Sounder mailing list etiquette and future direction

[Amedee Van Gasse (ub)]

On Sun, December 6, 2009 16:03, Liam Proven wrote:

>> Being an ignost myself, I consider your atheism as some kind of
>> anti-religion and therefor some kind of religion on itself. Why? Because
>> religion is all about certain questions. Religious people claim that
>> they
>> know the answer and it is yes; atheists like you claim that they know
>> the
>> answer and it is no; agnosts don't know the answer but still claim to
>> know
>> what the question is; and ignosts just say "what the frak are you guys
>> all
>> talking about?" Ignosts aren't so presumptuous to claim that they can
>> formulate the right questions (or answers!) when talking about concepts
>> that, by definition, are not definable by human language.
>> In other words, colorless green ideas sleep furiously...
>
> Well, this is a common point of view, and indeed a few months ago I
> went to a very interesting talk at London's Skeptics in the Pub
> discussion group...
>
> http://skeptic.org.uk/events/skeptics-in-the-pub
>
> ... about "evangelical agnosticism" and how it was the only
> intellectually-defensible point of view.
>
> But still, yours seems to be an example of a common error of thinking:
> that atheism is another faith position. It is not.

I never wrote that atheism is a faith position. And if I did, I wanted to
write something else. Must be a language issue.

> Atheism is above
> all based on observation of evidence: that there is a complete, valid,
> self-consistent naturalistic explanation for the entire universe,
> supported lavishly by masses of evidence,

I'm with you there. Duh, obviously!

> whereas there is no
> objective, verifiable evidence for the existence of any kind of
> deities or deity.

This is where we disagree because you seem to have a clear definition for
the concept of a deity. How else can you decide if some empirical data is
relevant for your evidence?
My point of view is, *before* you present evidence to prove or disprove
something, we must first agree on *what* we want to prove/disprove, or
else there is no point in the exercise. It is my personal point of view
that this is not possible.

> I do not have faith that a rampaging /Apatosaurus/ is about to flatten
> my house, even though I have not looked out the window. /Apatosaurus/
> became extinct some 150MY ago; I do not need to check to be sure that
> I am safe from one. It does not need any kind of faith or other belief
> not based upon evidence; I need no evidence that there is *not* a wild
> one roaming the south London/Surrey border area.

Except when you have seen too many episodes of Primeval ;-)

> I need no faith to assert that there are no gods; those who wish to
> proclaim that there /are/ gods need to present evidence that they
> exist.

As written before, first define what a god is before you present evidence.

> To be agnostic is to give the believers the benefit of the doubt that
> there might be something to their case and we cannot know. I do not
> extend this trust; I don't think there is anything whatsoever to their
> case.

I agree 100%. agnost != ignost

> Personally I think that our languages are more than adequate for
> discussing these concepts (well, my Dutch certainly isn't, but your
> excellent English is),

Sorry but you still have an unfair advantage over me. Indeed, I feel quite
comfortable discussing technical topics in a language that I only started
to learn when I was thirteen (after French, started at age 10), but I feel
handicapped when it is about philosophical an linguistic topics. You on
the other hand have heard and spoken English since your conception.

> and indeed such voices are a strong indication of an urgent need for
> professional psychiatric help.

agreed :)

> But I am straying far off-topic...

This *is* sounder... ;-)

-- 
Amedee Van Gasse