What do you call someone

[BreezeWood]

l

from the agnostics in this forum the very term defines them as disbelieving, would not declare a belief without proof - so the above would seem oxymoronic to the point of what you are describing is actually someone who is a theist ...

I don't think you should infer the OP's usage of the term from others' usage. As I said, the term is used in a few different ways. It's very common for "agnostic" to be used as a category which is not mutually exclusive with "theist" or "atheist", so that a person might describe themselves as either an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist.

Anyway, I'm sure the OP put "agnostic" in quotes for a reason. He recognized that he might be using the term in a little bit of a non-standard way. But the gist of the OP is nevertheless pretty clear despite any quibbles about terms, and they are asking more about agnosticism in relation to properties of some "higher intelligence", rather than the existence of said intelligence. So most of this is probably beside the point, but it still seemed worthwhile to me to point out that your complaint about terminology neglects some common uses of the word "agnostic".

.

Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

and they are asking more about agnosticism in relation to properties of some "higher intelligence", rather than the existence of said intelligence.

- my answer remains the agnostic can not "believe" without proof as otherwise being oxymoronic however tangential, existence or properties ... agnostic atheist / theist the same.


believe - without trying to define it?

* the OP asked a stupid question - for whatever reason, sorry.

believe in flying saucers - would still require the saucer.

 

[konradv]

What do you call people who can't respond to the question without hostility?

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

 

[Skull Pilot]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

There is nothing to indicate an agnostic can believe there is a supreme intelligence without empirical evidence because an agnostic does not necessarily deny the existence of a supreme being

 

[Picaro]

What do you call people who can't respond to the question without hostility?

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

Your beloved Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American, you're a Commie deviant. Big difference.

 

[Picaro]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

There is nothing to indicate an agnostic can believe there is a supreme intelligence without empirical evidence because an agnostic does not necessarily deny the existence of a supreme being

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant. Huxley knew that most 'logic' is merely circular reasoning, and a matter of definitions, and left the undefinable undefinable. If formal logic wasn't circular then the empirical method would be useless, as it relies on repetition with all variables held the same and getting the same results repeatedly. And he also realized some variables were unique and will never be repeated values and left that for theorists. Basic physics outran the ability of mathematical language to explain things a long time ago. That's why we have such convoluted absurdities like 'string theory' lying around.

 

[BreezeWood]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

There is nothing to indicate an agnostic can believe there is a supreme intelligence without empirical evidence because an agnostic does not necessarily deny the existence of a supreme being

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant. Huxley knew that most 'logic' is merely circular reasoning, and a matter of definitions, and left the undefinable undefinable. If formal logic wasn't circular then the empirical method would be useless, as it relies on repetition with all variables held the same and getting the same results repeatedly. And he also realized some variables were unique and will never be repeated values and left that for theorists. Basic physics outran the ability of mathematical language to explain things a long time ago. That's why we have such convoluted absurdities like 'string theory' lying around.

.

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant.

very informative as usual, prick

Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American

that's odd, hitler was European ...

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

that might also be better understood by the likeness used by the theist that has yet to be known to exist.

 

[jwoodie]

believe - without trying to define it?

* the OP asked a stupid question - for whatever reason, sorry.

believe in flying saucers - would still require the saucer.

An insult is no substitute for an intelligent response. But I will rephrase my question to make it easier to understand:

Is it possible for a person to believe that a higher power exists even if that power isn't defined?

For example, can a person genuinely believe that UFOs exist even if that person doesn't believe in fly saucers? Do you?

 

[well named]

For example, can a person genuinely believe that UFOs exist even if that person doesn't believe in fly saucers?

I appreciate the attempt to clarify, but it seems like that might not be the most useful example. If you deflate the term UFO of any implications about aliens, so that it just means literally an unidentified flying object, then it's just a fact that some have existed. People see stuff and don't know what it is. I guess maybe there is some distinction between unidentified and unidentifiable, and I'm only describing the first.

Anyway, yes it's definitely possible to believe that something exists (satisfying some set of constraints or having some defined properties) while also believing that one is unable to say much about it specifically, although I think you have to be careful because those kinds of concepts can become so vague as to be nearly vacuous. So the constraints of a vaguely defined concept of "higher power" might be that said power was responsible for the creation of the universe, or that it satisfies some concept of omnipotence, omniscience, or whatever else. One could hold a belief that there is some entity with those properties but disclaim knowledge about more specific properties such an entity might have. This is pretty common in forms of Deism, where Deists believe in some concept of the Divine as architect of the world but reject belief in any specific revelation, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise. Obviously Deism isn't very popular anymore, but anecdotally I think there are a number of people who hold beliefs that are roughly analogous. They are sometimes the people who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious".

The potential problem in my view, as I said before, is that this kind of concept of God can become vacuous. The Deist God doesn't really serve in the same role as most religious conceptions, because it doesn't really provide much in the way of an ethos, a way of life, moral rules, social institutions, and so on. Maybe it satisfies some intellectual need, or is aesthetically pleasing, or symbolically evocative. I think those things are useful and important to people, so I'm not really opposed to this type of religion, per se. But it becomes entirely subjective, and very individual. There are few conclusions about the world or life which can be reliably drawn from a belief in such a "higher power".

Also I think some people (I'm not accusing you) retreat to these sorts of definitions of God when challenged to support their beliefs, while secretly hoping to justify a belief in some more traditional concept of God. This is basically what the ontological and cosmological arguments do. They argue for such a vague concept of God, but then usually the people advancing the argument really hope to reach the conclusion that their interpretation of the Bible is true, rather than merely holding that there is "a being than which none greater can be conceived."

 

[konradv]

What do you call people who can't respond to the question without hostility?

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

Your beloved Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American, you're a Commie deviant. Big difference.

What's with all the hostility? Low on meds this month?

 

[jwoodie]

The potential problem in my view, as I said before, is that this kind of concept of God can become vacuous. The Deist God doesn't really serve in the same role as most religious conceptions, because it doesn't really provide much in the way of an ethos, a way of life, moral rules, social institutions, and so on. Maybe it satisfies some intellectual need, or is aesthetically pleasing, or symbolically evocative. I think those things are useful and important to people, so I'm not really opposed to this type of religion, per se. But it becomes entirely subjective, and very individual. There are few conclusions about the world or life which can be reliably drawn from a belief in such a "higher power".

Also I think some people (I'm not accusing you) retreat to these sorts of definitions of God when challenged to support their beliefs, while secretly hoping to justify a belief in some more traditional concept of God. This is basically what the ontological and cosmological arguments do. They argue for such a vague concept of God, but then usually the people advancing the argument really hope to reach the conclusion that their interpretation of the Bible is true, rather than merely holding that there is "a being than which none greater can be conceived."

Good points. My beliefs are not based on specific interpretations of the Bible or any other religious documents. Instead, I look to commonality and rationality in belief systems stemming from these documents.

For example, the Creation story in Genesis is remarkably consistent with current scientific theories. However, the use of "days" in that description was obviously in the parlance of people who could not have grasped any other chronological description. Similarly, describing God as "creating man in his own image" would have been the only comprehensible way of describing spirituality to those people. I believe that other religious texts should also be considered within their own historical contexts.

The facts that all human societies have had religious components suggests that it is somehow built into our DNA. Unless religion can be shown to be elemental to human survival, it is rational to assume that it serves some other purpose. Therefore, it is irrational to believe that religion serves no purpose at all.

It is also arrogant (and dismal) to believe that human beings represent the highest form of intelligence in the universe. True intelligence is acknowledging that we don't, and never will, have all the answers.

 

[BreezeWood]

believe - without trying to define it?

* the OP asked a stupid question - for whatever reason, sorry.

believe in flying saucers - would still require the saucer.

An insult is no substitute for an intelligent response. But I will rephrase my question to make it easier to understand:

Is it possible for a person to believe that a higher power exists even if that power isn't defined?

For example, can a person genuinely believe that UFOs exist even if that person doesn't believe in fly saucers? Do you?

.

An insult is no substitute for an intelligent response. But I will rephrase my question to make it easier to understand:

Is it possible for a person to believe that a higher power exists even if that power isn't defined?

For example, can a person genuinely believe that UFOs exist even if that person doesn't believe in fly saucers? Do you?

Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?
.................


Is it possible for a person to believe that a higher power exists even if that power isn't defined?

well ok for a person perhaps, for an agnostic it just seems you are attempting to alter a definition for it to conform to a circumstance where agnosticism does not presently apply, so no.

For example, can a person genuinely believe that UFOs exist even if that person doesn't believe in fly saucers?

I would say as for the agnostic no, they would not speculate the saucer is from Mars without first seeing the saucer.

Do you?

i'm not really sure what you are attempting to accomplish - I believe the Religion of Antiquity exists, is real whether spoken by the Almighty or not which again is not really related to agnosticism but seems to relate to your questions.

 

[Picaro]

What do you call people who can't respond to the question without hostility?

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

Your beloved Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American, you're a Commie deviant. Big difference.

What's with all the hostility? Low on meds this month?

Who's hostile here? Oh yeah, you Commies. Never mind.

 

[Picaro]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

There is nothing to indicate an agnostic can believe there is a supreme intelligence without empirical evidence because an agnostic does not necessarily deny the existence of a supreme being

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant. Huxley knew that most 'logic' is merely circular reasoning, and a matter of definitions, and left the undefinable undefinable. If formal logic wasn't circular then the empirical method would be useless, as it relies on repetition with all variables held the same and getting the same results repeatedly. And he also realized some variables were unique and will never be repeated values and left that for theorists. Basic physics outran the ability of mathematical language to explain things a long time ago. That's why we have such convoluted absurdities like 'string theory' lying around.

.

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant.

very informative as usual, prick

Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American

that's odd, hitler was European ...

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

that might also be better understood by the likeness used by the theist that has yet to be known to exist.

Ah, another Angry Faggot, crying for attention. You might try hanging around Richard Dawkins. He has no problem with pedophiles sticking their hands down boys' pants, so you two would get along fine, since you're both stupid deviants.

 

[konradv]

What do you call people who can't respond to the question without hostility?

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

Your beloved Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American, you're a Commie deviant. Big difference.

What's with all the hostility? Low on meds this month?

Who's hostile here? Oh yeah, you Commies. Never mind.

Project much?

 

[Windparadox]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it? Your thoughts will be appreciated.

`
Eclectic.

 

[sparky]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

deists....

 

[Picaro]

N

Angry Faggots and Deviants.

That's no way to talk about our president!

Your beloved Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American, you're a Commie deviant. Big difference.

What's with all the hostility? Low on meds this month?

Who's hostile here? Oh yeah, you Commies. Never mind.

Project much?

No. And, your Incompetent use of fake psycho-babble is another Commie trait, too; they're big on fake psychiatry.

 

[BreezeWood]

who believes that all religions are valid attempts to explain our existence? Can an "agnostic" believe in a greater intelligence without trying to define it?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

There is nothing to indicate an agnostic can believe there is a supreme intelligence without empirical evidence because an agnostic does not necessarily deny the existence of a supreme being

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant. Huxley knew that most 'logic' is merely circular reasoning, and a matter of definitions, and left the undefinable undefinable. If formal logic wasn't circular then the empirical method would be useless, as it relies on repetition with all variables held the same and getting the same results repeatedly. And he also realized some variables were unique and will never be repeated values and left that for theorists. Basic physics outran the ability of mathematical language to explain things a long time ago. That's why we have such convoluted absurdities like 'string theory' lying around.

.

That's close to what the inventor of the word said it meant.

very informative as usual, prick

Kim Jung Dung isn't my President. I'm an American

that's odd, hitler was European ...

By definition the term agnostic

: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

that might also be better understood by the likeness used by the theist that has yet to be known to exist.

Ah, another Angry Faggot, crying for attention. You might try hanging around Richard Dawkins. He has no problem with pedophiles sticking their hands down boys' pants, so you two would get along fine, since you're both stupid deviants.

.

Ah, another Angry Faggot, crying for attention. You might try hanging around Richard Dawkins. He has no problem with pedophiles sticking their hands down boys' pants, so you two would get along fine, since you're both stupid deviants.

hey prick -

I bet you drulled with the brown shirts when they had their homosexual orgies ... in your reminiscence of their days of glory.

 

[well named]

For example, the Creation story in Genesis is remarkably consistent with current scientific theories.

I would say that it's only superficially consistent with current scientific theories, or maybe even only that it's trivially consistent. The leading cosmological theory implies that the universe had a beginning. Some creation stories, including those in Genesis but also others like the Canaanite creation stories on which Genesis is based, also tell a story where the world begins. This isn't terribly surprising to me. People observe that things begin and end, life especially. Semitic cultures seemed to focus in on that idea of "sacred history", of a linear story to reality. In fact, it seems fair to say that the importance Judeo-Christian cultures place on scientific cosmology today also reflects that traditional focus. Some other cultures put more emphasis on the seasonality or cyclical nature of existence, noticing that while an individual life has a beginning and end, Life in some broader sense continues, a cycle of births and deaths. This focus appears important in Vedic religious tradition, for example. It's not clear to me that one emphasis is more "remarkably consistent" with a modern scientific view of the universe than the other. They both have roots in basic human observations and experiences.

That said, I do think we may sometimes give ancient peoples too little credit for being intelligent, insightful, or wise, and there are plenty of ways in which ancient thinkers have prefigured modern theories. The atomism of Democritus is often mentioned. There are physicists who have taken some delight in noticing how ideas like "interdependent origination" (Pratītyasamutpāda) in early Buddhism dovetail neatly with modern physics' move away from classical Greek substance ontologies towards something more like a process ontology. But I think while we should credit our ancestors for their intelligence and ability to make astute observations of the world, we shouldn't mistake that intelligence for esoteric or secret knowledge, and quantum mechanics is also only superficially (but evocatively!) similar to Buddhist ideas.

The facts that all human societies have had religious components suggests that it is somehow built into our DNA. Unless religion can be shown to be elemental to human survival, it is rational to assume that it serves some other purpose.

I'm assuming you mean "built into our DNA" in something like a metaphorical way. I would say that statements like "all human societies have had religious components" also run the risk of falling into vacuousness by virtue of being too abstract and vague. The religion of the Greek city states is very different from Christianity, and both are different from Buddhism, or Shinto, or the religion of the Nuer tribe in Africa. I mentioned the last because my view is that one of the best intellectual disciplines from which to approach an understanding of religion as a human phenomenon is cultural anthropology. That is particularly because anthropologists have had the opportunity to survey in a detailed way the immense variations between human cultures. We draw analogies between elements of those cultures, and say they all have something like "religion", or "kin-ship relations", and so on. And they all do, and the similarities are interesting and worth exploring. But the similarities are also often superficial in much the same way as the similarity between the story in Genesis and modern cosmology. That all people have cultural institutions which deal in kinship and marriage really does follow fairly obviously from basic biological facts about humans, for example. It doesn't suggest some transcendent purpose, and the differences between how those cultures understand and carry out those relationships are vast.

Similarly, religion (understood broadly) clearly does play a role in human survival, and that role is connected to the fact that we are social creatures who depend on cooperation with each other to survive and flourish. Maybe religion also has some transcendent role, but it clearly has a social one. On this, I recommend Geertz' Religion as a Cultural System, a chapter from his excellent book The Interpretation of Cultures. There's obviously much more that should be said on this topic, but the part I'd emphasize is his definition of religion and the social role it plays:

"As we are to deal with meaning, let us begin with a paradigm: viz., that sacred symbols function to synthesize a people's ethos—the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood —and their world view—the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order. In religious belief and practice a group's ethos is rendered intellectually reasonable by being shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world view describes, while the world view is rendered emotionally convincing by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs peculiarly well-arranged to accommodate such a way of life. This confrontation and mutual confirmation has two fundamental effects. On the one hand, it objectivizes moral and aesthetic preferences by depicting them as the imposed conditions of life implicit in a world with a particular structure, as mere common sense given the unalterable shape of reality. On the other, it supports these received beliefs about the world's body by invoking deeply felt moral and aesthetic sentiments as experiential evidence for their truth. Religious symbols formulate a basic congruence between a particular style of life and a specific (if, most often, implicit) metaphysic, and in so doing sustain each with the borrowed authority of the other."
​

The point I am trying to make is that it's clear that religion's role in establishing this shared ethos and worldview among a group of people is enormously important to social cohesion, which is enormously important to human survival. Hence something like "religion" (understood in those terms) is unsurprisingly universal in human cultures. I think I can say, without being too glib, that we can see the effects of a loss of shared ethos and worldview in the current state of American politics. In part we have lost social cohesion not only because we disagree about the right way of life, but we disagree about the way the world is, fundamentally.

​

It is also arrogant (and dismal) to believe that human beings represent the highest form of intelligence in the universe. True intelligence is acknowledging that we don't, and never will, have all the answers.

I'm also a big believer in the importance of epistemic humility, so no arguments there. Although I don't think this provides a good argument for a "higher intelligence"; it only provides a good argument for uncertainty.

 

[jwoodie]

For example, the Creation story in Genesis is remarkably consistent with current scientific theories.

I would say that it's only superficially consistent with current scientific theories, or maybe even only that it's trivially consistent. The leading cosmological theory implies that the universe had a beginning.

I was referring to the chronological development of life on Earth. But I agree that the Creation story is also consistent with the leading cosmological theory of a "God particle."