Quote:
Originally Posted by MoneyGuy
I'm a theist (not religious; there is a big difference). I laugh at those on both sides who claim to be 100% sure that there either is or is not a God. You can't be sure, and you both certainly can't be right. It's funny that there can be two people sitting beside each other at a hockey game, and one is 100% sure there is a God and the other is 100% sure there is not.
I consider myself an agnostic theist. My wife is, I think, 100% sure there is a God. I think she's wrong, not wrong that there is no God but wrong in the sense that this is unknowable. I know people who are 100% sure there is no God; they're also wrong.
For those who answered the poll 100% either way, how in the world can you possibly know that? You can't.
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Not to pick a fight, but your belief position is actually the only one that is wrong as regards the truth about the existence of God (*see below), even though your position about justifiable certainty regarding the matter may be right. As between your two hypothetical people, one of them is certainly wrong and the other is right about the ultimate question. Their own certainty as to the existence or non-existence of God is based on the appreciation of the evidence and their justification may or may not be faulty, and in fact for one of them it MUST BE faulty, but the fact is that one of them is actually right.
Many people are uncomfortable with agnosticism and feel the need to take a position of certainty. You hear about things like 'crisis of faith' among the religious, or 'death-bed' conversions of atheists and while these stories are anecdotal at best, they perhaps reveal a bit about the truly agnostic nature of many who would claim to be certain if you came out and asked them.
Again, I actually agree with your position on certainty, although I am on the other side of the fence and am only a 'little' agnostic, in that I think it is highly unlikely that there is a personal God or any supernatural agency and that it is so unlikely that you can almost be gnostic about it. The only reason I bring this up is to point out that the argument of the gnostic against the agnostic is that at least the gnostic represents a real position on the matter that will comport with reality.
* I have ignored the possibility that by some quantum universe argument, both atheists and theists are both right and wrong at the same time as a result of some strange universe that is in superposition of states where there both is a God and is not a God. The theological version of the double slit experiment or Schrodinger's cat if you will. In such a universe, the agnostics are still wrong unless Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies to the measurement of the existence of God... (who knows, maybe it does) Even in this superposed universe God exists or does not, but measurement may influence existence. (although that would tend to suggest that God is not omnipotent and can't enforce his own existence in a universe He has supposedly created, which would seem to be a pretty impotent supernatural being)
Just food for thought for anyone crazy enough to go down this particular path...