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| quote: | Originally posted by Espresso
Jem,
i didn't say your defintions of athiest/agnostic are wrong, but what i said is that they don't reflect the common definitions being used these days (modern age, because they have become more broader than the simple defintion that you used.you're referencing the dictionary, so did i when i refered to the word "spirtuality" or even the word "religion" , but the problem is that people refer to words without using their classical meaning anymore, making it more hectic and confusing.
for example: "The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning "without, not," as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnsis, "knowledge," which was used by early Christian writers to mean "higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things"; hence, Gnostic referred to those with such knowledge. In coining the term agnostic, Huxley was considering as "Gnostics" a group of his fellow intellectuals"ists," as he called them who had eagerly embraced various doctrines or theories that explained the world to their satisfaction. Because he was a "man without a rag of a label to cover himself with," Huxley coined the term agnostic for himself, its first published use being in 1870."
whereas your(dictionary) defintion of the word only refers to "one who believes that there is no deity" which is partially true, but not a complete defintion. for a deatiled explanation see this very interesting article click
to see the modern defintion of athiesm check out
this
basically there are now four categories available in current dialogue:
1-Agnostic Theism: belief in a god without claiming to know for sure that the god exists.
2-Gnostic Theism: belief in a god while being certain that this god exists.
3-Agnostic Atheism: disbelief in gods without claiming to know for sure that none exist.
4-Gnostic Atheism: disbelief in gods while being certain that none (can or do) exist.
and note these are not my definitions or what i think is correct (i actually see an absolute contradiction in number 1), but what is used nowadays, hence the confusion that arrives when we start to discuss this subject.
hope that clarifies what i meant when i said not-so-correct, should have said not-so-correct-anymore!  |
Interesting. I don't necessecarily think that #1 is a contradiction... it could be a belief for pragmatic reasons rather than actually logical belief in truth. eg: somebody believes in a god because doing so gives him a certain sense of pride, holiness, etc, despite having doubts that this god or gods actually exist.
IMO we're just getting into knowledge issues here. Different people have different threshholds of how much justification is required for them to accept something as true. You also have to be careful to differentiate between knowledge and beliefs. A lot of people don't have much faith these days; they require justification before they'll believe anything, especially relating to deities, higher powers, etc.
What about people who are agnostic (ie don't claim to know whether or not there is a god), but haven't decided whether they believe in god or not (ie according to your definition, can't decide whether to be theists or atheists)? I don't think it's fair to classify people in such a binary system, because people really have different levels of beliefs.
For example, the belief in Santa Claus changes gradually from when you're 3 or 4 years old until when you're 12 or whatever. It doesn't just suddenly go from a "yes" to a "no" one day. It gradually slides away from you, until you no longer have anything to believe in.
BTW... if you have anything to argue with any of my previous posts, go ahead and quote them and make your counter-arguments. I'm always open to debate, as I too have spent years contemplating stuff like this.
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I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.
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