originally posted in:Secular Sevens
Well, because, an agnostic doesn't explicitly hold any position due to lack of evidence.
[quote]I could just as easily say that it should follow that an agnostic does not explicitly hold the belief that God doesn't exist.[/quote]And I would completely agree with that statement. But this person could still be considered an atheist, since an atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists, not someone who believes God doesn't exist.
English
-
[quote]Well, because, an agnostic doesn't explicitly hold any position due to lack of evidence. [/quote] That's not the case with an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist/etc. though. They do hold a position. They either lean towards god(s) existing or not. Evidence is not important. [quote]But this person could still be considered an atheist, since an atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists, not someone who believes God doesn't exist.[/quote] That's another huge semantic debate that in the grand scheme of things means very little. It's far more convenient to just define an atheist as someone with the position that God does not exist.
-
Okay, so let me see if I understand you correctly. Now, there's the proposition ''/at least one God exists.'' It could be true or false. As for my belief about its truth value, we could represent it with any number from -1 to 1; -1 means I believe with certainty it's false, 1 means I believe with certainty that it's true, 0 means I'm completely uncertain and I don't lean either way. Then, there's everything in between. What you're saying is that an agnostic is someone who is 0 or very close to 0. An agnostic atheist is someone with a negative value who is still very close to 0, and an agnostic theist is someone who is positive but close to 0. Do I understand you correctly?
-
More or less, although you're still implying that the agnostics of all types would even be subject to being put on the same scale as hard atheists or hard theists by giving them -1 and +1 values respectively.