Whats the difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic?

[Serge A. Storms]

most people here are wrong, and simply put this is probaly one of the biggest misundertaandings when argueing religon.

atheism and agnosticism are not mutaly exclusive, since they refer to differnt things.

atheism:, refers to belife or more acuratly the lack there of, the broadest definition being someone who lacks a belife in gods or dietys.

thesim:refers to belife in a god.

agnosticism: refers to KNOWLEDGE , they don't know wheither god exsit's or not.

therefore you can be a both an athesit and agnostic, or a theist and agnostic.

an atheist/agnostic dosen't belive in god but dosen't claim to know he dosen't exsit.

an theist/agnostic belives in god but dosen't claim to know he dose exsit.


hope this clears some of this mess up

This is true

 

[AssButt]

I've taken plenty of sciences classes, the point I'm trying and I guess failing to make is that yes, x has properties y under conditions of z but has properties of 1 under conditions of 2. We know how it works the way it does, but why does it work like that? Some things are just currently unknown but some things may be incomprehensible to the human consciousness.

Science hasn't yet explained everything, so you turn around and make up some ridiculous god to believe in? That makes sense.

I say nothing is incomprehensible, over time. How and why seem like the same question to me, I guess.

You have to remember that humans are merely animals, albeit the smartest animals that we know of. Plenty of things will be completely incomprehensible to say dogs but as far as the dog knows, it understands everything about the universe. We're several steps up the consciousness evolution, but how does that make us able to understand everything in existence?

Science is still pretty young so we probably aren't aware of its true potential but even if it can be reached, who is to say that humans can understand it?

Considering how far we've come in only a few centuries, there's no reason to think we're going to stop learning any time soon. Our knowledge of the universe is growing as fast as anything, and there's no reason to believe that some things can't be learned until we run into those things. That most definitely hasn't happened yet.

We've probably made more breakthroughs in the past ~100 years or so than all of history combined, we've also learned some stuff that's becoming increasingly harder to make sense of such as the concept of time, pretty soon we're probably going to run into something that shatters our perception of reality.

You say that like it's a bad thing. We've already gone from a universe revolving around a world dangling from the heavens by a string to our current model of the universe. The more mind-blowing science gets, the better, and if it means breaking down basic truths we had taken for granted and replacing them with confusing things we don't immediately understand, even better, it just means more motivation to think about our existence as we get closer to knowing the true nature of the universe.

My original post is stating that because of the rate in which we discover things, it is silly to say that we are capable of understanding everything. In terms of advancement, I am very much for it but by the same token, I believe it is bad to cling on to our perception of reality as the truth because eventually it won't be.

It's sillier to say that we can't understand something when clearly we've been doing well up to this point. Our changing, growing perception of reality is wonderful, it means that no one can claim to have the "truth," and the only way to approach the "truth" is to keep learning until nothing more can be learned.

The last part of your post was my point, is there truly nothing more to be learned or did we just reach our limitations from the human mind?

You act as though we've stopped learning, and that's definitely not the case, nor will it likely ever be the case. We're learning more now than ever before.

The more we learn the more we learn how little we actually know. At this rate, do you think we're ever going to catch up with what we don't know?

We're not "catching up," we never knew to begin with, and we replaced things we didn't know with religion. If the only thing learning leads to is more and more learning as we discover things we didn't even comprehend before, on and on, until the end of time, that's infinitely better than putting an artificial cap on the learning once we scratch the surface of something scary and mysterious.

I'm not religious nor advocating ignorance, I'm just saying that we have to accept that we are ignorant about most things and that is how it will always be.

Why? We all acknowledge that science is expanding our understanding of the universe, why assume that it will end at some arbitrary point when nothing has ever suggested that such a point exists?

I didn't say that and actually said the contrary, I think we're not arguing over the same thing at this point.

"I'm not religious nor advocating ignorance, I'm just saying that we have to accept that we are ignorant about most things and that is how it will always be"

"Why" is a fair question for the assertion that we will always be ignorant about most things.

Because as you said, our knowledge of the universe is expanding, but what is expanding even faster is our realization of how little we know and also as you said, the rate of expansion doesn't indicate it will end.

We were ignorant of virtually everything not many centuries ago, just because we're realizing how little we know doesn't mean we don't know far more than we did back then. "Accepting" that we will always be ignorant based on the fact that there appears to be more unknown than there was back then and there might be things in the future that are incomprehensible ignores the progress we've made and the progress we're bound to make in the future. Just because it seems overwhelming doesn't mean that it is, much less that it always will be.

As far as I know, the total sum of information we don't know is decreasing but there's always a possibility it is not. While we are gaining understanding of the universe, the universe itself is changing so it may be very possible that we know even less what is true.

 

[Serge A. Storms]

I've taken plenty of sciences classes, the point I'm trying and I guess failing to make is that yes, x has properties y under conditions of z but has properties of 1 under conditions of 2. We know how it works the way it does, but why does it work like that? Some things are just currently unknown but some things may be incomprehensible to the human consciousness.

Science hasn't yet explained everything, so you turn around and make up some ridiculous god to believe in? That makes sense.

I say nothing is incomprehensible, over time. How and why seem like the same question to me, I guess.

You have to remember that humans are merely animals, albeit the smartest animals that we know of. Plenty of things will be completely incomprehensible to say dogs but as far as the dog knows, it understands everything about the universe. We're several steps up the consciousness evolution, but how does that make us able to understand everything in existence?

Science is still pretty young so we probably aren't aware of its true potential but even if it can be reached, who is to say that humans can understand it?

Considering how far we've come in only a few centuries, there's no reason to think we're going to stop learning any time soon. Our knowledge of the universe is growing as fast as anything, and there's no reason to believe that some things can't be learned until we run into those things. That most definitely hasn't happened yet.

We've probably made more breakthroughs in the past ~100 years or so than all of history combined, we've also learned some stuff that's becoming increasingly harder to make sense of such as the concept of time, pretty soon we're probably going to run into something that shatters our perception of reality.

You say that like it's a bad thing. We've already gone from a universe revolving around a world dangling from the heavens by a string to our current model of the universe. The more mind-blowing science gets, the better, and if it means breaking down basic truths we had taken for granted and replacing them with confusing things we don't immediately understand, even better, it just means more motivation to think about our existence as we get closer to knowing the true nature of the universe.

My original post is stating that because of the rate in which we discover things, it is silly to say that we are capable of understanding everything. In terms of advancement, I am very much for it but by the same token, I believe it is bad to cling on to our perception of reality as the truth because eventually it won't be.

It's sillier to say that we can't understand something when clearly we've been doing well up to this point. Our changing, growing perception of reality is wonderful, it means that no one can claim to have the "truth," and the only way to approach the "truth" is to keep learning until nothing more can be learned.

The last part of your post was my point, is there truly nothing more to be learned or did we just reach our limitations from the human mind?

You act as though we've stopped learning, and that's definitely not the case, nor will it likely ever be the case. We're learning more now than ever before.

The more we learn the more we learn how little we actually know. At this rate, do you think we're ever going to catch up with what we don't know?

We're not "catching up," we never knew to begin with, and we replaced things we didn't know with religion. If the only thing learning leads to is more and more learning as we discover things we didn't even comprehend before, on and on, until the end of time, that's infinitely better than putting an artificial cap on the learning once we scratch the surface of something scary and mysterious.

I'm not religious nor advocating ignorance, I'm just saying that we have to accept that we are ignorant about most things and that is how it will always be.

Why? We all acknowledge that science is expanding our understanding of the universe, why assume that it will end at some arbitrary point when nothing has ever suggested that such a point exists?

I didn't say that and actually said the contrary, I think we're not arguing over the same thing at this point.

"I'm not religious nor advocating ignorance, I'm just saying that we have to accept that we are ignorant about most things and that is how it will always be"

"Why" is a fair question for the assertion that we will always be ignorant about most things.

Because as you said, our knowledge of the universe is expanding, but what is expanding even faster is our realization of how little we know and also as you said, the rate of expansion doesn't indicate it will end.

We were ignorant of virtually everything not many centuries ago, just because we're realizing how little we know doesn't mean we don't know far more than we did back then. "Accepting" that we will always be ignorant based on the fact that there appears to be more unknown than there was back then and there might be things in the future that are incomprehensible ignores the progress we've made and the progress we're bound to make in the future. Just because it seems overwhelming doesn't mean that it is, much less that it always will be.

As far as I know, the total sum of information we don't know is decreasing but there's always a possibility it is not. While we are gaining understanding of the universe, the universe itself is changing so it may be very possible that we know even less what is true.

If we learn more about the nature in which the universe changes, we would not only be learning about how the universe changes, we would be able to observe and form hypothesis based on predicted events, which would give even more information when the event either takes place as predicted or something else occurs. We wouldn't be able to learn much about the universe if it wasn't constantly moving and changing.

 

[Worgen]

well if its definatly the christian god then there arnt any atheists since its been proven but if there are any atheists then its not the god since according to christians their god is perfect etc etc so if it is god then no more atheists if it isnt then you still have us

now the diffrence between atheist and agnostic is that an atheist says Im as sure I possibly can be that there is not a god, any god. The agnostic says Im not sure