no, we most certainly do not both know or agree. agnosticism is about the unknowable, not knowledge and atheism has nothing to do with belief or disbelief. the rest of your post i've no comment on.

no, we most certainly do not both know or agree. agnosticism is about the unknowable, not knowledge and atheism has nothing to do with belief or disbelief. the rest of your post i've no comment on as we cannot agree on the terms.

I think you are using the definition on a one sided plane. As you can see from the wiki it states what it is, then later states that modern people use the term to mean "unknowable":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Etymology

Again it states this as i quote:

"Agnostic (Greek: ἀ- a-, without + γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876[10] to describe his philosophy which rejects all claims of spiritual or mystical knowledge. Early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) to describe "spiritual knowledge." Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular; Huxley used the term in a broader, more abstract sense.[11] Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.[12]
In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean "not knowable".[13] In technical and marketing literature, agnostic often has a meaning close to "independent"—for example, "platform agnostic" or "hardware agnostic."" - from the Wiki


As for what i was talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticism

Seems to me you take the portion that conform to you and get rid of everything else to fit what you want, if that's your reasons fine, but please don't make it seem like i'm wrong about the definitions, but then again to me it seems more like your opinion and we will be going back and fourth, but using this to educate anyone else who slides through this thread.


and really atheism is not a disbelief in Gods? Please educate me, maybe i been wrong these past three years.

ITs not that serious,,,we believe what we believe. But when you start asking about definitions in a public forum, be prepared to get more than the 'standard' explanations.

Words can evolve, that doesnt mean they dont still mean what they mean if the person means it that way,, it just means others might mean it in a different 'evolving' kind of way,,lol


When I say agnostic or atheist, I am using it as I learned it and as I read it from Webster(which has been one of my LIFELONG resources for grammar, spelling, and definitions).

But our individuality sometimes causes us to put individual twists on those definitions...no big deal

well, at least not once the speaker makes clear what context they are using,,,

regardless lurkers need to know it as a whole not one person perception.

In rereading the op, the definitions were given and asked for verification. In that case, other expansions on that definition seem reasonable.

Blanket denials of those definitions would not be. The Op has an accurate definition of the terms, and if there are other definitions IN ADDITION, it still doesnt make his wrong.


We are all continuing to learn everyday,,,

once again. agnostic: regarding what is unknown and unknowable.
atheist: absent theism. you'll note that the word 'belief' or any variation thereof is not part of either description. and i never refer to wiki as a reliable source. and people come to a dating site to be educated??? hey man. good one.

sigh and what is theism kind sir :
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism

the belief in deities, the absent of that "belief" is disbelief, why is this so hard to understand? No, let's not get sarcastic, as you can see you have your own perception of whatever you want to think agnosticism is and there are terms coined that are equally valid. It's to not spread misinformation even if this was a website on cookie dough lovers. Wikipedia have cited information so where do your information lay at? the very origin of agnosticism stem from greek as - a (without) gnostic (knowledge), so I guess the word itself is wrong too. Anyway MH is right not that serious this will extend like the other thread did, I made my point.

You can argue this until the end, dragging out my thread. Or you can just accept he simply doesn't want to agree with anyone and has his own definition

Agreed, back to you, what is your religious history?

None what-so-ever... this is why I was asking questions about it.

The original question was for those who discovered God later in life, how did they decide one day to look for God, did they believe in him before? Those sort of questions. So this doesn't apply to those who were born and raised with the belief passed from their parents

Oh okay, wish my cousin was on these boards because he use to be a atheist and now is deistic. He states that the universe is to intricate for there to not be something governing it. He doesn't believe in God in a sense of a man in the sky intervening like most religions, but God within the universe and within ourselves. So i guess he can also be a pantheist, he doesn't like titles so i don't blame him, but i think if i was to slap one on him it would be either pantheist or deist.

[edit] Oh and i asked him how did he go from non-belief to that, he said he just felt something in his life that he couldn't explain, i don't know what he said verbatim, but something of the sort.

I think I mentioned on a few pages back before all this got spammed, I'm actually into Astronomy. I said I could understand why people believe the universe was created by God, as it's so vast and beautiful. But then my question would go on to ask what created God? There has to be a start somewhere. Space is governed by phyisics, gravity, neublae etc. As for what made it, if there was a big bang, what created the first 2 gases? That is a question to last forever and can't be answered, as we weren't around back then I don't look through my telescope for answers, I look through it for the beauty and detail.

If I were to say there is a God, my personal belief is that God is in each one of us. It's our own individual idea. We all have our own versions, our personal definitions. A religion is where a group of people just so happen to have the very same or similar idea of God. Some may change their mind and try a different religion, because their own personal event in life has changed that. Not because anyone is right or wrong, simply the God they have inside them has changed due to an experience of some sort.

Even non-believers pray at some point, they may think it's to themself or they may even say it's a prayer to God, asking for help. It varies on how much they really believe though. Either way, at some point we turn to somebody or something asking for help.

What do you think towards my thinking? As I said, I've not found God, I've prayed when my Mum died earlier this year. Hoping that she is OK now (after suffering with cancer/heart attack/paralyzed in the last few days). I have no idea if there is a better place, but as an individual, I rest on hope.

Well according to science, what was before the big bang, they don't know, but they consider the question irrelevant since time didn't exist. The question of who created God, is often brought up because apologist like William Lane Craig often use first cause as a argument for God, the problem is it doesn't explain which God or even if it is a God of how we view it. The only reason why i don't think there is a heaven is before i was made inside my mother womb, i was here, i never existed period. Let's think about this, you have no prior memory of every existing, this to me shows your existence is just that, i'm not saying it like i know for a fact, but that just makes me accept that i didn't care about existing then, after i die i won't have a conscious to worry about pain,suffering, worshiping someone for eternity, playing harp for eternity :p etc.

Basically you're saying it's like an On (born) and Off (die) switch... is that all? When it's put like that, then you ask what's the purpose? Now this can get really interesting lol

If you look or see posts by a mingler named MG( I think thats his mingle name,, cant remember for sure,,lol) ,, he has wonderful incite about coming into knowledge of God later in life,,,

not so. the question is definately relevant. we just have no evidence to suggest what was before the big bang.

God is ETERNAL...meaning...God has no beginning nor end.



We live in TIME...but when we leave this earth, we enter into

ETERNITY......where TIME will be no more.


Because we still live in TIME, it is hard for us to grasp what

Eternity is like.

Hi folks, just popping in and breezed through this thread and just wanted to make a comment.

As an atheist I've always disagreed with those who attemt to define atheism with the term disbelief. On many levels of definition, including synonyms, the term is associated with both, "skepticism" and "doubt."

Certainly, in this vast cyberspace of information, there will be some confliting information available.

However, my reasoning in not accepting the term 'disbelief' is rather simple. I approach matters of religious 'faith' in the same manner with which I would approach reading comic books. Young children with little knowledge or understanding of our human limitations might read the X-Men and wonder about what powers lay hidden in their own bodies. I suppose when those kids grow and no longer habor such childish beliefs that one could say they now disbelieve, but I do not, because those children were working with limited expereience, knowledge and informatin in the first place.

HOWEVER, when an adult immerses himself in a science fiction book or movie they do so by suspending 'belief' (example: imagining our world in the company of vampires or being invaded by Martians). But such behavior is not akin to DISBELIEF.

Now, let's look at religious belief. In most cases in which religious doctrine guides the belief system, the individual is required to suspend and/or modify current scientifically accepted views to accommodate their religious beliefs.

In that case I would consider that faith in religious dogmas causes the faithful to DISBELIEVE rather than a suspension of belief because accepting religious dogma over other more objective inforamtin would be to disbelieve.

On the other hand, I do not accepted religious dogma at any level higher than a science fiction comic book. I may consciously suspend knowledge or current understanding of the universe in order to enjoy the science fiction of the comic book or, in some cases, as an attempt to understand what others believe, but I cannot disbelieve something I did not believe in the first place. There is no more doubt, for me, about religious dogma than there is doubt that "The Avengers" are real. I have not changed in any significant way in response to what others believe but believers often tend to trade in one belief for another, thereby causing disbelief for themselves, not for me.

Understand?

well said, red.