Talk:Strong and weak agnosticism

Uroshnor's proposal
Am I the only one in the world who notices the blatantly obvious contradiction between this statement:

1) Strong agnosticism or positive agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for humans to know whether or not any God or gods exist.

And this one:

2) Neither type of agnosticism is irreconcilable with theism (belief in a deity or deities), but both are typically irreconcilable with strong atheism. ???

The author and every subsequent editor apparently believe there is no contradiction. But if you hold that knowing whether God exists or not is impossible, then how can that possibly be reconciled with theism (belief in God)? Does this sleight of hand depend upon an unstated logical distinction between God or gods and deity or deities? I would understand, and agree, if the author wrote that strong agnosticism can be reconciled with neither theism nor strong atheism, but apparently the author believes these two statements can be reconciled:

1) It is impossible to know whether God exists or not. (strong agnosticism)

2) God exists. (theism)

(But not the first with this one: 3) God does not exist. (strong atheism))

How does this make sense?

Also, why is the word "typically" in there, just for kicks? Can strong agnosticism and strong atheism be atypically reconciled?

I am writing this here so that others can respond to my objections, otherwise, within a reasonable time period, I am going to change the article to bring it in line with what I stated. --Uroshnor 16:40, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * One can believe in a god (or the absence thereof) based on faith rather than knowledge, and indeed it's my understanding that some religious philosophies suggest this is the best way to approach religion. So it's only the second clause of the second paragraph that needs changing IMO. Both strong atheism and theism can be reconciled with strong agnosticism, though I suspect most strong atheists frown on the whole concept of "faith" and so a strong agnostic strong atheist would be pretty rare. Bryan 17:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * "Believers do not require evidence to justify belief." &mdash; Adraeus.

This edit and commentary miss the point completely, though I do value the feedback, so thanks for replying. But this is simply not a faith vs. knowledge issue. Your first sentence is redundant, Bryan. Faith in a god is the best way to approach faith? What does that even mean? If you actually meant, but did not say, that some religious philosophies suggest that faith is the best way to approach theistic religions (rather than saying that one definitely knows that God exists), then even this is not a neutral POV and so does not belong in a wikipedia article itself (and so is properly in the discussion section). (And who really says that? Do you honestly believe that Christians are walking around thinking to themselves, "God exists," and that every time they think this, they immediately and inevitably append to this the statement, "But it could be false, since I don't have evidence to justify it.")

Furthermore, belief in the three positions is already implicit in calling oneself either an atheist, theist, or agnostic, whether you have evidence or not. If you believed something other than that "God exists," then you wouldn't be a theist. So a theist believes that it is true that "God exists," with or without evidence. If you believed something other than that "God does not exist," then you wouldn't be a strong atheist. So, a strong atheist believes that it is true that "God does not exist," with or without evidence. If you believed something other than that "It is impossible to know whether God exists or not," then you wouldn't be a strong agnostic.

Either someone is a strong agnostic or a strong atheist or a theist, but not two of these at the same time (and obviously also not three at the same time or zero at the same time, so each person is just one of the three; there simply is no mixing).

Again, if you didn't believe the position, then you wouldn't call yourself either an atheist, theist, or agnostic. So, you believe it, with or without evidence. Hence it is not about faith vs. knowledge at all.

Theists say:

"I definitely believe that God exists."

Strong atheists say:

"I definitely believe that God does not exist."

Strong agnostics say:

"I definitely believe that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not."

''It is a completely separate issue whether they believe based on faith or what they claim is knowledge. They simply believe'' (again, or we wouldn't call them what we do).

There are three irreconcilable positions: theism, strong atheism, and strong agnosticism (leaving aside for the moment the separate positions of weak atheism and weak agnosticism, which are virtually identical).

Everything that I have said is consistent with what Adraeus meant to say, but did not. He said, "Believers do not require evidence to justify belief." My response? Yes they friggin do! Do you even know what the word "justify" means? In case you don't, here is the dictionary definition:

To Justify is to:

1) Offer reasons for or a cause of: account for, explain, rationalize.

2) Be a proper or sufficient occasion for: call for, occasion, warrant.

3) To assure the certainty or validity of: attest, authenticate, back (up), bear out, confirm, corroborate, evidence, substantiate, testify (to), validate, verify, warrant.

4) To support against arguments, attack, or criticism: apologize, defend, maintain, vindicate.

I think what you meant to say, Adraeus, was that, "Believers do not require evidence to believe." (Now this is something with which I would agree, as would any reasonable person since it is obviously true IMO.) But if I am wrong, please defend your statement, Adraeus, from the charge that it is absurd, since I believe it obviously is (considering that to justify something is to offer evidence for it).

Strong agnosticism is an extreme form of skepticism that is inherently incompatible with both the positions of theism and strong atheism, since both claim to definitely believe that something is true. A strong agnostic strong atheist is not pretty rare, it is impossible. You simply cannot believe both of these statements to be true at the same time:

1) I believe it is impossible to know whether God exists or not.

2) I believe God does not exist.

Just as the following two statements are also inherently and inevitably and necessarily irreconcilable:

1) I believe it is impossible to know whether God exists or not.

2) I believe God exists.

(Notice I didn't bring faith or knowledge into it since it is not about that.)

Maybe instead of writing this all here I should just change the article and then ask, as you did Bryan, "How did I do?" But now that I have written it, I'll flesh out the article only after I have given others a further chance to respond. It may seem unfair that I have charged you with being redundant and then repeated myself again and again here but my point has been missed before, so I wanted to repeat it in various ways so that there is less of a chance of misunderstanding now (though I don't doubt someone will persist in misunderstanding). Anyway, I await your feedback. --Uroshnor 00:15, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You're right about the original version of my first sentence here, but I corrected it just minutes before you posted so that it's closer to what you guessed I meant. As for the rest of this extremely lengthy comment, I'm going to try to summarize. You're saying that "one can't believe in something if one doesn't believe one knows what one's believing in"? If so, this is an argument that has gone around in circles on Talk:Atheism and Talk:Agnosticism before. I maintain that it is not irreconcilable to say "I believe it is impossible to know X" and "I believe X", since one can believe something without knowing it. The example I usually bring out at this point in the debate is Immanuel Kant. Bryan 00:35, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well this is a great piece of feedback, IMO. I do clearly understand now what you are driving at Bryan. Yes, you summarized my position quite correctly. In the final analysis, if it is disputed whether what I think of "belief" is true or not, then I'll leave the article as it is. But for the record, I think that the only reason you can say something like, "one can believe something without knowing it," is because one later finds out that one was wrong (or because a different person believes something that conflicts with what you believe, so they assert that you don't know it is true, you only believe it). However, in the act of believing something, you are believing that you know it's true, otherwise you wouldn't believe it. I have read the Theaetetus of Plato so I am aware that the distinction between knowledge and belief is notoriously difficult to get a firm grip on. Also, while it would be helpful for you to elaborate on what precisely you mean by bringing up Immanuel Kant, I think I already have an idea of what you mean. Immanuel Kant proved (or claimed to) that while it is impossible to know that God exists, one can choose to believe it anyway, since theism does not involve a logical contradiction. Just ask yourself whether we as believers really differentiate between "I believe X," "I believe I know X," AND "I know X" as much as your position on belief vs. knowledge would seem to dictate. I personally don't believe we do. --Uroshnor 02:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You believe we don't, or you know we don't? :) Anyway, yeah, that's why I use Kant as an example - he's a big famous thinker who did differentiate between those two positions. How about we put a though this can be disputed depending on how one defines "belief" and "knowledge" into the article as a way of agreeing to disagree? This is a common and accepted way of dealing with questions of POV, simply point out that different POVs exist (preferably with links for further research - Kant's article is extensive, but I haven't read Theaetetus and the article on it unfortunately leaves much to be desired) and leave it up to the reader to decide what to do with that information. Bryan 04:05, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I edited the article with your suggestion. One last thing is a comment not related to what we've discussed before. I'd like to point out that strong agnosticism, IMO, requires just as much faith as theism and strong atheism do. To believe that something is impossible to know at the current moment, because of the existing rudimentary state of knowledge, well, that's just prudent. But to categorically deny the possibility of any progress on this issue in all the potentially millions of years of subsequent human history, with all the attending development in thought and technology, well, that's a leap of faith that requires a true believer. --Uroshnor 11:13, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. Yay compromise and mutual understanding! :) Personally, I think it's overly simplifying to pick just "strong" or "weak" agnosticism as a philosophy and apply that to everything. Everything has various shades running from the logical certainty of 2+2=4 to the "how-the-hell-would-I-know" level reserved for omnipotent beings that use their omnipotence to hide their existence (though fortunately Occam's Razor is especially useful in cases like that). Various gods fall over the entire spectrum. Bryan 15:50, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Elembis' edit
Among other things, my recent edit changes the justification/criticism paragraph and (I think) clarifies the possible overlap of strong agnosticism (SA) and strong atheism. Each change is imperfect.

First, I'm not comfortable with the justification/criticism paragraph, mainly because it's just a paragraph. I tried to find more arguments online, but it seems the view is rarely argued for or against in comparison to weak agnosticism and weak/strong atheism. Furthermore, the argument I included (essentially, "SA is only valid if deities are understood to have nothing to do with the natural world, but such a qualifier cannot be made from a standpoint of SA") seems very strong, and I don't want to be making a straw man by not mentioning better arguments which may exist for SA.

Second, I think the current explanation of how SA and strong atheism may coexist is a clear and accurate one. However, Agnosticism states that strong atheism and agnosticism are incompatible, and I'm about to bring this up on Talk:Agnosticism. As my edit says, the compatibility issue depends on the reasons for strong atheism, and since many people justify strong atheism with Occam's Razor (according to Strong atheism) without requiring reference to particular attributes of a given deity, I think strong agnosticism and strong atheism are compatible.

&mdash; Elembis 07:54, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Asymmetry in the discussion
The problems detailed above seem to me to be due to a lack of symmetry in the categories being used. There should be a category of Strong Theism - an instance would be Roman Catholicism, which teaches that it is possible to arrive at facts about God (such as his existence) by use of one's ordinary reason. SA is clearly incompatible with this, but not with fideism. Likewise, SA is compatible with Weak Atheism (or Nontheism) but not with Strong Atheism.

&mdash; Alec Brady 16:20, 20 October 2006

Bad edit on the article
The article of Strong Agnosticism was: "Strong agnosticism (also called "hard agnosticism," "closed agnosticism," "strict agnosticism," or "absolute agnosticism") refers the view that the question of the existence or nonexistence of God or gods and the nature of ultimate reality is unknowable by reason of our natural inability to verify any experience with anything but another subjective experience. A strong agnostic would say, "I don't know whether God exists or not, and neither do you."

Now article has been changed as: "Strong agnosticism (also called hard agnosticism, closed agnosticism, strict agnosticism, absolute agnosticism)—the view that the question of the existence or nonexistence of a deity and the nature of ultimate reality is unknowable."

Explanation of Strong Agnosticism should not have been removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.101.220.72 (talk) 22:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)