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-- Need Definitions and Define Me
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Originally posted by DJ Rat 187 Renegade said "Agnostic = Someone who has no convictions either way about whether God exists or not." and that is incorrect, I know a guy who is Agnostic and he believes that there is a higher being but chooses not to belong to a religion

Then he's not an agnostic. Saying that there's an agnostic who believes in God is like saying there's a vegetarian who eats meat - by definition, they cannot exist.

If your friend believes in a God then he is a deist, pantheist or a theist. If he doesn't believe in a god, then he is an atheist. If he has no conviction either way (for any one of a plehtora of reasons), then he is an agnostic. Unless "higher power" has a different meaning for your friend than it does for me, he is mistaken is thinking that he is an agnostic.

Heh, if there's one person who knows the definition of an agnostic it's renegade. Oh wait, I do know one person who may perhaps know the defintion better ... perhaps the first person to coin the word, Thomas Huxley:

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Agnostic views are as old as philosophical skepticism. But the terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism" were applied by Huxley to sum up his thoughts from that time's contemporary developments of metaphysics about the "unconditioned" and the "unknowable". It is important, therefore, to discover Huxley's own views on the matter. Though Huxley began to use the term "agnostic" in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time before that date. In a letter to Charles Kingsley (September 23, 1860) he discussed his views extensively: "I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter".. "It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions".. "That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.".. And again, to the same correspondent , May 6 1863: "I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father who loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I�who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deeds�have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them." Of the origin of the name "agnostic" to cover this attitude, Huxley gave (Coll. Ess. v. pp. 237-239) the following account: "So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic.' It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took." Huxley's agnosticism is believed to be a natural consequence of the intellectual and philosophical conditions of the 1860s, when clerical intolerance was trying to suppress scientific discoveries which appeared to clash with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis and other established christian doctrines. Agnosticsm should not, however, be confused with deism, pantheism or other science positive forms of theism. By way of clarification, Huxley states, "In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable" (Huxley, Agnosticism, 1889). A. W. Momerie has noted that this is nothing but a definition of honesty. Huxley's usual definition went beyond mere honesty, however, and he insisted that these metaphysical issues were fundamentally unknowable. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/agnosticism

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Originally posted by arctic You've never met a real atheist fundie, have you? Try and find one, they'll happily inform you that the government should affirm that there is no god as opposed to staying neutral on the subject, that all religious people have a mental disease and need psychiatric help - and that religious people should be disqualified from running or any form of government. How's that for fundamentalism?

Heh, that sounds a bit like my brother, although he is much more extreme than that.

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Originally posted by Arbiter Heh, that sounds a bit like my brother, although he is much more extreme than that.

I'd say he's a smart guy.

Taoism: **** happens.
Confucianism: Confucious says, **** happens.
Buddhism: If **** happens, it isn't really ****.
Zen: What is the sound of **** happening?
Hinduism: This **** happened before.
Islam: If **** happens, it is the will of Allah.
Protestantism: Let **** happen to someone else.
Native American: What is the medicine of ****?
Catholicism: If **** happens, you deserve it.
Judaism: Why does this **** always happen to us?
Pantheism: It's all the same ****.
Atheism: I don't believe this ****.
Agnosticism: What is this ****?

quote:

Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I'd say he's a smart guy.

You have no idea.

He believes that extreme gullibility should be punishable by death, and that theistic belief is sufficient proof of guilt.

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Originally posted by Arbiter You have no idea. He believes that extreme gullibility should be punishable by death, and that theistic belief is sufficient proof of guilt.

Unfortunately if we'd kill all the gullible people, the world would then be left with less than 1% of the population.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Unfortunately if we'd kill all the gullible people, the world would then be left with less than 1% of the population.

I could live with that

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Originally posted by trancaholic I could live with that

Well, yeah, but you know what's the problem - many children that would be born in the next generation would also be rather gullible. So I guess we should solve the problem little by little, so that we don't endanger the very survival of the species. First we get rid of retarded people, castrate them and take away their voting rights. Then we ensure that people carrying the retarded genes don't breed, or if they do that their kids inherit only the good genes. After that we start with castrating people with low IQ's, but slowly, so that it doesn't have much of an impact...

Or we just wait for a few more years and genetically engineer everyone to repair the genes and make people smarter. But for that we'd have to kill all the fundies who oppose stem cell research. Bah, whichever way we go, we'll have some major killing to do...

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