What do you make of this?

[SPR]

Ok so I am having a chat with someone and he said:
"It doesnt have to! There are religions I have no doubt never heard of, and supposing one postulates the existence of, to invent a term, the great 'Flaggulblut'. Having never heard of it, I would still be an aflaggulblutist!"

I replied back:
"I sure hope not, you already without hearing what they have to offer write them off as not true. I remember someone was talking about indoctrination, oh I can't remember. This comment shows me that you are not interested in truth, writing off something before giving it a chance."

He then replied:
"Not really. Not accepting something as true is not the same as saying it is false, which is why you whole argument is a fallacy."



So my question to you is: Not beliving the truth in something, does that mean it's false to a person? Correct me if it is wrong to stare blankly at the screen?

[KR Wordgazer]

Seems to me the most this guy could validly assert was that he was an "agno-Flaggulblut."

[Emuse]

Ok so I am having a chat with someone and he said:
"It doesnt have to! There are religions I have no doubt never heard of, and supposing one postulates the existence of, to invent a term, the great 'Flaggulblut'. Having never heard of it, I would still be an aflaggulblutist!"

"a" in front of a term simply denotes "without". If someone who is a flaggulblutist believes in flaggulbluts or a flaggulblut then someone who lacks that belief (for whatever reason) can rightly be called an aflaggulblutist. If call myself an atheist then I'm simply saying that I don't believe in God.

I replied back:
"I sure hope not, you already without hearing what they have to offer write them off as not true. I remember someone was talking about indoctrination, oh I can't remember. This comment shows me that you are not interested in truth, writing off something before giving it a chance."

I don't know the position of the person you are speaking to, but if he takes the same stance as myself then you have most probably misunderstood him. Here is a little thought exercise. If someone lacks belief in unicorns then they can rightly be called an aunicornist (if a unicornist is someone who believes in them) but they might not be able to prove that such things don't exist. I'm not comparing God belief to belief in unicorns, it is just that examining something that we both lack belief in helps us understand the nature of lacking belief in a less emotive way.

"Not really. Not accepting something as true is not the same as saying it is false, which is why you whole argument is a fallacy."

He is quite right. Whilst a proposition is true of false (objectively speaking) we can not know whether it is true or false in which case we will regard it as "undetermined". Agnosticism is the rational warrant for witholding belief in something.

So my question to you is: Not beliving the truth in something, does that mean it's false to a person? Correct me if it is wrong to stare blankly at the screen?

You can not know whether a propositoin is true or false. In that case you regard it as neither true nor false.

[Emuse]

Seems to me the most this guy could validly assert was that he was an "agno-Flaggulblut."

Agnosticism is the rational warrant for lacking belief. If I don't know if something exists then I'm rationally warranted in lacking belief in it. If I don't know that something is true then I will not believe it ... even if I don't know that the claim is false either. It is trivially easy to point out many examples where all of us do this.

[SPR]

Maybe I am one of those people that give everything the benefit of the doubt before choosing to or not to believe in it. However if I haven't heard a theory I will not state I do not believe in it, I will with hold judgement until they have made a case. I do not consider that a lack of belief which if we transposed onto the issue of god we would now call it the new definition of atheism. I would consider it a state where belief or non-belief does not apply because I haven’t made a decision yet. This is why I did not agree with the person I was discussing with.

[Emuse]

Maybe I am one of those people that give everything the benefit of the doubt before choosing to or not to believe in it. However if I haven't heard a theory I will not state I do not believe in it, I will with hold judgement until they have made a case.

Which is the correct thing to do IMO. However, if you have withheld judgement then you neither believe nor disbelieve their claim. This means, that you lack belief in the truthfulness of the claim even though you haven't concluded that it is false.

I do not consider that a lack of belief which if we transposed onto the issue of god we would now call it the new definition of atheism. I would consider it a state where belief or non-belief does not apply because I haven’t made a decision yet. This is why I did not agree with the person I was discussing with.

"I do not believe X" does not equate with "X is false". If I don't know that X (where X is a proposition) is true then (similar to yourself) I with withold judgement ... but this means that I still lack belief that X is true. Consider the proposition:

"God exists."

This proposition is either true or false. It can't be both. Someone who believes it is true is a theist. Someone who lacks belief that it is true is an atheist (they lack belief that the claim "God exists" is true). Some atheists (not many) will say we can know that God doesn't exist. They are gnostic or strong atheists. Some atheists (like me) will say that we are not in a position, intellectually, to make that type of claim. I lack belief that the proposition is true (which qualifies me as an atheist) but we can never prove that it is true. Atheists like myself are agnostic or weak atheists. There are also agnostic and gnostic theists; people who think that we can't know that God exists and that his existence must be taken on faith (assumed without proof) are agnostic theists.

It isn't an either/or issue. At the end of the day, we are all on a spectrum on a variety of issues and what we call ourselves doesn't matter as much as what we actually think.

[KR Wordgazer]

Seems to me the most this guy could validly assert was that he was an "agno-Flaggulblut."

Agnosticism is the rational warrant for lacking belief. If I don't know if something exists then I'm rationally warranted in lacking belief in it. If I don't know that something is true then I will not believe it ... even if I don't know that the claim is false either. It is trivially easy to point out many examples where all of us do this.

It's difficult to talk about these things when everyone has a different definition and they keep changing all the time. My understanding is that an atheist does not believe any God or gods exist (which means he/she disbelieves in their existence), and an agnostic does not know whether a God or god exists and so does not believe, or disbelieve, in a God or gods. These are the common definitions.

You, on the other hand, seem to be saying that either you totally believe something is true, or you don't believe at all. No such thing as keeping an open mind.

[Metacrock]

O you don't want to get mixed up with those flgbullists! they are sourly crowd.

[Kane Augustus]

I agree with Emuse that the person you were discussing belief with was right about his position as an aflaggulblutist. In other words, your friend was right to desribe himself as being without belief in flaggulblut.

[Metacrock]

I agree with Emuse that the person you were discussing belief with was right about his position as an aflaggulblutist. In other words, your friend was right to desribe himself as being without belief in flaggulblut.

then I'm right in describing myself as someone who disbelieves the disbelief.

Atheists don't just stop with not believing. they want us to think that but very few of them really do. If we could get them to take a poll I think we would find like 90% of them agree with enough reductionsit, phsyicalist, humanistic ideology to able to say that it is an ideology of secular humanism. Of course to say that links me with the fundies except that I actually do know what humanism is.