What do you REALLY believe?

[Faust]

ISOLATE


YOUR MOTHERFUCKING


VARIABLES



(also I lol'd)

The word god isn't even defined. You ask two different people of the same religion and they will probably give you widely different answers, let alone taking that to a world scale. The issue of "is there a god" doesn't mean anything.
Someone call me when they can figure out the question they are asking before I'll consider anything other then pure agnosticism.

[Triple Zero]

The word god isn't even defined. You ask two different people of the same religion and they will probably give you widely different answers, let alone taking that to a world scale. The issue of "is there a god" doesn't mean anything.
Someone call me when they can figure out the question they are asking before I'll consider anything other then pure agnosticism.

Maybe it's like "42", in the sense that you can never have both the Answer and the Question in the same universe?

[Telarus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic

A 12 section wikipedia article, and in pretty much no where does it simply define Gnostic as 'the opposite of agnostic'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.


Either bolded option has metaphysical ramifications for the holder of that position.

[Faust]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.


Either bolded option has metaphysical ramifications for the holder of that position.

Not if you completely refute any religions and the assumption that the word god implies a deity.

[Phox]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic

A 12 section wikipedia article, and in pretty much no where does it simply define Gnostic as 'the opposite of agnostic'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.


Either bolded option has metaphysical ramifications for the holder of that position.

Gnostic is derived from a Greek word meaning "to know". Agnostic is a negation of gnostic. Wiki isn't the end all be all of... well, anything. Gnosticism, with a capital G, is not the same as gnostic, with a small g. Agnosticism or Gnosticism as a belief theory, is not what Blight was referring to.

[Requia ☣]

Gnostic has referred to those belief systems for about 1800 years now.

[Phox]

Gnostic has referred to those belief systems for about 1800 years now.

Big "G" Gnostic, yes. But that was not what Blight was talking about.

[Triple Zero]

Gnostic is derived from a Greek word meaning "to know".

Agnostic is a negation of gnostic.

Only when you're speaking Greek. Otherwise English words--derived from Greek or not--mean exactly what the English dictionary says they mean. Specifically this means that in English, not every Greek-derived word with the prefix "a-" always means the exact negation of the same word without it.

[Phox]

Gnostic is derived from a Greek word meaning "to know".

Agnostic is a negation of gnostic.

Only when you're speaking Greek. Otherwise English words--derived from Greek or not--mean exactly what the English dictionary says they mean. Specifically this means that in English, not every Greek-derived word with the prefix "a-" always means the exact negation of the same word without it.

Linguistically speaking, there are many things a word could mean whether or not the English dictionary says they do.

It's moot because, Blight wasn't referring to Gnosticism as a belief system. English or not, he was using gnostic as "knowing" and agnostic as "not knowing". I don't see what all the debate is.

[Kai]

The universe is void of supernatural entities, and conducted completely based in particle interactions.

This universe was born of an expansion event 13.5 billion years ago, after which stars and galaxies collapsed and became thermonuclear reactors.

The Earth and surrounding solar system was born of red giant and supergiant star explosions that yielded elements significant to life's development on this planet, 4 billion years ago.

The tendency of variation to exist has resulted in selection against some lifeforms, resulting in the separation of lineages and the transmutation of species.

Humans exist as one lineage within the Hominidae, a group of Primates (Mammalia) which separated from their sister taxon (Pan) approximately 4-6 million years ago. As such they share common characters with all Hominids, including sociality and group hierarchy, opposable thumbs, tool usage, self recognition, and the ability for bipedalism.


Most human beliefs are small notions.

[Jasper]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.


Either bolded option has metaphysical ramifications for the holder of that position.

Not if you completely refute any religions and the assumption that the word god implies a deity.

Hey, we've got this MYSTERY TRUTH.  We cannot ask what it is, and we cannot define it, and we cannot prove it to have causal potency, but IF we are right, and you reject our doctrine, you will suffer unimaginably for infinite time.  Your gamble. 

[Faust]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.


Either bolded option has metaphysical ramifications for the holder of that position.

Not if you completely refute any religions and the assumption that the word god implies a deity.

Hey, we've got this MYSTERY TRUTH.  We cannot ask what it is, and we cannot define it, and we cannot prove it to have causal potency, but IF we are right, and you reject our doctrine, you will suffer unimaginably for infinite time.  Your gamble. 

Only from one small religion that only represents 30 ish percent of the world. Agnosticism isn't small enough to tie to Christianity or any one religion or stance on life.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

The universe is void of supernatural entities, and conducted completely based in particle interactions.

This universe was born of an expansion event 13.5 billion years ago, after which stars and galaxies collapsed and became thermonuclear reactors.

The Earth and surrounding solar system was born of red giant and supergiant star explosions that yielded elements significant to life's development on this planet, 4 billion years ago.

The tendency of variation to exist has resulted in selection against some lifeforms, resulting in the separation of lineages and the transmutation of species.

Humans exist as one lineage within the Hominidae, a group of Primates (Mammalia) which separated from their sister taxon (Pan) approximately 4-6 million years ago. As such they share common characters with all Hominids, including sociality and group hierarchy, opposable thumbs, tool usage, self recognition, and the ability for bipedalism.


Most human beliefs are small notions.

Ah, yes, but Who caused that expansion event?  If you say you don't know, then the King James Bible on my shelf is literally true and 169% historically accurate, by default.

[Telarus]

indeed. ScienceTheology is looking both upinwards and downoutwaqrds, and apparently both the large-scale and the small-scale limits push at their orders of magnitude at a similar pace. Because the scales are logarithmic and the progress isn't, this is probably not nearly as unlikely as it seems. Much less unlikely than us just happening to exist right in the middle of scales of magnitude taken as absolute.

In fact, there is nothing we can say about it because we don't know if the smallest scale we currently know is in fact the smallest scale there is. Same about the largest scales. So the fact that we're right in the middle says a lot more about the limits of scientifictheological progress than about the actual scale structure of the universeGod.

Edited for Sci->Theological shift.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Gnostic is derived from a Greek word meaning "to know".

Agnostic is a negation of gnostic.

Only when you're speaking Greek. Otherwise English words--derived from Greek or not--mean exactly what the English dictionary says they mean. Specifically this means that in English, not every Greek-derived word with the prefix "a-" always means the exact negation of the same word without it.

Linguistically speaking, there are many things a word could mean whether or not the English dictionary says they do.

It's moot because, Blight wasn't referring to Gnosticism as a belief system. English or not, he was using gnostic as "knowing" and agnostic as "not knowing". I don't see what all the debate is.

Precisely. I'm not talking about a specific sect of Christianity. I figured it would have been fairly obvious when I used the terms atheist and theist, since they cover a lot of bases.