A question for agnostics.

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It's an awful example. It's radiation leaked by quantum effects from a black hole, which diminished the mass and energy from the black hole itself. I think you are thinking of the virtual particles that violate conservation through the uncertainty principle, by briefly popping into existence and annihilating each other.



Isn't it? A vacuum is just that, nothing.

@ryan93

The quantum vacuum is not nothing. It is a sea of fluctuating energy, governed by laws (though we do not know them in full, it could also be random: it depends on what maths you use), that can spawn particles.

The quantum vacuum itself excludes the energy created therin, the energy is what pops out of the nothingness that is the quantum vacuum.

I think I do see the distinction you are trying to make. Are you saying that nothingness and empty space are non-synonymous?

the ONLY way to know if God exists without a doubt is to be omniscient and no human is omniscient

im atheist with a liberal sprinkling of beliefs from Nihilism(mainly existensial and moral), and Absurdism

there is an invisible dragon in my garage but you can feel him or sense him with any equipment but i know he is there lol i heard that argument a long time ago, the invisible dragon in garage, invisible pink unicorn, and the flying spaghetti monster are great examples to use that uses the same logic religion uses

if God actually existed wouldnt he show himself?

He did...that's rather the central focus of Christianity...

A. There are quite a few claimed sightings.

B. If I were God - and unlike some I am not - I would pretty much keep to myself. If Howard Hughes really existed....

Nobody knows how god looks like. How do they tell they have seen god?

I don't think percentage assessments for certainty make much sense.

Can you be certain there is no God? No (well, I guess you could, but if you are you probably aren't thinking about it very sensibly). This is irrelevant, though. I'm talking about knowledge - not 'absolute knowledge', not 'certain knowledge', not 'knowledge without a doubt', etc. Agnosticism is about plain old knowledge, so that's what I'm interested in here.

Agnosticism about deities states you don't know whether any deities exist. What I'm saying is that on the conventional use of the word 'knowledge', many agnostics do know, from their perspective (so they're not really agnostic). It seems to me that the reason so many people say they don't know is because they're assessing theological claims on stricter knowledge conditions (like '100% certain' - of course you can't be '100% certain' there is no God, but, conventionally, '100% certainty' has nothing to do with knowledge, and therefore nothing to do with agnosticism).


If you're an epistemic minimalist, and if you believe (1) and (2) are true, then you'd also believe that (3) is true. You could be wrong, of course. If belief x isn't objectively true, then x isn't knowledge.

Perhaps this would be clearer: (1) I believe there is no God; (2) I believe it's true that there is no God; (3) therefore, I believe I know there is no God.


I'm not saying I can 'discount the possible existence' of God. I'm saying I can know there is no God. I believe it's possible God could exist, and I also believe I know there is no God. I believe it's possible there isn't an oven in my kitchen (I could be hallucinating), and I believe I know there's an oven in my kitchen.


I'm aware that's what you're attempting to do, but I still don't see how the don't/can't distinction is relevant. You are right about that, though, and it's silly to be unclear without good reason. I'll use 'don't' from now on since that's the weaker of the two.


If, of these claims -

(1) I believe there is no God.
(2) I believe it's true that there is no God.
(3) I believe my belief that there is no God is justified.

- you wouldn't assent to (3), then fine. All I'm saying is that many 'agnostic' atheists would assent to all three claims (and many 'agnostic' theists would assent to the opposite). If you assent to (1) and (2) - or just (1) - I'd be interested why you don't also assent to (3) (or both (2) and (3), if you only assent to (1).)

(To be clear given my earlier comments in this post, I'd say all that's required for you to know there is no God (from your perspective) is that you assent to claims (1) and (2). I thought it best to follow convention for the purposes of this thread, though.)


Okay then. You're an unusual case. Most 'agnostic' atheists would not identify as agnostic about whether there's an oven in their kitchen, about where they live, about evolution, etc. If you do identify as agnostic about so much stuff, then it's probably totally consistent for you to identify as agnostic about God. You must use the 'knowledge' in a far more restricted way than is usual, though.

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It's not so much a matter of not knowing as not caring. We know enough about how nature works to make God superfluous. If you want to demand a God for moral purposes, you have only to briefly glance at the total bloody mess the world has been throughout history and very much in the present to be convinced that if this is the way God decided the world should work he needs to get into another line of work.

heh. i'm not a physicist, so i'm probably not the best to explain it. as i understood it, hawking radiation is the result of those "virtual particles" (particle-antiparticle pairs that annihilate themselves so quickly they can hardly be said to exist at all) appearing so close to the edge of a black hole that one part of the pair falls in and the other escapes, becoming "real."

this great article from Ethan Siegel is a good starting point. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/02/can_you_get_something_for_noth.php


and here's an article talking about why we now think there's a preference for matter over antimatter in the universe. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=muons-mesons

91's objection seems, to me, quite sound. it's just not consistent. what we know of these "virtual particles" is known only in our universe. he assumes that, without our universe, there would be *nothing*. well... *nothing except for god*, i guess...... but he doesn't seem to care that his argument for god, out of "sheer necessity," is also viewing the problem from within our universe. he ignores this problem for god.

91: you're right, as far as i understand it, about virtual particles arising from our already-existing-reality. i'm just pointing out that we know hardly anything about how the universe actually works. we know that (what-we-think-of-as) our universe can be considered to have had a "beginning" but i don't see any reason to believe that (what-we-think-of-as) our universe is alone in reality. time, being as much a part of this universe as the space to which it is attached, is how we keep things separate. this may not be an appropriate way to view the larger reality. we don't know yet.

but we're trying. taking a shortcut through "some sh** people started believing at a time when EVERYONE BELIEVED RIDICULOUS MAGIC STORIES" to get to "Goddidit" is hamstringing out efforts.


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the agnostic/atheist divide is hilarious. "i don't believe in god" vs "i DON'T believe in god!" is a matter of volume, not substance. i identified as an agnostic until i got tired of people taking that as a concession that there might be a window open for their particular deity. "we can't know" means "you can't know either."

pigeon-holing someone who identifies as an atheist into someone who believes that everything came from nothing (or has always existed) draws attention to the fact that people who believe in god believe that he always existed (or came from nothing).

you're doing it wrong.

@Wultur

I think your pretty much right on with that last post. There are two things I should like to mention though.

1. That positing God as an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing does provide a good explanation for the universe. I find the topic of necessity very interesting and it is certainly not a settled matter (until a few decades ago, people were arguing the universe existed in the same way and dismissed the need for an explanation at all). However, one does not need to solve the necessity issue in order to posit God as an explanation. To do so would be to invoke an argument of infinite regress.

2. The issue between science and religion no doubt exists to some extent. There are certainly some churches that are seriously anti-intellectual. To me and to most Christians there is no issue. As you can tell, I love science, so do many thesits (the discoverer of 'big bang theory' was a Catholic priest). Just as there as some people who will never allow God to be inferred as an explanation for anything. These people are still fighting the ghost of Bishop Wilberforce.

So, why is there a God? You see the question is futile.

ruveyn

I vote. And I had a spiritual (meditative) experience as a child and a religious (abrahamic) experience as an adult.

When I say "I do not know" it is because all knowledge of God that I have is limited to my sensory and subjective experience, and is not "God" but an "interpretation of God". I can have an idea "about" God, but by the limits of my experience I cannot "know" God as defined in western religious (abrahamic) meaning.

My beliefs of or in God are just those: beliefs, nothing more. They are not the same as God. They are not "knowing" God. And that is why I am Agnostic.

The religious experiences I have had are the only reason I am Agnostic as opposed to Atheist. Of course, others could say that by my own logic, my experiences are inadequate proof of God's existence if I cannot "know" him. I agree to disagree.

Much of my "ideas about god" come from psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and some eastern mysticism more than traditional, religious or conventional western notions.


From MCalavera's post, I don't conform to the definition of Agnostic, as I have beliefs and ideas about god, even if they state the (perhaps paradoxically) unknowability of god.

Knowledge is just a particular kind of belief.

Why would you require that your beliefs about x be the same as x in order for them to count as knowledge? On that condition, you wouldn't be able to have any knowledge at all about the external world.

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God or (or the gods) are also part of the something. The bible doesnt touch upon why there is something rather than nothing. It opens with a mysterious being doing mysterious things and not a list of answers for every question.

Christians believe they have answers regarding human origins, the human condition and the future of man, but in terms of the very big questions that transcend man, they have no more answer than atheists or agnostics. The bible didnt supply them.

Or if God gives us conclusive evidence that He does exist. Something that has yet to be done.



Belief in the existence of an invisible dragon in your garage is unjustified. Why believe that such exists?

Same with invisible pink unicorn and flying spaghetti monster. They are all depicted as limited beings that are limited by space and time.

Whereas the God that I believe in is an unlimited God that could easily be one [very] good logical reason for the existence of this big universe.



How can God fully show himself to us if he's unlimited?