Agnosticism and other related labels (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 07, 2014, 13:24 (3854 days ago) @ romansh

Dhw: You asked how I would describe a weak atheist. I responded: "an agnostic tending towards atheism". This is my equivalent of your bluey green, in case you hadn't realized.
ROMANSH: In case you did not realize atheistic is my equivalent to bluey.
Dhw: A few days ago, you said "atheistic" meant "atheist like" ... do I have an atheist-like disbelief in men walking with dinosaurs? ... and now apparently it's bluey green. So you meant: do I have an atheist-like, roughly three quarters disbelief and one quarter belief in men walking with dinosaurs? Ditto with the flood, ancient gods, and your attitude towards the vast number of Christian positions. The more you wriggle, the lower you sink. Stop it.-As usual, no response from Romansh. Instead the wriggling continues:
 
ROMANSH: I disbelieve that a god created our world where, about four thousand years ago or there abouts, man wandered this Earth together with dinosaurs. I disbelieve in this god... -Same silly equivocations as before, conflating god and stories about the god. The Pope believes that his god created our world, but he disbelieves that men walked with dinosaurs, and for all we know, he may even disbelieve in the story of Noah and his ark, or perhaps have doubts about Christ walking on water, but that does not make him atheistic and agnostic "with respect to" the selfsame god of the Old and New Testaments about whom these stories have been told. You claimed not to know how your thinking could make a person atheistic, theistic and agnostic in his attitude towards the same god. I have shown you, and you continue to ignore my response, reproducing exactly the same equivocal arguments as before. Why do I bother?-ROMANSH: .... and when it comes to that many other gods too. I would find it really strange that anybody could argue against the use of the word atheistic to describe my position regarding these gods.-Atheistic as in atheist like, or as in bluey green? The above was the basis of Dawkins' little joke, which started this whole discussion and which leads to the (in my view) illogical conclusion that a person can be atheistic, theistic and agnostic at the same time, even in relation to the same god. But use it that way if you want to. There is no ultimate authority to say you are wrong. I can only explain (as I've done over and over again) why I regard this use as confusing and illogical, but I've now given up hope that one day you might actually read what I say and respond to it.
 
ROMANSH: I also understand I can't prove that these gods are false, so in this sense I could be described as agnostic. All I can do is provide tons of corroborating evidence that these gods are false. Here I would cite Bertrand Russell a world class mathmetician and logician.-Agreed. The word "agnostic" is not the subject of our disagreement. But see my post on Defining Agnosticism.-ROMANSH: And say I happened to believe in a panentheistic god, like David does. By definition this would make me a theist.-Agreed. However, David doesn't believe in the Christian God, so would that make him an atheist? Of course not, because according to me (and the Wikipedia articles you quoted approvingly), theism = belief in the existence of 
god(s); atheism = disbelief in the existence of god(s). Not belief/disbelief in one particular form of god or story about one particular form of god. Round we go, but there is no objective right or wrong here, and with your use of "atheistic" you are in the good company of Dawkins and many others, so do as you please.