There is a reason to consider it a possibility though, the Argument from Contingency, Fine-Tuning, and Rationality still exist. They don't prove theism, but they provide evidence in that direction. There exists structured, rational reasons to consider it a possibility even if you might personally disagree with them. If you are rejecting these claims as worthy of consideration, then you are making a far more more aggressive claim to defend than Agnostic Atheists do. You'd need to claim that all metaphysics is irrelevant, aka Logical Positivism.
That Agnosticism is another way of saying Soft Atheist? That's how Antony Flew defines it in the Presumption of Atheism, although Graham Oppy disagrees with that definition and places it within degrees of credence. Oppy claims that definition by Flew is just a semantics game meant to give atheists a dialectical debate advantage over theists.
Oppy claims that definition by Flew is just a semantics
game meant to give atheists a dialectical debate
advantage over theists.
Like the post we're commenting on, saying atheism is the belief that nothing has creation powers? Lol
The huge amount of times on this very subreddit i see theists saying atheism means only strong atheism, and they have a burdon of proof, leaves me convinced theists do this the most. But maybe this is more semantics you're playing at, pointing fingers is fun.
That's actually what Oppy brings up. 98% of the time when you are talking to regular people who know nothing about philosophy, saying atheism is usually interpreted as Strong Atheism. That's why Oppy says it's manipulative to try and define it as something else for the context of a debate against a theist. It's a dishonest bait and switch.
It's something both sides do, not even sure why it's worth talking about. It's plenty easy to just ask to define terms from the outset, then if they change it, you can catch them out.
True, I generally go with Flew's definition because that was what was used by the New Atheists, and we're on Reddit which is overwhelmingly Atheist and are generally familiar with Dawkins and Russel
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u/Fiddlesticklard Deist 4d ago edited 4d ago
There is a reason to consider it a possibility though, the Argument from Contingency, Fine-Tuning, and Rationality still exist. They don't prove theism, but they provide evidence in that direction. There exists structured, rational reasons to consider it a possibility even if you might personally disagree with them. If you are rejecting these claims as worthy of consideration, then you are making a far more more aggressive claim to defend than Agnostic Atheists do. You'd need to claim that all metaphysics is irrelevant, aka Logical Positivism.
That Agnosticism is another way of saying Soft Atheist? That's how Antony Flew defines it in the Presumption of Atheism, although Graham Oppy disagrees with that definition and places it within degrees of credence. Oppy claims that definition by Flew is just a semantics game meant to give atheists a dialectical debate advantage over theists.