there is no reason to believe in a god, given what we currently know", which remains a different position from "I, personally, don't know" which is the argument of an agnostic. It is true that, colloquially, we compress "there is no reason to believe that this is true" and "this is false" to the same thing, because realistically we can almost never say the second absolutely with anything outside the deep theoretical, and we fundamentally behave the same way given both.
  - TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
    Exactly. This whole atheism vs. agnosticism debate is about semantics. Ultimately the question to ask is, is it rational to act like there are gods. An atheist says no, a theist says yes, and an agnostic is neutral on the subject. This is not the same thing as asking if there is a god or not, which is not answerable.
malms 8y ago
> Atheism is a single position on a single claim. The claim is "There is a god", and the position is "I don't accept that claim". Thats agnosticism.
- groestl 8y ago
  Agnosticism is "This claim is untestable and therefore not scientific. I don't accept that claim, not just based on the (lack of) evidence presented so far, but because I reject it's underlying question."
  - malms 8y ago
    Im sorry im not seeing the difference. Do we agree ?
    - groestl 8y ago
      I mean that agnosticism operates on a different level, kind of like a syntax error in an expression versus that expression being false.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> How can this be even remotely against the scientific method? Even the claim “there is no God” is preferred within the scientific method in the absence of evidence by the rule of preference for parsimonious explanation: if God is not necessary to explain anything, then God, from a scientific perspective, does not exist. From a scientific perspective “X exists” and “X does not exist” are not symmetric claims requiring equal evidence; science starts with the assumption that only actual observations are real, and then admits only those entities necessary to the most complete and parsimonious predictive falsifiable models which withstand efforts are falsification. What is not required for those models is a non-entity to science.

reaperducer 8y ago

My understanding from theology classes a long, long time ago is as follows: - Atheist: Believes there is no God. - Agnostic: Doesn't know/isn't sure/doesn't care if there is a God. - Anti-theist: Is against the mere idea that there is a God. That may have changed in the intervening decades, and with the rise of the internet, the term "atheist" seems to have changed in popular culture, often to suit a particular person's views or vocabulary. A lot of internet atheists strike me as anti-theists. But that's not a common term.

skissane 8y ago
I was about to say more or less the same thing. The way people define the word "atheism" has changed. Traditionally, most people understood "atheism" to mean a positive disbelief in God – either, you are certain God doesn't exist, or at least you think the non-existence of God is significantly more likely than God's existence. People who are close to 50-50 on God's existence would call themselves "agnostics" not "atheists". In the last few decades, there has been an increasing tendency to define "atheism" as a mere absence of positive belief in God, so that the 50-50 folks get classified as "atheists" as well. To read Geisler's remarks charitably, I think we have to keep in mind that he is likely using the older definition of "atheism" rather than the newer one.
- rgbrenner 8y ago
  No, atheism does not mean: I have proof of gods non-existence. This is a position put forward by theists who wish to push the burden of proof off of their side. Theists put forth a claim: god exists. They need to prove that claim. It's not up to anyone else. Atheism is simply looking at the evidence that has been provided for the claim. It is non-existent. Therefore it cannot be said that god exists. You need to prove the claims you put forward. Note, it's not 50/50 (like agnosticism says). Atheism doesn't say: one side says a teapot exists out in space, and another side says it doesnt.. so it's 50/50. If there's no evidence of the teapot, there's no reason to believe it is there. That's atheism.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    The dictionary definition of atheism is a belief that there is no god. This is a long lasting definition.
    - rgbrenner 8y ago
      You posted this all over the thread. I already responded to one of your other posts.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    They need to prove that claim No, they don't. The whole point is believe without proof. It's called "faith."
hota_mazi 8y ago
Absolutely not. Atheism is about belief, agnosticism is about knowledge. They are complementary. You can be atheist/agnostic, theist/agnostic, atheist/gnostic, theist/gnostic. It's a matrix. Also there are two flavors of atheism: those that believe there is no god (a minority in my opinion, and that position requires a burden of proof). And there are atheists who simply reject the claim that there is a god. They say there might be a god, or maybe not, but that people who claim there is a god have not presented enough evidence for that claim to be accepted. If I look at a grass field and tell you there is an even number of blades of grass in that field, you are not going to accept my claim. Does that mean you think that number is odd? No. You're just saying I have not provided evidence for my claim, and therefore, you do not accept it. But you are not taking any position yourself. That's atheism.
- waserwill 8y ago
  This is a common set of colloquial definitions; nothing wrong with that. Philosophical writing, particularly with regards to theology, refers to atheism as the belief that there is no God [1]. As such, it is easy to interpret the article as saying: "the belief in no God [rather than the lack of belief in God] is inconsistent with the scientific method." 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
- DanBC 8y ago
  This doesn't match any dictionary I have. Atheism: belief there is no god. Agnosticism: we don't, we can't, know whether a god exists or not. > They say there might be a god, or maybe not, This by definition is not atheism, it's agnosticism.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Not a dictionary, but how about an encyclopedia? Wikipedia shows that there is a distinction within the group of people who can be called "atheist", regarding how strong/affirmative a claim they are making. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
gamblor956 8y ago
The problem is that the common meaning of "atheist" has always been someone who does not believe there is a God. "Anti-theist" is a specialized term. It's sort of like the issue with "hypothesis" and "thesis" meaning different things to scientists than they do to the rest of us.
rgbrenner 8y ago
Athiest: Believes there's no god because the hypothesis was "god exists" and insufficient evidence has been put forth to prove it. It's completely consistent with the scientific method.
wumms 8y ago
"Doesn't care" now seems to be considered Apatheism. Said to be coined around 2003: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/489221/word-for-a-person-who-has-no-opinion-about-whether-god-exists https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/489221/word-for-...

zaksoup 8y ago

I'm not sure I agree with you. By my understanding an atheist would accept the claim "there is no god" An agnostic rejects both "there is a god" and "there is no god" I do like the way of framing these belief systems as "what claims do you accept as true", though, I'm going to start using that to help me describe and frame my own beliefs!

DanBC 8y ago
Weird you get downvoted when you're using the mainstream definitions in use in many dictionaries. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+atheist&t=ffab&atb=v100-3&ia=definition https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+atheist&t=ffab&atb=v100... We have to go all the way down the page, to Wikipedia, to find a link that suggests atheism is anything other than the disbelief in god.
- jeremysmyth 8y ago
  Is wikipedia wrong? I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rdruxn 8y ago

> I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. He seems to understand it perfectly whereas you seem to be mischaracterizing his words

Latty 8y ago
His point is bunk because it is fundamentally mischaracterising the argument of atheists. It isn't about there being literally proof of no god, it is about how we act in our daily setting. The classic counter is Russell's teapot. You can't prove to me that there is not a teapot, undetectable by our current tooling (tiny, invisible, etc...), orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. That said, if I were to ask you "does this thing exist", you'd say "no". Sure, there is technically a chance, in the way we can't prove gravity won't suddenly stop working tomorrow, but there is no evidence for it, and no reason to act like it is there. An atheist is not saying that there absolutely is no god, but rather "there is no reason to believe in a god, given what we currently know", which remains a different position from "I, personally, don't know" which is the argument of an agnostic. It is true that, colloquially, we compress "there is no reason to believe that this is true" and "this is false" to the same thing, because realistically we can almost never say the second absolutely with anything outside the deep theoretical, and we fundamentally behave the same way given both.
- TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
  Exactly. This whole atheism vs. agnosticism debate is about semantics. Ultimately the question to ask is, is it rational to act like there are gods. An atheist says no, a theist says yes, and an agnostic is neutral on the subject. This is not the same thing as asking if there is a god or not, which is not answerable.

malms 8y ago

> Atheism is a single position on a single claim. The claim is "There is a god", and the position is "I don't accept that claim". Thats agnosticism.

groestl 8y ago
Agnosticism is "This claim is untestable and therefore not scientific. I don't accept that claim, not just based on the (lack of) evidence presented so far, but because I reject it's underlying question."
- malms 8y ago
  Im sorry im not seeing the difference. Do we agree ?
  - groestl 8y ago
    I mean that agnosticism operates on a different level, kind of like a syntax error in an expression versus that expression being false.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> How can this be even remotely against the scientific method? Even the claim “there is no God” is preferred within the scientific method in the absence of evidence by the rule of preference for parsimonious explanation: if God is not necessary to explain anything, then God, from a scientific perspective, does not exist. From a scientific perspective “X exists” and “X does not exist” are not symmetric claims requiring equal evidence; science starts with the assumption that only actual observations are real, and then admits only those entities necessary to the most complete and parsimonious predictive falsifiable models which withstand efforts are falsification. What is not required for those models is a non-entity to science.