Simpler: he’s saying that there are people who believe in something, but they don’t claim to know it.
For example. I brew some coffee at 14:00. Now it’s 18:00. I believe that my coffee is still warm, but I don’t know it - because I have no data to back up that knowledge. I can however generate said knowledge by grabbing a cup of coffee. (I just did it. It’s warm.)
What the agnostic theists do is like that. With a key difference: they cannot generate said knowledge, and they know it. They cannot grab that cup of coffee.
If for example we didn’t know how much time has passed, it would be impossible to estimate with any calculations the temperature - thus agnostic person would conclude there’s no way of knowing, thus believing the coffee is warm or cold is useless.
Read again that quote I posted earlier
The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data. Faith lays on believing without a proof. Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Expecting people to operate in a purely logic driven manner is a great road to disappointment, and one could argue that it also reveals a deep lack in understanding of your own self. People are not logical beings.
Life is not debate club. You can insist all you want that it’s not a logically compatible “belief system” (or however you want to label it). You can argue that there should be a different, more etymologically sound name for it.
But regardless of your objections, agnostic theists do exist, and “correct” or not that is what they are called.
Edit: I’m not even one of them, I just absolutely loathe this sort of behavior online, especially when discussions of theism and belief systems come up.
The belief is still there, even if you don’t know it nor claim knowledge. You believe that the coffee is cold or warm, inferring it from tiny scraps of info, or… even based on stupid grounds, like wishful belief. Because the belief is not necessarily grounded on rationality; some Christians even highlight this, with their idiotic credo quoniam sum stultus “credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because [it is] absurd”).
Read again that quote I posted earlier
That’s a fallacy known as “the etymological fallacy” - you’re trying to define a word based on its etymological origin (in this case, Huxley’s usage when coining it), instead of its usage.
And even if the reasoning wasn’t fallacious, look at the very Wikipedia page that you took this quote from, and you’ll also get the following (emphasis mine in all of them):
Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology. On the whole, the “bosh” of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not.
He’s saying that lack of belief + claim of knowledge is more offensive for him than belief + lack of claim of knowledge. Effectively splitting both things (belief and knowledge), and acknowledging that they do not necessarily follow each other.
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data.
Your *knowledge. Or rather, what you claim to know. (“Opinions” are third can of worms by the way, as they are not epistemic in nature.)
Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Personally I opine agnostic theism to be ridiculous, as any sort of theism; as a rationalist I’d rather tweak my beliefs to be in conformity with my knowledge. And as I implied in another comment, I don’t see any good reason to put gods in a higher standard than the Tooth Fairy or centaurs, when it comes to claiming knowledge of absence, for practical purposes.
However that does not mean that agnostic theist is an oxymoron. It boils down to someone who believes in that superstition without claiming knowledge over it.
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Simpler: he’s saying that there are people who believe in something, but they don’t claim to know it.
For example. I brew some coffee at 14:00. Now it’s 18:00. I believe that my coffee is still warm, but I don’t know it - because I have no data to back up that knowledge. I can however generate said knowledge by grabbing a cup of coffee. (I just did it. It’s warm.)
What the agnostic theists do is like that. With a key difference: they cannot generate said knowledge, and they know it. They cannot grab that cup of coffee.
If for example we didn’t know how much time has passed, it would be impossible to estimate with any calculations the temperature - thus agnostic person would conclude there’s no way of knowing, thus believing the coffee is warm or cold is useless.
Read again that quote I posted earlier
The very basis of agnosticism is basing your belief or opinion in verified data. Faith lays on believing without a proof. Those 2 things are the polar opposites, and agnostic theist an oxymoron
Expecting people to operate in a purely logic driven manner is a great road to disappointment, and one could argue that it also reveals a deep lack in understanding of your own self. People are not logical beings.
Life is not debate club. You can insist all you want that it’s not a logically compatible “belief system” (or however you want to label it). You can argue that there should be a different, more etymologically sound name for it.
But regardless of your objections, agnostic theists do exist, and “correct” or not that is what they are called.
Edit: I’m not even one of them, I just absolutely loathe this sort of behavior online, especially when discussions of theism and belief systems come up.
The belief is still there, even if you don’t know it nor claim knowledge. You believe that the coffee is cold or warm, inferring it from tiny scraps of info, or… even based on stupid grounds, like wishful belief. Because the belief is not necessarily grounded on rationality; some Christians even highlight this, with their idiotic
credo quoniam sum stultus“credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because [it is] absurd”).That’s a fallacy known as “the etymological fallacy” - you’re trying to define a word based on its etymological origin (in this case, Huxley’s usage when coining it), instead of its usage.
And even if the reasoning wasn’t fallacious, look at the very Wikipedia page that you took this quote from, and you’ll also get the following (emphasis mine in all of them):
He’s saying that lack of belief + claim of knowledge is more offensive for him than belief + lack of claim of knowledge. Effectively splitting both things (belief and knowledge), and acknowledging that they do not necessarily follow each other.
Your *knowledge. Or rather, what you claim to know. (“Opinions” are third can of worms by the way, as they are not epistemic in nature.)
Personally I opine agnostic theism to be ridiculous, as any sort of theism; as a rationalist I’d rather tweak my beliefs to be in conformity with my knowledge. And as I implied in another comment, I don’t see any good reason to put gods in a higher standard than the Tooth Fairy or centaurs, when it comes to claiming knowledge of absence, for practical purposes.
However that does not mean that agnostic theist is an oxymoron. It boils down to someone who believes in that superstition without claiming knowledge over it.