Talk:Agnosticism/Archive 9

Agnosticism in "religion" line of officeholder infobox
So, newly elected president(-elect) of Croatia, Ivo Josipović, when asked about his religion declares to be an agnostic. User:DIREKTOR says we can't put that in infobox since it's not a religion. User:GregorB and me, we thing that if the man chooses to list his religion as "agnostic", that designation should be in his infobox. Full discussion can be found here:. It's not very long and GregorB I feel that this matter should be discussed here, not on Josipović's talk page. So, Agnosticism talkers, what do you think, what should Ivo's infobox "religion" line state? Cheerz, 188.129.65.176 (talk) 15:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * IMO agnosticism is indeed not a religion, but my reasoning about it differs from Direktor's. I won't go into details, I've pretty much said what I had to say in the Josipović talk page. Also, let me just note similar subjects have been discussed here before. GregorB (talk) 16:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to be as informative as possible. Please think of this as a kind of informal RfC (for the record, I'm an atheist :)

When Ivo Josipović, the new socialist president of Croatia, was asked about his religious beliefs during his recent election campaign, he stated that he is an "agnostic". Now, in Croatia the socialist left often likes to use the label "agnostic" to avoid the negative "feel" of the word "atheist" (or "agnostic atheist"), denoting an imaginary softer form of atheism. In fact most prominent politicians from the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (Josipović's party) identify as such. What we know about these folks is that they are certainly not religious persons, i.e. they do not belong to any specific religion.

In short, I removed "Religion: agnostic" from the infobox and replaced it with "Religion: None" since a person's agnostic convictions (or lack of them) have virtually nothing to do with religion. As we all know, people can be agnostic atheists, agnostic Christians, agnostic theists, etc. Agnosticism is a separate category from atheism/theism. A politician's elections media ploy to avoid the term "atheist" is good enough for the media, but an encyclopedia should not perpetuate such common misconceptions and misuse terms. Agnosticism is not religion, nor is it atheism. Lets not list it as such in infoboxes simply because people are generally unaware of that. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 17:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's another interesting thought. According to the scientific method (roughly speaking), before anything can be said to exist, its existence has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt via empirical observation. The proponents of atheism affirm that there is no evidence whatsoever that a deity exists, and that therefore we cannot consider such a possibility. Agnostics acknowledge that there is no evidence that a deity exists, and add that such evidence will (most likely) never be found, and that evidence disproving (a) god also cannot be discovered. However, it is not necessary to disprove something which has not been proven in the first place. Therefore, by acknowledging that there is no evidence supporting a deity's existence, and by even adding that none can ever be found, agnostics in the religious sense are more opposed to the possibility of an empirical assertion of (a) god's existence than mere atheists. :) -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 18:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Schrodingers cat
The definition of agnosticism sounds like somebody s been playing around with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodingers_cat Of course, that statement would be OR. But i thought i d bring it up, maybe someone has seen a scientifically valid publication referencing SC to agnosticism. 88.217.56.141 (talk) 13:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Fix this page?
"gings gingser alex is fake a gay"

Someone has messed with this page, can any Wikiheads fix it up? "ging gings" seems to have been scattered throughout the article.

Also, the following bit doesn't seem to make sense. Has it been badly edited or am I missing something?

"Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1860. They include Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher,[2] and a creation story in the Rigveda, an ancient Hindu religious text." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.75.227.241 (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I find this page particularly hard to read. I have poor reading comprehension and i would apreciate it if the writing could be made a little simpler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.160.7.222 (talk) 16:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * See http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism for simple wikipedia version JimWae (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Schrodingers cat
The definition of agnosticism sounds like somebody s been playing around with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodingers_cat Of course, that statement would be OR. But i thought i d bring it up, maybe someone has seen a scientifically valid publication referencing SC to agnosticism. 88.217.56.141 (talk) 13:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Fix this page?
"gings gingser alex is fake a gay"

Someone has messed with this page, can any Wikiheads fix it up? "ging gings" seems to have been scattered throughout the article.

Also, the following bit doesn't seem to make sense. Has it been badly edited or am I missing something?

"Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1860. They include Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher,[2] and a creation story in the Rigveda, an ancient Hindu religious text." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.75.227.241 (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I find this page particularly hard to read. I have poor reading comprehension and i would apreciate it if the writing could be made a little simpler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.160.7.222 (talk) 16:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * See http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism for simple wikipedia version JimWae (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Joseph Ratzinger's quote
Pope Joseph Ratzinger's quote is incoherent. Could some context or the filling of the ellipses fix that? njaard (talk) 22:34, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Possibly not. Wrong book in citation, for a start: it's from Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, ISBN 1586171429, page 96. There, it's discussing the beliefs of Paul of Tarsus, rather than those of Ratzinger, and in the context of atheism, with agnosticism only mentioned as an aside. Shuffling the edit a little gives us: "In [Paul's] eyes [atheism, or agnosticism that is lived out as atheism], is always the fruit of a refusal of that knowledge which is in fact offered to man". Diminishes, but doesn't totally destroy, the relevance. Fix and keep, or delete? --Old Moonraker (talk) 12:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It is such a mess, it makes any response virtually unnecessary. The opposing Catholic view did not originate with Ratzinger, and giving him prominence as an originator of arguments against agnosticism is misleading. His statements are a reworking of Paul of Tarsus and a Vatican Council PRONOUNCEMENT from about 1870 by Pope Pius IX and the First Vatican Council. That pope  is the same one that decreed Papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception, and that 1868 council is the one that assented to the doctrine of papal infallibility.
 * "He blames the exclusion of reasoning from religion and ethics for the dangerous pathologies of religion and science such as human and ecological disasters" -- but there is no dynamic provided that would connect these pathologies to agnosticism any more than to religion.
 * Ratzinger draws no distinction between scientific truth and philosophical truth. He asserts Kant is wrong, but does not address Kant's arguments. Ratzinger's arguments against Kant rely on a type of consequentialism, judging some non-essential outcomes precipitated by certain people who may (or may not) have held Kantian views, rather than presenting any problem with Kant's intellectual method.--JimWae (talk) 19:20, 14 September 2010 (UTC)