Outline your beliefs.

It is typical that you attempt to frame this in insulting terms, claiming that i don't have the "guts" to acknowledge that i don't know. It is crucial to you, for reasons which seem puerile to me, to present yourself as superior to all of those who will not subscribe to the gospel according to Frank.

I have no problem with stipulating that i don't know. However, we all deal with uncertainties in our existences, and many of them involve questions which have deep personal significance--one related to theism, but separable from it, is whether or not there is any existence of the individual personality after physical death. However, as i do not know, and as far as the state of evidence currently available, cannot know, it is not something with which i intend to concern myself--it is irrelevant to my existence. On the same basis, i do not know and cannot know whether or not there is a deity (cannot in so far as concerns the evidence currently available), and therefore it is irrelevant to my existence--i am without god to that extent, and am functionally an atheist.

But you want to proclaim your intellectual moral superiority, so you cobble together a sneer for those who will not accept the terms you wish to peddle, and attempt to equate the atheist with the theist, and crow about your superior stance with regards to belief. You want to claim some special intellectual status for agnostics. It's a chimera. An important distinction between theists and atheists is that theists assert that they possess a truth which they cannot demonstrate. Only the canting atheist proclaims they possess a truth which they equally cannot demonstrate. You are little better than the theists, because you constantly seek to assert that you are the possessor of a special truth which makes you superior (a form of bigotry, by the way) to all those who will not acknowledge your version of the truth.

CdK once posited to you something to the effect that you cannot prove that little green proctologists do not inhabit the gaseous clouds of Saturn (something to that effect) and asked you whether you thought it were plausible. On that occasion, whether or not this will be true now, you were honest enough to admit that you were willing to assert that that were not true, but that you have a different standard when it comes to the question of a deity. Get real, Frank. Relative plausibility is a basis upon which all of us make decisions about what may be true throughout our lives. Any contention that you are intellectually superior based upon your stance in regard to this one particular question of plausibility reeks of the same self-righteousness of which you are fonding of branding thesits or atheist for their stance on the same subject.

edgarblythe wrote:

Some persons are sure to hesitate to put their personal beliefs out there, to avoid having them attacked by ones who disagree.

Since a "belief" is merely a guess about something unknown...I'm not sure why anyone would hesitate on that account.

Pandora, your little box . . .

I am suggesting that Frank has allowed himself to be suckered into the "You can't know" argument by the impossibility of proving the negative. So what if it can't be proven? You don't need to prove the negative when someone invents concepts with no evidence to back it up. That is the stuff of strawmen and jousting at windmills. And, even if science somehow found a link that strongly suggested or proved a god's existence, it wouldn't ruin my day, because, nothing would change but perception. Innocents would still die in wars, the religious continue to do whatever that thing is they do, the good do good works, the bad destroy. How much does it matter?

I dont like to announce my religion because

#1- alot of christians begin the entire " you will go to hell" arguement that pisses me off to no end.

#2- I dont want to have to justify myself.

Frank's ass sucks pinballs

Aww. I'm interested to hear more of SheWolf's beliefs. I'm interested to hear about the beliefs of those who are being quiet, even though I understand where they are coming from.

We have been over this barren ground countless times, Frank. I don't guess that what someone has made up out of thin air is fantasy. I know without a hint of doubt. I know that if somebody says, arbitrarily, the brownies make shoes by night, they are not right in the head in some way. I don't intend to argue the point over and over with someone whose sole argument is, nobody knows. That's the bunk. Those who don't know are self deluded.

Setanta wrote:

I cannot state with certainty that the Easter Bunny does not exist. I cannot state with certainty that the Tooth Fairy does not exist. Frank always has the problem of ascribing to the question of a deity an importance which he will not ascribe to the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. I don't know that no gods exist--it is, however, sufficiently implausible that i acribe to it the same likelihood as that of the existence of any other imaginary but putatively real creature. Therefore, i consider myself a functional atheist, based on the derivative meaning of the word. I am without god.

The question being dealt with is not really...is there a GOD or are there no gods...but rather..

...what is the REALITY of existence.

I do not know what the REALITY is.

I do not have anywhere enough evidence to include or exclude a supernatural explanation for it.

I don't think you or Edgar...or any of the other theists and atheists have either.

The word agnostic has as solid an etymology as does atheist....and atheists do not own the world of "I do not believe in gods" just because of its etymological derivation.

Fact is there was a day when atheists honestly were atheists. They denied the existence of gods. Nowadays...most atheists take that back door...that they are merely people who do not actively "believe" in a god and are not asserting there are no gods.