As a result, the term "agnostic" is a bit anachronistic today.
Cap't Jack
Not at all; agnosticism is simply intellectual honesty; it says "I don't know." Atheism says "I
KNOW there is no God"; which to me, even today, seems a bit premature. Agnosticism simply admits that there are questions to which I don't know the answer, and furthermore that I doubt I ever will.
All right. As far as the God of the Bible goes, especially the petty-minded, mean-spirited, tyrannical god of the Old Testament, in my opinion such a grotesque creature could not exist, and if it did it could not possibly be the Creator of the Universe; and - turning Voltaire's (I think) quote on its head, if the biblical God existed it would be necessary to destroy it. To that extent, I'm a thorough and unrepentant atheist.
BUT, I accept there is a non-zero probability - vanishingly small, perhaps, but nevertheless non-zero - that there exists a vast, overarching conscious intelligence in the Universe (or perhaps in some alternate dimension), that we can call God if we want - I prefer the term Universal Intelligence. If so, then it is so far beyond any conception that we finite humans can possibly imagine of it, then anything we say about it cannot come within several billion lightyears of its reality, so there's really no point in trying. Still, I suppose it's possible that it exists.
AND, I accept there is a non-zero probability - and I'm not even going to hazard a guess as to how small - that there exist - "entities" - living, conscious "Beings", perhaps not even "physical" Beings as we understand the term, as far beyond us humans in terms of knowledge, wisdom, longevity and power as we humans are beyond mice - but who, for inscrutable reasons of their own, have not seen fit to provide us with
unambiguous evidence of their existence; I mean the kind of evidence that would hold up at least in a magistrate's court if not in a scientific laboratory. (Perhaps they don't show themselves because if they did, we would expect them to come and solve all our problems for us, thus stunting our development as a species; something like the "Prime Directive" so beloved by Trekkies.) These, I suppose, we can call (small-g) gods if we feel like it.
So...... I'm content to call myself an agnostic. There, see; I'm honest. I SIMPLY DON'T CLAIM TO KNOW.
I SUSPECT a great many things; but I don't KNOW very much.
TFS
You wrote: Not at all; agnosticism is simply intellectual honesty; it says "I don't know." Atheism says "I
KNOW there is no God"; which to me, even today, seems a bit premature. Agnosticism simply admits that there are questions to which I don't know the answer, and furthermore that I doubt I ever will.
Its not true that ateism says "I know there is no god." Most atheists do not claim to know there are no god(s). What they claim to know is that no evidence of god(s) haa ever been presented.
There is evidence, however, that the god of the bible is impossible, according to what we know about how the universe works. Whether there could be a god of some description, we don't know. We are still atheists whether there could be a god or not because we don't believe that any god that has ever been proposed exists. We also accept that no objective, testable evidence of the exisence of any god has ever been presented. THAT is what an atheist is.
We are ALL agnostics when it comes to god(s), theists and atheists alike.
Lois