Posted: Nov 03, 2016 5:49 pm
And, with my penchant for wading into a thread in pedant mode, I'll provide a rigorous response. 
Quite simply, an atheist is someone who doesn't treat unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact. That is it. It may surprise you, Eli, when I post this, but I'm an atheist, and quite prepared to state this openly, but I don't rule out the existence of a god-type entity. I simply consider pre-scientific mythologies to be wholly incompetent to answer the relevant questions. Indeed, I'm on public record here repeatedly, as stating the following:
[1] if genuine evidence ever arises, pointing conclusively to the existence of a god type entity, said entity will be completely unlike anything in past human experience, to the point of falsifying all of our mythologies at a stroke;
[2] Said evidence, once it materialises, will be a worldwide news sensation for months on end, and guarantee its discoverer a Nobel Prize;
[3] The people best placed to understand said evidence, once it materialises, will be particle physicists, because they encounter and analyse counter-intuitive phenomena on a daily basis in their work.
It should, of course, be implicit in my placing the words 'genuine evidence' in italics above, that I do not consider the tinselly fabrications of pedlars of apologetics worthy of the title. This has much to do with the sort of discoursive shell games that are endemic to apologetics, which I highlight via the following contrast:
Science: Hypothesis H is constructed. Said hypothesis states that phenomenon X will be observed occurring, whilst phenomenon Y will never be observed occurring. If X is observed and Y not observed, hypothesis H is considered sound, and provisionally retained for as long as the data supports it. If X is not observed, and Y is observed, on the other hand, hypothesis H is tossed into the bin, and it's back to the drawing board.
Apologetics: "My magic man exists" is asserted. It is further asserted that phenomenon X purportedly constitutes "evidence" for this. If phenomenon X is observed, this is asserted to be "evidence" for the magic man in question. If, on the other hand, phenomenon X is not observed, but phenomenon Y is, this is still asserted to be "evidence" for the magic man in question, on the flimsy basis that this is what said magic man wants.
As for the matter of being an agnostic, this actually addresses a different question. Instead of addressing the question "does a god type entity actually exist?" agnosticism, properly and rigorously constructed, concerns itself with the question "can we actually know the answer to the question of whether a god type entity actually exists?". Agnosticism is a matter of epistemology, not ontology. Those with the best rigorous claim to be agnostics, are those who regard the existence question as being unanswerable even in principle. The important conceptual differences are best highlighted as follows:
Q1: "Does a god type entity actually exist?"
Q2: "Can question Q1 above ever be answered?"
Supernaturalism consists of asserting that both Q1 and Q2 have the answer "yes", and that the answer to Q1 is found in the supernaturalist's mythology of choice.
Atheism consists of regarding Q1 as currently unanswered, and regarding mythology as incapable of answering it. Atheism, at least when conducted properly, does not of itself commit either way to an answer for Q2, but waits for requisite scholarship to inform us of the matter. Some atheists think Q2 has the answer "yes", and that Q1 is answerable in principle, but that supernaturalist assertions about that answer fail all elementary tests. Other atheists have an agnostic view, which I now come to.
Agnosticism consists of regarding Q1 as unanswered, and Q2 of having the answer "no".
In short, every substantive question, at bottom, consists of answering three corollary questions, viz:
[1] What truth value does the postulate contained in our original question have?
[2] Is it possible to determine this truth value?
[3] What actions or data are required to provide the requisite truth value, if the answer to [2] is "yes"?
Science operates on the basis that the answer to [1] consists of "unknown prior to test, provisionally true if it survives the current test, and false if the current test destroys it". Thus opening up the possibility that a future test could falsify the postulate, if that is what the data tells us. With regard to [2], science operates on the basis of "yes if we can test it, unsure if we currently cannot". [3] is where science starts to get busy in the lab.
Quite simply, an atheist is someone who doesn't treat unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact. That is it. It may surprise you, Eli, when I post this, but I'm an atheist, and quite prepared to state this openly, but I don't rule out the existence of a god-type entity. I simply consider pre-scientific mythologies to be wholly incompetent to answer the relevant questions. Indeed, I'm on public record here repeatedly, as stating the following:
[1] if genuine evidence ever arises, pointing conclusively to the existence of a god type entity, said entity will be completely unlike anything in past human experience, to the point of falsifying all of our mythologies at a stroke;
[2] Said evidence, once it materialises, will be a worldwide news sensation for months on end, and guarantee its discoverer a Nobel Prize;
[3] The people best placed to understand said evidence, once it materialises, will be particle physicists, because they encounter and analyse counter-intuitive phenomena on a daily basis in their work.
It should, of course, be implicit in my placing the words 'genuine evidence' in italics above, that I do not consider the tinselly fabrications of pedlars of apologetics worthy of the title. This has much to do with the sort of discoursive shell games that are endemic to apologetics, which I highlight via the following contrast:
Science: Hypothesis H is constructed. Said hypothesis states that phenomenon X will be observed occurring, whilst phenomenon Y will never be observed occurring. If X is observed and Y not observed, hypothesis H is considered sound, and provisionally retained for as long as the data supports it. If X is not observed, and Y is observed, on the other hand, hypothesis H is tossed into the bin, and it's back to the drawing board.
Apologetics: "My magic man exists" is asserted. It is further asserted that phenomenon X purportedly constitutes "evidence" for this. If phenomenon X is observed, this is asserted to be "evidence" for the magic man in question. If, on the other hand, phenomenon X is not observed, but phenomenon Y is, this is still asserted to be "evidence" for the magic man in question, on the flimsy basis that this is what said magic man wants.
As for the matter of being an agnostic, this actually addresses a different question. Instead of addressing the question "does a god type entity actually exist?" agnosticism, properly and rigorously constructed, concerns itself with the question "can we actually know the answer to the question of whether a god type entity actually exists?". Agnosticism is a matter of epistemology, not ontology. Those with the best rigorous claim to be agnostics, are those who regard the existence question as being unanswerable even in principle. The important conceptual differences are best highlighted as follows:
Q1: "Does a god type entity actually exist?"
Q2: "Can question Q1 above ever be answered?"
Supernaturalism consists of asserting that both Q1 and Q2 have the answer "yes", and that the answer to Q1 is found in the supernaturalist's mythology of choice.
Atheism consists of regarding Q1 as currently unanswered, and regarding mythology as incapable of answering it. Atheism, at least when conducted properly, does not of itself commit either way to an answer for Q2, but waits for requisite scholarship to inform us of the matter. Some atheists think Q2 has the answer "yes", and that Q1 is answerable in principle, but that supernaturalist assertions about that answer fail all elementary tests. Other atheists have an agnostic view, which I now come to.
Agnosticism consists of regarding Q1 as unanswered, and Q2 of having the answer "no".
In short, every substantive question, at bottom, consists of answering three corollary questions, viz:
[1] What truth value does the postulate contained in our original question have?
[2] Is it possible to determine this truth value?
[3] What actions or data are required to provide the requisite truth value, if the answer to [2] is "yes"?
Science operates on the basis that the answer to [1] consists of "unknown prior to test, provisionally true if it survives the current test, and false if the current test destroys it". Thus opening up the possibility that a future test could falsify the postulate, if that is what the data tells us. With regard to [2], science operates on the basis of "yes if we can test it, unsure if we currently cannot". [3] is where science starts to get busy in the lab.