User:Anthonyisageek/journal/Theological Neutralism

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Wikipedia's principles don't always work as they were intended. This is becoming increasingly evident as Wikipedia grows larger and more difficult to maintain. Information on Wikipedia typically gets passed through committee-style negotiations. Because of this, accepted information can sometimes be more about consensus than objective truth. Furthermore, Wikipedia's criteria for "reliable sources" are weak; and therefore, it's easy to distort the truth when news articles and books, reliable sources to a Wikipedian, have their own agenda. So, what can one do about these cases of rationalized censorship? The answer is to educate people about this misinformation. No doubt, Wikipedia is a great and vast resource. But you should still take it with a grain of salt. Wikipedia has a great policy known as Neutral point of view which was instated to ensure content is without bias. Sounds great, right? Well yeah, until you realize that "non-bias" is literally defined as the summation of a committee's bias. An impersonal logical authority is barely considered. You only have to convince your peers, by whatever means of sophism you can, that you are correct. It's all about persuasion and influence.

Take a gander at this article. Thankfully, the clause "Some sources use agnostic in the sense of noncommittal" has been added in the "Defining agnosticism" section. However, there isn't much emphasis on this at all. It's a single clause that's nonchalantly skimmed over. The "Types of Agnosticism" section further promotes the weak/strong dichotomy of agnosticism. So, why is this? Why isn't there more focus on the term agnosticism defined as "noncommital"? Well, take a look to the right of the article and you'll see a sidebar that says "Part of a series on Irreligion". At the bottom of this sidebar, you'll notice that it says "WikiProject Atheism". That means that a collaboration of people are working on topics related to Atheism], and [[Agnosticism was included in that project. So, the most influence is going to come from them. Alright, so why is this important? Because strong atheists and strong theists argue about who has burden of proof. The truth is, they both bear this burden because they're both strong camps who assert a claim. However, the strong atheists have partially annexed Agnosticism by broadly defining atheism to include agnosticism. There are three political benefits that strong atheists get from this: credibility stolen from agnostics, shelter from the burden of proof, and inclusiveness used to bolster numbers. Let's focus on "shelter from the burden of proof" by observing the logical implication and complement of each term, as well as a neutral term (like agnosticism):

Logical Implication:


 * "I believe that there is a/are god(s)". — Theism
 * "I believe that there is/are no god(s)". — Atheism
 * "I neither belief there is or is not a/many god(s)". — Neutral

Logical Complement:


 * "I lack the belief that there is a/many god(s)" — Atheism
 * "I lack the belief that there is not a/many god(s)" — Theism
 * "I neither lack the belief that there is or is not a/many god(s)" — Neutral

By adding a negative (logical complement), an atheist keeps their position from being disclosed and a strong atheist can masquerade as a weak atheist, leaving the burden of proof on theists. The difference between the "belief" and "lack of belief" is that the former makes a direct implication that it's complement is true, while the latter doesn't necessarily impose an implication. e.g. "I believe that there is a/are god(s)" imply’s "I lack the belief that there is not a/many god(s)". However, this property is not commutative. Most people use the term "agnosticism" colloquially to entail a "theological neutralism". This is a kind of semantic-based propaganda, psycho-politics if you will, and I don't think it's the proper way to go about spreading a philosophy anyway. By imposing philosophy at a subterranean linguistic level, people assume the truthfulness of a proposition rather than actively thinking it's true.

So, while logically, agnostic atheism and agnoistic theism are ambiguous enough to mean the same thing; people like Austin Cline have redefined agnostic theism. Here's the definition taken from the Agnosticism article: "The view of those who do not claim to know of the existence of any deity, but still believe in such an existence". We could similarly define agnostic atheism, like so: "The view of those who do not claim to know of the non-existence of any deity, but still believe that there are none anyway". Still don't believe that strong atheists are playing a masquerade game? Read it from their own text on the PositiveAtheism.org FAQ Page: "With the weak definition, the strong-position atheist can participate in a lengthy debate with a theistic apologist without ever disclosing his or her wholesale dismissal of the entire god question, and without once ever being called upon to prove anything. (A careless presentation of the strong position could open itself to the Burden of Proof.)"