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Okay, I guess/suppose this has been posted before many, many times but here is my suggestion and the reasons for it.
We ARE all here, well the larger majority that is, because we ARE either Agnostics or Atheists are we not?
And yet, time and time again we see quibblings/debates/discussions, etc, etc, occurring repeatedly, imo, over the actual meanings of the terms, correct or incorrect, is that not so?
We are, the larger majority, attempting in our own ways to bring our Atheism/Agnosticism ' in to the light of day ' rather it being hidden in the shadows.
Then WHY don't we all agree and settle upon a single Definition/s of the terminologies in question?
Yes there ARE numerous Dictionaries and Lexicons, etc, etc, circulating around the world, each with their own nuances/meanings that differ, either greatly or lesser from each other.
So, to avoid this confusion, etc, etc, why not settle upon one the Oldest, most respected and most original meanings known, i.e. the Definitions as per found in one of the Oldest Dictionary ever publish,the Oxford English Dictionary?
Yes, I realize that this suggest may well raise the 'hackles' of many an American re- the ingrained dislike, for want of a better term, of things of an ' english nature,' but is NOT the root of the American language embedded in the language that came with the earliest of Pioneers used from the moments of their arrival on the shores of the U.S.A.?
Would this NOT remove the 'impression' that some arrive at that, we, Atheists and Agnostics, are simply a disorganised mass akin to 'herding cats'?
Unity and Unification ARE our strengths, hence such a show of Unity and Unification over 2 meanings agreed upon and adopted WOULD go, imo, a very long way to dissipating that false impression as well as showing that we ARE Unified also.
Who agrees/disagrees that we SHOULD adopt ONE single meaning for Atheism and also for Agnosticism and why you agree or disagree?

Triphid 9 Jan 11
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19 comments

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0

I used to say I was an agnostic and found that lots of people don't know what that means. But when I say I'm an atheist, everyone seems to understand and react to that. But, of course, deep down, logic tells me I don't really know anything for sure.

0

I honestly don't see a prob with the terminology. People think that they either know or they don't know and they either believe or they don't. I see considerable merit in bringing together all those who would caution against ( many of the perceptions and consequential actions of ) a belief that supernatural beings are responsible for everything that (we tentatively consider) exists.

1

Nobody really knows anything about these things so it really doesn't matter very much what the definition is. The reason I choose to keep a open definition is because I could be wrong and anything is possible, although common sense tells me I just don't have enough proof to make a informed decision so what it comes down to is those four little words "I do not Know"!

4

I haven't read the comments here, and I'm ok with reiterating what someone else might have said. But seriously, xtains can't even agree amongst themselves, not to mention the other religions, so what makes you think we'd fare any better? We run our social, religious and governmental systems on "facts" that have been proven false, from simple translations to outright lies perpetuated by agendas half the population is perfectly content to not fact check. Humans want real bad to categorize everything in order to understand and hopefully control it.

2

I can say it doesn't really matter much to me, just a label 🏷️.πŸ˜‰

5

There are, thankfully, only afew on here who get their panties in a twist over semantics. I think in the Dark Ages it would be the equivalent of arguing about how many angels could dance on the point of a pin. (A real thing! HEATED arguements!)

The answer to the angel thing is all of them, every f n one of them. 😁 Also Twisted panties sounds like a K-pop girls band. πŸ€”πŸ€­

Needling Anne about panties is a pointless twist.

So, @AneWhimsey and everyone else, let us play the Semantics game and now shall we?
1 very simple question and let us see how many differing answers we can get to it.
What PRECISE Colour, shade of, tone of, etc, etc, is the Atmosphere, aka the SKY, that surrounds us?

@Triphid nobody actually knows. PET scans & the like have conclusively revealed neither humans or dogs see anything exactly the same. Therefore nit-picking whether something is "white" or "ecru" is totally pointless because to you it IS white, to me it IS ecru.
Either you believe in a Sky Daddy, or you do not....what difference does it make if you sorta think there might be one, or are 100% positive there is not & , more importantly, why do You think it is your job to put everybody in pigeonholes that You defined?!

You f argon beauty, a trick question up with which to lighten. The atmosphere is comprised largely of two colourless gases.

@waitingforgodo colorless you, shimmering bands of glowing colour to bees. See? That's why we cannot be put into pigeonholes.
Trick questions only work on tricky people, sort of like all con artists know they cannot con a truly honest person & seldom try. You be the former, methinks.

0

Control, control, all is control.

If that be what you think then that be what you think.

@Triphid And if that be what you do then that be what you do.

2

This could cut deep to the rib of epistemological and ontological discourse on prescriptivism versus descriptivism and the implications for language.

If instead of collective nouns for each, eg. an ascension of atheists and a quibble of agnostics, consider a grand unified camaraderie under one banner; an apostasy of abnegators.

Well then lets have it cut as deep as we need and Unite instead of quibbling and quarrelling.

When the agpbzn mountain comes to muhammad we will be as one brethen and sistren; it would make a good road trip from the east.

0

i wonder if a lot of the confusion might be cleared up by a better understanding of the terms myself; of course an atheist might be either agnostic, or, more likely, gnostic, same as any believer, but somehow the term "agnostic" has come to be applied more strictly to "knowledge of God, specifically," which i think a primer on Gnostics might clear up

Since " Gnostic by the Dictionary/s means " Having knowledge/believing that a Supreme God exists, then an Atheist can by no means be a Gnostic person logically.

@Triphid ah, well i don't think that that was originally what gnostic meant, but you might be right there

@bbyrd009 Gnostic, a word adapted by Christianity to mean a Believer/or a person with Knowledge of God was derived from the Greek word Gnosis, meaning having Knowledge/awareness, to put in simple terms.

@Triphid actually persecuted by early Christians i guess, but meh language drifts. Perhaps suffice it to say that new definitions often obscure important information, mythology becomes myth, etc

0

Come on ADMIN, have your say IF you so dare.
Do you NOT have a sense of Control, a Modicum of Decision re- this Site?

2

Why don't we all start liking cherry pie? The last thing I need is for someone else to tell me what my thoughts and definition of something is. This just does not work. It's like white people telling you what they do not like about BLM. I may or may not agree with your thoughts and ideas but it does not mean I'm going to start using them as my own.

True. I support ALL free speech regardless of how offensive or inappropriate it may be to some, including myself.

My point for this topic theme is that for the best of 2,000 years the 3 main Abrahamic based religions have arguing with each other over whose God is the True God and then in comes all the off-shoots tossing in their ' impressions/interpretations of their versions of their God and still they can't work out the answer.
In my opinion, we are doing something similar with debating the meanings of Atheism and Agnosticism and still getting nowhere.
Is it not time, that as a Community of like-minded peoples we ALL agreed on one single thing for a change, i.e. What describes ourselves as what we are?

@Triphid Who decides what that one single thing is? Nobody is happy being told what to think and how to reply to something.

@DenoPenno So, in essence, the impression I get from your reply is that we should continue on as always rather than using our heads, having a Democratic Vote to come to an agreed/agreeable consensus over having 2 simple definitions, i.e. the meanings of being either an Atheist or an Agnostic, carry on butting heads together and appearing to the religious world as being a poor emulation of themselves and their interminable debate over their Imaginary Invisible God and which of whose God is the TRUE God then?
Yes, everyone can still have their very own viewpoints, since NOT to allow that, for example, would BE akin to being somewhat like a Dictatorship would it not, but We are striving for Logic, Reasoning, Understanding, etc, AND a Democratic based Fellowship of sorts in our community are we not?
So then, why should we NOT take the first step and PROVE we can do what others have thus far failed to do miserably?

@Triphid Imagine a court room scene. The judge tells the jurors that according to the evidence they have to vote a certain way. No I don't. I don't do it your way because of the very fact that definitions are your way and not my way. But you can do it any way you want or use any definition you want. Just don't pin it on me. None of this has anything to do with gods or stupid arguments about them.

@DenoPenno Still I get the impression here that you only seem to see my suggestion in the light to which it suits yourself.
IAM NOT, repeat NOT attempting/trying or what ever else you may/may not think to DICTATE/Control ,etc, etc, the thought processes, opinions or what-so-ever else of ANYONE, I am, however TRYING to get us, as a Community, to come to a DEMOCRATIC Consensus on 2 separate Definitions rather than have us emulating endlessly a dog chasing its own tail.

3

A community does not have to agree in order to come together. If your definition of atheism or agnosticism is different than mine, that's okay. My definition of atheism works for me. Can you accept that my definition differs from yours?

Personally, I'm not going to argue with you over a trivial difference of the meaning of a word. I'll have issue with you if you try and tell me what I believe or that because I'm an atheist that I must conform to certain viewpoints. If you tell me that atheism is a religion or a cult or a political stance then I will indeed disagree and argue with you (or anyone else).

So, in my opinion, trying to get everyone to agree on a concrete definition isn't really fruitful. But that doesn't mean we can't be on the same side against a larger issue. We don't need to split hairs on semantics to have unity.

Please check the DEFINITION of both UNITY and Unification as per the subject matter here under discussion.
ANY Community, be it large or small needs to have a consensus/ agreement set in place or else it will fail to be a community and fail, also, to grow to its fullest potential, that, my good Sir, is LOGIC.

Yeah, your base argument there is part of why the US is in such a dither. So I'm seeing some huge holes in your philosophy....

Well, looks like these two people have proved me wrong. It seems we must all be in complete and utter agreement on the definition of "atheism" and "agnosticism" or else this entire website and the non-believer community as a whole will never come together. Or else those who don't agree must be expunged, deleted, excommunicated, or otherwise shunned. Right?

My viewpoint allows for some middle ground and acceptance of different viewpoints, but it seems that may be too much to ask for. I certainly hope that is not the consensus of the majority of people on this website.

@Charles1971 "heil," huh? πŸ™‚

2

Well I agree, but a consensus that agnostics and atheists are, or should be, all on the same side seems impossible to achieve. I have said before and repeat again that before I joined this site I believed, maybe naively I don't know, that atheists and agnostics were on the same side. It wasn't an issue for me. It was a shock to the system and a bucket of cold water in the face to be on the receiving end from agnostics soon after I arrived, I'll tell you. I still haven't gotten over it.

Regarding agreed definitions, frankly some people just like squabbling over definitions, and that's just the truth of it. But I wish you the best of luck.

NOTHING is TRULY 'impossible' unless one fears to try.

@Triphid well that's true, but a challenge certainly. Also, I should have said before that not all atheists and agnostics are divided on this issue. Indeed I think most accommodate the other position quite well and there's no problem, but there are a few who are lost in this debate, enjoy the squabble and want to 'win' the debate, which is foolish. For the record, I don't think agnostics are 'wrong' and atheists are 'right'; I simply have logical issues with agnosticism and assert that atheism reflects my position more fully. It's always simply been that, nothing more. No squabbling required.

@David1955 I am NOT asking for ASSERTIONS as to who is Right and Who is wrong, I am asking for a Unified and United Group of People who want to bring OUR thoughts and opinions, etc, out of the shadows and into the Light of Day UNDER 2 AGREED upon Definitions.

@Triphid I wasn't asserting that you were. My point was that some in this debate see things on terms of right and wrong positions and that's a false assumption.That's all I meant.

Just a little feedback. Sometimes you can be a little defensive, when there's no need. Ok?

@David1955 Fair enough but can't we all be a bit defensive from time to time, after it is a human fault is it not?

@Triphid also fair enough.

0

You are so on target. You would think that after this last decade, divisiveness would be the last thing we want.
Maybe we should hire a PR firm.....

Bugger the P.R. Firm, we have at LEAST 10 Billion times the brain power here than EVERY P.R. Firm in the Universe could manage to scrape up imo.
UNITY, Brothers and Sister, UNITY.

0

Connotation and Denotation

The Nemeses of Consensus, Negotiation and Agreement.

0

Good luck with that.
It comes down to atheists fundamentally misunderstanding Agnosticism. Sure I'm tired and discouraged by it, because the conversation would be very different if it were otherwise.
But the two camps are fundamentally incompatible, in my opinion, despite surface similarities.
One thought: maybe Agnostics' opinions are flexible and fluid, and atheists are more doctrinaire and 'authoritarian.' Maybe Agnostics are the 'liberals,' in this analogy, and atheists are 'conservatives.' Just an analogy, and not to be confused with political labels. But just like the seemingly eternal internecine political struggle between two sides prevents any real progress in the political arena, so too this one does in the philosophical and perceptual one, is my notion. It perhaps stops us from getting to the heart of the matter. If so, it's a shame.

@OldMetalHead they can

@storm1752. Funny, I see it as agnostics misunderstanding atheists.....

What a discouragingly negative reply, but at the same time very illustrative of the attitude and the problem.

@David1955 Why negative? As so many have pointed out, this debate is neverending, like the Middle East Peace talks. Thus, it appears there are no grounds for a resolution. If there is one, don't tell me; I'll tell you why you're wrong.
BUT we probably agree on 99% of everything else, so who cares?

@OldMetalHead I'm by no means setting a dividing wall between Agnostics and Atheists, I am trying to get us ALL to AGREE to a set5 definition as who and what we are so the Faithfools, etc, can no longer views as a divided group, etc, and, hence WILL hopefully see us as a Stronger, less Pathetic Group who cannot Unite and agree with each other.
After all, "United We Stand, Divided we Fall," and in so many eyes of the Faithfools, etc, we ARE divided simply by our OWN vastly differing definitions of what we are and what we stand for.

I'm an agnostic atheist. I have no knowledge of any gods and believe in zero gods. Nothing confusing about that.

@Triphid Perhaps a suitable retort to the faithfools might be "You can't even agree among yourselves about the nature of God." and "Thor strikes down the unbelievers.".

@Canndue Jumping to erroneous conclusions imo.
Nowhere did I mention Atheists misunderstanding Agnostics or vice versa.
A wee humble suggestion here, "Always look well before you leap."

@Triphid it was aimed at Storm1752, not your post

@Triphid Politically? We're not for the most part divided. We both despise the entrenched, but for different reasons. If Agnostics could take over, we'd probably remove barriers to free thought (which is the American ideal); it sounds like to me atheists would burn all the books and say it's all propaganda. They would not be wrong.
My point is, I think the better approach is to remove the barriers, not erect different ones.
If Republicans had their way, they'd burn all disagreers at the stake. Authoritarianism
Agnostics, like REAL Americans (not fake ones), would let each individual decide for themselves what they think. No organized thought.
Atheists cannot run from the fact they have established an orthodoxy no less drenched in certitude than the one they wish to supplant.
Again, this is an opinion and I can change my mind whenever I want.

@Canndue My mistake, my apologies.

@Storm1752 Which, btw, any person is entitled to do as well, i.e. change their mind, opinion or whatsoever they so needs to be changed.

@Storm1752 I view atheists as agnostics with an attitude. Speaking for myself as an atheist, my belief that there is no god is no different than believing it’s going to rain when a storm cloud is overhead. (Similar to the difference between civil and criminal trials. - preponderance of evidence is fine) No more firm than that, and happy to change my belief if conclusive evidence is found. Never, ever heard an atheist β€œpreach” anything, there is no orthodoxy, no tenets, none of that shit you accuse us of. I, as well as other atheists are more politically active to protect the rights of other β€œnones”.
I considered myself agnostic when I left the church, looking for a word that the religious could β€œaccept” as I dealt with doubt. I then realized it was nothing but fence sitting. It’s great to contemplate all this deity stuff, but sometimes you need to β€œshit or get off the pot”.
I never saw this huge chasm between atheists and agnostics until this site. Bizarre!
As far as I’m concerned, we are all just non-believers with different opinions, and that is ok...

2

You touch upon a complex matter in linguistics. English, like every other natural language, changes to serve the changing needs of its speakers. Yes, the Oxford English Dictionary is undoubtedly an icon, but so is Miriam-Webster. Moreover, every lexicographer recognises the limitations that are inherent in all dictionaries.

No group is entirely homogeneous. Using what might be regarded as relatively strict interpretations of the words "agnostic" and "atheist", I am atheist about both the God of the Bible and the God or the Torah (I know that neither can exist), and I am agnostic about all other gods (this for the want of both adequate definitions and falsifiable evidence).

I am reminded of a splendidly absurd line allegedly spoken to an Englishman in New York: "For a foreigner, you speak pretty good English.", which serves merely to underscore the small mindedness of many in Yankeeland.

5

Trying to get everyone to agree on a single definition is like herding cats.

Well, why should we disagree when we can agree much easier then?

@Triphid Because we are NEVER EVER going to agree or disagree on everything.

Labels, man. Whaddya gonna do?

2

Sounds good to me & I'm tired of the US running everyone else's show.

My personal take on the United States of Absurdity - " A very little fish in a massively huge pond TRYING to be the "Biggest fish" in a small pond of its own making."

@Triphid The myth of "American exceptionalism" is as absurd as the myth of there being gods.
πŸ™„

@Triphid Yeah, well they think they're on a pedestal above everyone else.

@Lilac-JadeCanada hmmm...Canada, isn’t that one of the New England states? πŸ€ͺ

@canndue tthhhhbbbthhbbthhhh

@Canndue Nah, like Australia it's a Nation where people actually try get along together rather than settling trivial disagreements with guns, etc, etc.

@Triphid don’t knock it till you try itπŸ˜‰

@Canndue Been there twice, hated it the first time, enjoyed the second because I was catching up with long lost relatives, etc, from my Familial Heritage of the Cherokee and Navajo Nations.

@Triphid how did you end up in Australia?

@Canndue Well, my Father married my Mother and they had sexual intercourse, his sperm, one of them anyway, got to her ovum first and I was conceived, became and embryo, developed into a foetus, then into a human looking baby who was born by natural means and here I am.

@Triphid awesome, amazing story, thanks for sharing. 😎

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