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Politics
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Thread ID:
00677783
Message ID:
00679326
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>Your terminology is out dated. At one point, your defintion of agnostic was accurate. However, with obvious over lappings between atheism and agnosticism, something had to be changed. So we now have:
>http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=agnosticism&r=67
>
>As you can see, agnostic here have their own belief, the belief that you cannot know. Meanwhile, atheism is still defined as skepticism in theism. Meaning, that the above (Aetheists decidedly believe there is no god) is inaccurate. Atheists do not believe in god, do not believe there is no god, and do not believe that you cannot know.
>Would you agree with that?

Words can attain many meanings, as shown in your link. I will define my "agnosticism" here, but first (and sorry, I can't help it, but I simply love the old Greek spelling using AE) to aetheism:

"Aetheist: one who denies the existence of god." That's it, no more, nada. Surely that's more than skepticism? This is from Webster's Collegiate (okay, they call it Webster's University dictionary now, just to show how words change), but quite new, and my general basis for word meanings.

Agnosticism: this has many interpretations, and I'm choosing the one I like, and the simplest one. "A state of unknowingness as to the existence of god(s) or other theisms" and I'll throw in the others I mentioned, like UFO existence, ESP, etc. In my view it's not a belief in this sense, it's quite the opposite: an unknowingness about the basis, provenence, or existence of belief systems. An agnostic is subject to change upon the discovery of evidence for or against theism.

That's my word usage, and I disagree to various extents with most of your link's definitions (though some parts I agree with). But some folks their seem to be morphing the poor word into peculiar and rather strong meanings, to me, seemingly almost subjective interpretations (much as I am doing). IMO, the term should imply just the contrary to a "belief" - an inability to know whether a given belief has any solid, provable basis at a given time and place.

But your point is taken, words can be drawn and quartered into a lot of meanings, and colloquialization (ugh, tough word!) enters the picture on word defs an awful lot. Wars have been caused by word-interpretation confusion, no doubt. Guess we ought to make our definitions clear before we speak in these subjective gray areas.

But possibly, you are a little more toward a common-meaning on "agnosticism" and I am a little more toward a common-meaning on "aetheism," to be candid.
The Anonymous Bureaucrat,
and frankly, quite content not to be
a member of either major US political party.
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