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Rath on 17 December 2012
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ManUtdFan said:
Rath said:
ManUtdFan said:
Jay520 said:

I reccomend you watch these two videos to understand atheim better and to understand why all atheist have no burden of proof.

 

I'm an agnostic and don't associate myself with atheism at all. The first video completely misrepresents what it means to be agnostic vs atheistic. 


The first video describes agnosticism extremely well actually. It's a common misconception that it means neither a theist or an atheist - it really does mean Iin this context) the belief that knowledge of God is unknowable. As such you can be agnostic and theist, atheist or neither.


All three terms - atheistic, theistic, agnostic are mutually exclusive. If the video claims it's possible to be both agnostic/theistic, or agnostic/atheistic to the same degree, then it's fudging the issue of belief and non-belief with oxymoronic statements.

To summarize the terms' real meanings...

Atheistic - certain non-belief in a divine creator, supreme being(s), god or gods.

Theistic - certain belief in any of the above (encompasses polytheistic as well as monotheistic faiths)

Agnostic - belief related to anything divine/supernatural is unprovable and unfactual, and therefore limited to subjective experience.

A good case in point. Richard Dawkins when asked in an interview how convinced he was that there isn't a god (any god for that matter), on a scale of 1 to 10, replied with '9'. Therefore it could be said he is 90% atheist, 10% agnostic. The three terms atheist, theist, agnostic can be considered on a sliding scale or pendulum, rather than an on-off switch. They are interchangeable, but not in the way the video described.    

You simply lack knowledge of the meaning of the word.

According to the Oxford dictionary online.

Definition of agnostic

noun

  • a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.

adjective

  • relating to agnostics or agnosticism.
  • (in a non-religious context) having a doubtful or non-committal attitude towards something:until now I’ve been fairly agnostic about electoral reform
  • [usually in combination] Computing denoting or relating to hardware or software that is compatible with many types of platform or operating system: many common file formats (JPEG, MP3, etc.) are platform-agnostic

 

As you can see - in a religious context the video was entirely right and that while theism and atheism have to do with belief agnosticism has to do with knowledge.This isn't something we can really debate about, you simply have the definition of the word wrong.