what is agnosticism?

hey guys & chickies
so i've been scratching my noggin about this for awhile.....
then this afternoon i was reading heinlein: siasl; (the house on the hill is painted white on this side) & got to the line, "Was there any basis for preferring any one sufficient hypothesis over another? When you simply did not understand a thing: No!"

agnosticism: n. the doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.

but is this an appropriate definition?

no; during a dream i experience perceptual phenomena, but how firmly 'true' are they? certainly no ultimate reality.
likewise, how firmly true are any of our experiences? not firm enough to peg my life on!
so what in hell is agnosticism?

what can one depend on? religion is certainly suspect, science too; when it seems that all you have left is Self, even she turns her back on you!

forget limits to human knowledge - i feel like the more i reflect on agnosticism, the more i slide down into complete un-knowledge.

when you don't "know" anything, what can you know?

 

Agnosticism is a joke. Obviously you can and do know things. You might not know everything about these things, but you do know something about them.

Dreams are made for you by God to teach you...

 

what do you mean? what are some of the things that we can know for sure, even if only in part?

and besides, if god causes you to act as you do, without freewill,
does he not also control your mind?
what can YOU know as firm truth, for yourself?

 

this is just what jubal was getting at with that quote i threw in at the top:
"Was there any basis for preferring any one sufficient hypothesis over another? When you simply did not understand a thing: No!"

why does that fact that we don't-know have to be a joke? the truth is, (!)
we don't know anything for sure.
what i "know" now isn't what i'll "know" tomorrow, so it seems that all we have left is "believe".

which is why i also put in the other line, teaching us not to assume things about the nature of unperceieved objects. (he points up at a house on a hill and asks his assistant, "what colour is that house?". she responds, "it is white on this side."

she may "believe" that the rest of the house is also painted white,
but she does not "know" this to be a firm truth.

the assistant's response would have been even better had she said,
"from where i am standing, the house appears to be painted white on the wall that faces me."

 

3 types of knowledge for starters.

Complete knowledge. Example: What is a circle? A closed plane curve every point of which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve.

Incomplete knowledge. Example: How do we calculate the digits of Pi? The method of calculation of the digits of Pi was not known until James Gregory gave us the formula Pi/4= 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7......, before this formula was discovered (revealed by God), the calculation of Pi was based on simple approximation. Of course, the commonly used refinement of Gregory's formula is Machin's Formula: Pi/4= 4 arctan (1/5) - arctan (1/239) which is simply another method to approach true Pi.

Knowledge that is unattainable through finite means: The complete digits of Pi. God must grant this knowledge to you as a whole instead of presenting it through finite means.

Yes.

Whatever God teaches you.

 

Even the knowledge "it is white on this side" is incomplete. Full knowledge of the color of the house is unattainable through finite perspective, because of the minor variations in color due to weathering, etc. Calling the house "white on this side" is an approximation, like using 3.14159 as an approximation of true Pi. Approximations generally represent incomplete knowledge.

 

Leave it to Kharakov, a believer in God, to explain an agnostic position ...

nitemare, agnostics have basically decided that there isn't enough evidence to believe in concepts such as deity, and (usually) believe that enough evidence about certain things (usually deity) can't be attained, at least not with any current techniques. Thus, they don't believe or disbelieve in God.

It's more or less suspending your judgment on whether there is or isn't a God, because there isn't enough evidence to support either claim. Some people are very dedicated to the philosphy of agnosticism, and claim that even thinking about the question itself is absurd, because it's not relevant, doesn't solve anything, and doesn't immediately arise from any observations throughout life.

 

yes,
and it seems very near to be the only appropriate (self-respecting) conclusion to come to.... regarding deity.

but beyond deity, i'm all wondering: all reality.
[actually, all reality could be considered to = god],
i mean, it seems that a religious agnostic who really takes that standpoint seriously should apply it to things beyond god as well... which forces the conclusion that we not only don't-know about god, but we don't-know about anything at all, firmly.

 

it seems that we can talk about numbers in a way that is unlike anything else... so yeah, i see what you mean; there is definite knowledge to be had in mathematics. a circle is a circle, and 342 is 342.

an agnostic does not have to say "i believe a circle is: (a closed plane curve of which every point is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve.)"

beyond numbers, though: experiences, logic, the external world, who i am, where i am, what i remember...........

none of these things can we say "i know" about.

 

hoo!!
even more reason to abide by the "i believe" (it appears to me & may or may not be finally true) philosophy.

added:
i have a feeling occam is going to have a good response to this thread.
he's like the king of agnosticism around these parts... apart from spock.

lol

 

God created the agnostic position, which is something that agnostics do not understand. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is sad.

 

Incomplete (or approximate) knowledge is still knowledge if you recognize it's fundamental incompleteness. Acknowledgement of the incompleteness of a certain piece of knowledge is knowledge.

To work towards and strive for completeness of knowledge is the path to truth, which is not the agnostic method- the agnostic method is that of a whipped dog who is too tired to pursue truth.

 

The same doubts had to be dealt with by early astronomers who recognized the earth was not the gravitational center of the universe. Luckily they did not take up the agnostic position of giving up pursuit of knowledge.

 

HippyGirl

Occam probably is the most staunch of all those who weild the term
Agnostic.
[in this forum]

Agnosticsm is to occam a stance made within his system of belief/understanding/and fact.
ALL of us have different standards.

Occams standards allow that there is fact.
We fall to earth.
And fantasy
Elves inhabit occams garden. [and maybe they do.. but occam sees them not]

There are also speculations, Theories, Ideas.
That have support in the phenomena of the real world we experience.
Those things are INDETERMINATE for we do not have existant evidence.
To call them fact.
Just indicative.

One of those ideas is god

Because there is INSUFFICIENT DATA
To say that the idea of god is more than just an idea.
We created agnosticism.
To initially explain to ourselves how one could logically defy religion.
[and it turned out to be easy]

Logic is NOT BLACK AND WHITE
There is a third state.
Insufficient data.

Those who admit they do not know.
Understand reality.
And causality
Who out there REALLY KNOWS if the IDEA of god is FACT?...none.
For 'fact' is an agreement between many based on existant evidence.
Occam is honest.
He does'nt know....thus he is an AGNOSTIC

Occam

 

The agnostic position is not about giving up pursuit of knowledge; perhaps if you actually had an inkling of what you were talking about, you'd know this.

The agnostic position is to admit, "I'm not sure," and keep searching for the answer, in practical and pragmatic ways.

Edit: Come to think of it ... why are you even on this board?

 

Hikaru

Exactly
Kharakov says that agnosticism is wishy-washy.
'I'm not sure' is not a wishy-washy position.
'Insufficient data' is not a wishy-washy position

It is a position of accepted ignorance.

WE ARE ALL IGNORANT
Is it a weakness to admit such?

NO
It is a strength.

Occam asks how any can say they knew something
when they are born knowing nothing.
WE ALL STARTED WITH NOTHING
Ignorant to the extreme.
Yet here we are..
speaking of high philosophical concepts.

How did we come to understand.?
From a position of ignorance. Insufficient data.
We gained understanding through effort.
Though method of thought.
through thinking.

ALWAYS..in understanding..there is a prior period when we do not..[understand]
Even if we know the question.
Applied to the theory of god.
That period prior to understnding.
Is agnosticism..

Maybe there will be no understanding. for there be no god.
Maybe there will be understanding.
because there is.

Kharakov says there is.. yet cannot provide any existing evidence to support it.
He supports the theory of god.

If god supported the theory of kharakov in real terms

we would not be having this talk.

Occam

 

Ok, I just go by the definition of words, you've known that for a long time now.

Agnostic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god

Maybe you should call yourself a seeker of the truth instead of using a label that implies you believe the ultimate reality (God) is unknown and probably unknowable?

Because I enjoy correcting you.

 

It's not always right to accept something that can be improved upon. When walking up several flights of stairs to the top of an apartment building, do you stop at the 3rd step and accept that this is as high as the stairs will get you? To get to the penthouse you must keep climbing.

Not all of us are ignorant about all things. Some things are more important to know than others.

Ohh. God is not unknowable though- to clarify that which is wrong with calling yourself an agnostic.

I already told you, unless you understand that God will provide you with understanding of God, you are not looking in the right place. Understand this: you are a creation of God, those around you are too, everything that happens around you, through you, to you is arranged, as long as you seek to see the truth and do not overly fear it, God will reveal it to you. You must understand that much of what you fear is just God being funny (even the thoughts that arise within you).

If God didn't support my existence, we would not be having this talk.

 

Well, Occam's Razor is a good guiding principle.

I'd say that's an okay definition for empiricism, phenomenalism, or naturalism, but that it's not the definition of agnosticism.

In a later post, I think you talk about seeing one wall of a white house and asking on basis can we justify inferring that the whole house is white. I think we can complicate the matter a lot more than that. Say the sun is covered by a cloud and a shadow is cast over the house. Can we still say that that house is white when it appears gray to us? Another thing we feel we can safely say about the one wall of the house that we see is that it is rectangular. But take 100 steps to the right or left and the wall will appear to be a parallelogram. But of course something can't be a rectangle and a parallellogram at the same time, and it seems very unlikely that the house would suddenly change shape. So which is it?

I lifted that almost straight out of G.E. Moore, except he used an envelope instead of the wall of a house. It's called the envelope paradox, and Moore uses it in an attempt to refute idealism. In short, the point is that sense data, that ideas are very helpful to us, but we can't just take them at face value. We can't take them to a point where we lose touch with the most basic parts of reality, like that a house painted white really is white, or that a rectangle really is a rectangle. In other words, Moore means that we should distinguish between the way the world really is and the way the world only appears to be.

I'd also be interested to know on what grounds you criticize the natural sciences. Certainly science is not infallible but it never claimed to be, and you can't really argue with the results. And I'd go so far as to claim that math is infallible.

 

Agnosticism is the position of believing that knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God is impossible. It is often put forth as a middle ground between theism and atheism. Understood this way, agnosticism is skepticism regarding all things theological. The agnostic holds that human knowledge is limited to the natural world, that the mind is incapable of knowledge of the supernatural. Understood this way, an agnostic could also be a theist or an atheist. The former is called a fideist, one who believes in God purely on faith. The latter is sometimes accused by theists of having faith in the non-existence of God, but the accusation is absurd and the expression meaningless. The agnostic atheist simply finds no compelling reason to believe in God.