Talk:Agnosticism/Archive 3

message: Does anyone have a reference for the following statement?
:Many agnostics are people who do not believe in absolute truth.
From my understanding of agnosticism, I would think that this statement should be more like:
:Many agnostics are people who do not believe in absolute knowledge of truth.
There is a huge difference between these two statements.  I don't think I have ever heard any self described agnostics make a statement like the first; however, I have heard many agnostics say something like the second. millerc 21:50, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to make the change, but I will say the rewording seems awkward. Could you perhaps phrase it more eloquently whilst preserving your meaning? I had a rather different tract before, leading one to believe agnostics were relativist/possibly postmodernist, which you are clearly moving away from, and perhaps rightly so. Citations/verifiability would be great, but regardless preserving prose is likewise necessary. Sam Spade 22:22, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Many agnostics are people who do not believe it is possible to have absolute knowledge of truth? Bryan 05:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The sentance written by Bryan sounds good.  Since no one has yet complained I think I will place it in the article.  There might be postmodernists who call themselves agnostics, but I don't think postmodernists make up a substantial subset of agnostics, as might be implied by the word many. millerc 01:26, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Absolute truth

message: that was actually a particularly agreeable compromise. The only trouble is their all the same link. Maybe they shouldn't be, but they are. Shouldn't the final two be delinked? Should we illustrate the distinctions/distinguishing traits of these alternate terms? Sam [Spade] 05:00, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, they aren't all the same link; deity redirects to list of deities, which I think is a reasonable way of indicating that Agnosticism is referring to "all of the above" rather than any one specific deity. The two links to god look hard to avoid due to Wikipedia's handling of capitalization. Bryan 05:17, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good job Bryan 

message: I was wondering what the terms are for distinguishing between these two characteristics.
:1 non-commital disinterest no claim to have any special knowledge admitting ignorace.
:2 Belief that no-one can know, i.e. rejection of the idea that anyone can know.
It seems to me that agnostic has ben used by different people for both reasons and it occurred to me that English is not such a limited language so as not to be able to distinguish between the two. 1 is not a belief system because the only faith involved is in tangible knowledge though admitting limitation in personal knowledge. 2 is a belief system with a pillar of faith i.e. to believe in the ultimate limitation of knowledge in a specific regard. Hope someone can help me out here.Zestauferov 05:21, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: AIUI, (1) is called weak agnosticism and (2) is called strong agnosticism.  — Gwalla | Talk 02:59, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Question on distinction

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message: Since Kaz's edit removed links to god I'm partially reverting them. This makes for a difficult and long construct, but gives Kaz the chance to state his preferred definition. The sentence could be split into two, but I think that would render the definition ambiguous. Any one got an idea?  Banno
:The word "god" is not appropriate in the most direct part of the definition, because that's not what agnosticism is about, except as a side-effect or symptom. It would make more sense for it to say "spiritual truth (including the existence of any God or gods) is knowable".
:To center around "the existence of god(s)" is a very simplistic approach. It's certainly what someone thinking solely about their own Christian upbringing might think first, but is really irrelevent to the whole definition. Again I cite Buddhism as an example of a spiritual stance that need not even include a deity at all.
:But practical example is irrelevent...if one is expressing uncertainty as to any way to determine spiritual Truth at all, then the infinite possibilities in which there's something spiritual, but not a deity, are of equal value to the ones in which there is. Kaz 00:33, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  First paragraph and definition