Question (Agnosticism)

by Nolander , Saturday, May 07, 2011, 19:30 (4949 days ago)

I wanted to make a clarification on the quote you took from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. -You mentioned,-"Dawkins, astonishingly, maintains that "atheists do not have faith" (p. 51), and yet it is his belief that science will one day come up with the answer, and the answer will be "no God". Since this entails the miracles of life (we shall discuss these later) having come into existence by sheer chance, he believes in the miraculous powers of chance as well as the ability of science to answer all the questions. "-I read through the book and have seen many of his Q&A meetings, and Dawkins doesn't imply atheists have no faith in his book or in his more recent meetings / documentaries with people. The quote is taken out of context on this webpage, since he was referring to Jung, which was just as fanatic as the strong theist for believing in total and absolute knowledge. Dawkins already mentioned on the same page that he would be quite surprised to meet someone in the 7 category of this spectrum, but yet he finds many people in category 1, and 2 which make up a large category in today's world. I, personally, have yet to find someone who falls into category 7 too, if it is possible to do so. Dawkins broke up the categories to define where people stand on a topic of god. The quote you took tried to imply that atheist have absolute knowledge or god like knowledge where you appeared to be trying to distort the basis of the book.-The Greek word, gnostic, translates "to know" and vice versa for agnostic meaning "to not know." I think you are comparing apples to oranges by trying to put atheism-theism, and agnosticism on the same plain. It also makes no sense, because where are the gnostics or gnosticism? -Anywho, be careful on how you take quotes out of books.