Talk:Agnosticism

Ignosticism and Spiritual Agnosticism

Ignosticism is not a "Type of Agnosticism", it is a different concept altogether. I have moved it to a "Related Concepts" section. The question I have regarding both that and "spiritual agnosticism", are these concepts notable enough to agnosticism to be included in the article at all? The sources for the information are websites. Allisgod (talk) 06:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

It is not "a different concept altogether"; it is a very closely related concept. That said, I agree with moving to Related concepts.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using websites as sources; in fact, I recently had someone on my page asking for admin advice because no web sourcing was being provided for some content, the sourcing being from a book. Neither view is correct; we accept both dead-tree and online sourcing, as long as the source provided meets with the WP:RS guideline. We also do not remove content because the sourcing is suspect, unless the information is believed to be inaccurate. We instead locate better sourcing for the content. We should certainly include both concepts in this article. Note that Spiritual agnosticism has its own article. Any content sourced on the target article is considered sourced here, as there is a link from the term to the article on the term. KillerChihuahua 17:20, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

In researching the phrase, "Spiritual agnosticism", I have found no evidence that this is not just a phrase used by a handful of people on the internet who want a unique name for their personal philosophy. There are dozens of such "[fill-in-the-blank] agnosticism" phrases out there. The sources on the target page are also all personal blogs with zero references and I haven't found it to be a notable concept in academic research, so I have nominated that page for deletion and notified the creator of the page (who happens to be one or more of the sources). Allisgod (talk) 19:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

It appears you prodded it, and did not list it at WP:Afd. Did you mean to nominate the article for deletion? KillerChihuahua 19:45, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, you're right. Allisgod (talk) 19:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

No worries, was just making sure. If you Prod an article, it can be recreated; if an article is deleted through Afd, it cannot be recreated without substantial changes. Be sure to notify the creator of the page about the Prod on their talk page, there are templates for that on the WP:PROD page. If you decide to switch to Afd, same thing, notify the creator, as this is a new article. KillerChihuahua 19:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I see you have listed the article at Afd; let's wait and see how the Afd concludes and work forward from that. If the Afd results in a Keep, that would indicate a community consensus that this is a topic worth having. KillerChihuahua 20:03, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

And I have now removed Spiritual agnosticism, as it seems clear the Afd will close as a snowball; we have the same lack of RS here as at the article. KillerChihuahua 13:38, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Input requested

Please offer your view on an Rfc here to decide whether of all the "List of atheist (profession)" lists, the philosophy list should be expanded to include agnostics as well, as "List of atheist and agnostic philosophers" instead of "List of atheist philosophers". The discussion may be found at Talk:List_of_atheist_philosophers#This_list. KillerChihuahua 19:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Too much god.

There's too much god-talk in this article, Agnosticism has nothing to do with God, it's a position against any claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.60.93.218 (talk) 17:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Problem with the Euler diagram

You can have knowledge of the subject or not have knowledge but as agnostic/gnostic is defined can there be a third state? What does the yellow area labeled 'Atheist' that lies outside knowledge/lack of knowledge represent? Wouldn't a more appropriate diagram be one with a line bisecting the Y-axis with agnostic taking the upper or lower half and gnostic the other half? A person either claims some evidence for belief or fails to claim evidence or claims no evidence but the person's failing to claim evidence are still agnostic. The article should make reference to the yellow and pink sections of the diagram as to what they represent. It only focuses on the intersected areas. Alatari (talk) 07:29, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Those areas represent a space where the word is written, not as an actual third category. It's not the most helpful diagram. NaturaNaturans (talk) 01:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

"Agnosticism is the belief that ..." - really?

The article currently begins "Agnosticism is the belief that the existence or non-existence of any deity is unknown and possibly unknowable." I don't particularly want to waste any more of my life than I have already done on what I now see as basically absurd (but sometimes seemingly mass-murderously dangerous) arguments over the meaning of words like 'God', 'god', 'belief', 'knowledge', 'atheist', 'agnostic', 'theist', etc. But it does seem to me that an unsourced and controversial initial definition which states as a fact that Agnosticism is some kind of belief seems to violate WP:NPOV (and maybe WP:NOR, etc) which may offend many self-perceived agnostics, perhaps especially those who come to agnosticism in the hope of escaping from the word 'belief' and the many horrors they may see it having caused to them and/or to others. I know it once hugely offended me elsewhere about 10 years ago when I still called myself 'an Agnostic', though I suppose I've calmed down a bit since concluding that none of the words that I've listed ('God', 'god', 'belief', 'knowledge', 'atheist', 'agnostic', 'theist', etc) seem to have any clear and/or agreed meaning anyway. Actually I still tend to describe myself as 'my own thoroughly eccentric variety of agnostic, skeptic, and humanist', but only because I think that's slightly less misleading to others than describing myself as 'my own thoroughly eccentric variety of atheist', or 'my own thoroughly eccentric variety of theist' or 'my own thoroughly eccentric variety of atheist, non-theist, agnostic, skeptic, humanist, and theist', all of which I could probably equally well use to describe myself (and quite likely everybody else too) by suitable choices of different but usually fairly common definitions for words like 'God', etc...

At any rate, in case it offends others the way it once offended me, and violates WP:NPOV, etc, I'm provisionally changing it to "Agnosticism is the opinion, (or view, or outlook, or belief, or idea, etc) that ...", and if I get reverted, I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it. I will probably leave it to others to improve the article by finding reliably sourced quotes to back up each of these words and any other words anybody else may care to add. Tlhslobus (talk) 02:32, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Since that got reverted by somebody claiming a list disimproved the article, I've changed 'belief' to 'view', which is the word used in the 2 citations from references 1 and 2, and is much less likely to annoy or offend any agnostics who are trying to get away from 'belief' systems, which is quite likely why both sources use the word 'view' rather than 'belief'. Tlhslobus (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

That the wording may be offensive to some is not a valid reason for rewording the lead. However if the cited sources uses "view" instead of "belief", then the former does indeed seem to be a more appropriate wording. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:13, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't particularly want to waste time getting into a distracting side-argument when we seem to be agreed on the present outcome. But I still feel some sort of doubtless foolish desire to mention that WP:NOTCENSORED says (among other things): 'However, some articles may include text, images, or links which some people may find objectionable, when these materials are relevant to the content. Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus on its offensiveness but on whether it is appropriate to include in a given article. Beyond that, "being objectionable" is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content.'

The qualifying word 'generally' actually implies that there may well be occasions when being objectionable is 'sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content', though I have no idea what these might be. The passage also implicitly acknowledges that discussion of potentially offensive materials should occur (by stating that such discussion should not focus on its offensiveness), and it seems self-evident that it is sometimes necessary, or at least usefully informative, that people be informed that some wordings are potentially offensive before such a discussion can even begin. In many cases, including this one, the offense may be largely or entirely caused by the perception that the wording is mistaken or misleading, and thus there may be little or no difference between the question of whether it is offensive and whether it is appropriate - the argument being not 'it should be excluded because its inclusion is offensive' but 'its inclusion is offensive because it should be excluded (on grounds of inaccuracy, etc)'. Also WP:IAR says we should ignore all rules if that improves the encyclopedia, and it seems to me that re-phrasing something to make it potentially less offensive without misleading the reader, improves the encyclopedia. Tlhslobus (talk) 11:50, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Most people are able to find and correct errors without being offended by them. In general if you find yourself to be emotionally touched by such experiences, you should perhaps reconsider being an editor on Wikipedia, because it is almost certain that you will run into similar instances on a fairly regular basis. --Saddhiyama (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your touching though ill-informed concern for my welfare :) As I stated in my opening remarks when creating this section, I am NOT offended by this matter, but was offended by a very similar statement a little over 10 years ago (not in Wikipedia, which may not even have existed at the time), and I was thus concerned that others might be similarly offended today. Nor, to the best of my recollection, have any errors in Wikipedia offended me in several years as an editor - but I am simply well aware that certain kinds of error have the capacity to cause unnecessary offence, and that it seems generally even more desirable and urgent than usual that such errors be fixed (and pointing out that such an error is one that is liable to cause unnecessary offence may well tend to usefully make it less likely that the fixes will be reverted without first giving the matter adequate thought). If a Wikipedia article explicitly or implicitly asserted that, for instance, Catholics were not Christians, or not proper Christians, this could be expected to offend a great many Catholics (all the more so if it was given exceptional prominence as the opening statement of the article, and presented as fact rather than as merely somebody's opinion (and indeed fact so self-evident that it seemingly required no backing citation, as initially appeared to be the case here - it later became easy to fix when it turned out that there were citations a little further on, and these were being misquoted)). And the offence would largely (not necessarily entirely) be the result of a perception that the assertion was untrue (or inaccurate, etc). And if I were to re-word it, I would think it perfectly reasonable to mention that I thought the new wording was likely to avoid offence (but I would hope to only do the re-wording if the new wording was also accurate, etc, and represented an improvement to the article). The same would apply to similar explicit or implicit assertions that Sunnis were not Muslims, or not proper Muslims, or that Savaists were not Hindus, or not proper Hindus, and so on ad infinitum. In this instance, the article was implicitly asserting that the many Agnostics who did not see their Agnosticism as a belief were not Agnostics, or not proper Agnostics, which may well offend many of those Agnostics, as it did offend me ten years ago (and might well still offend me today, if I still regarded myself as a 'proper Agnostic', and if I still felt that to be a core part of my identity).

At least in my humble opinion, there remain several unsatisfactory (inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, etc) aspects to this article, which I may or may not eventually get round to trying to fix myself (if I have the time and am sufficiently interested, etc). Needless to add, it is quite likely that the ones that I may want to see fixed first are those errors (or inaccuracies, etc) that I think are liable to cause unnecessary offence (rather than the seemingly less urgent ones that seem unlikely to cause offence). At present I have noticed two of these, which I'll mention (both here and again in a new section) in case somebody else wants to fix them. One is the frequent unqualified repetition as if it were fact that Atheism means believing there are no Gods, whereas many (and perhaps most) Atheists would say that is only one kind of Atheism (usually called Strong or Hard Atheism) - I know from experience (and you can also see clear evidence of it elsewhere on this Talk page) that this kind of unqualified assertion can offend Atheists (especially 'Weak' or 'Soft' Atheists), that the unqualified assertion is basically wrong, but that fixing it satisfactorily and accurately (with the backing of 'reliable sources') is liable to be quite difficult. The other is the bit about 'Agnostic Atheism', which is liable to offend many Agnostics who see it as describing their position, but who reject the label of Atheist (one of whom would perhaps have been T.H.Huxley himself, judging by what he has to say about Atheism). The fix may well be to clearly spell out that this is a classification invented by atheists and frequently rejected by agnostics (always assuming that it actually is all that - its sole supporting quote is one book by one atheist who, for all I know, may well not be a 'reliable' source), but finding reliable sources for any of that may not be easy.

I've wasted enough time on this already, so provided any reply you care to make is not too provocative, I'll leave you free to have the last word on the subject. Tlhslobus (talk) 04:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

However all that waffle of mine was a distraction from what I originally intended to write. As luck would have it, the so-called reliable sources currently seem to conveniently support my re-wording. But I actually suspect that these 'reliable sources' are profoundly unreliable, and that agnosticism is basically something that should be incapable of being precisely defined (especially not in sentences beginning 'strictly speaking agnosticism is...'). But it can perhaps be loosely (NOT precisely or strictly) defined as something like the set of different views of people who call themselves agnostics. Almost all of these say 'I don't know whether there is a God or not', but many (and perhaps most) of them do not have any firm views on whether theism and atheism are irrational. In my view they are not irrational (which probably means I'm not an agnostic according to many of the allegedly reliable sources making up the definitions), but I suspect that's already going further than many agnostics, who simply have no view on that question at all. In other words there's a big difference between 'I don't know' (a seemingly self-evident truth) and 'Nobody can know' (the sort of seemingly arrogant and unproveable generalisation that many, and perhaps most agnostics (and probably many or most 'weak' or 'soft' atheists) are trying to escape from, having had to endure that sort of stuff from priests and their 'strong' or 'hard' atheist counterparts for far too long). Or put another way, the 'popular view' of what agnostics are, a view which seems to be shared by most agnostics (and, incidentally, seemingly also by most non-agnostics - that's presumably what makes it the 'popular view') is dismissed by one of those 'reliable' sources as incorrect, but arguably that dismissal itself makes that source unreliable. Catholicism may be what the Pope and/or the Church says it is, and Islam may be what Islamic scholars say the Koran says, but agnostics tend to be people who reject the claims of authority figures, churches, and scriptures to tell them what they should think, and that presumably includes the claims of self-appointed 'experts' to tell them they are wrong in their understanding of what agnosticism is, and that to become 'proper agnostics' they have to go along with whatever the 'expert' claims they should be going along with. But my life is arguably too short to be wasted on looking for allegedly reliable sources who might say this, so I probably won't bother - but if anybody else would like to look for them, I'd be delighted if they found some, and mentioned them in the article. However I've wasted enough time on this rather trivial matter already, so if anybody wants to carry on this discussion, please feel free to do so, but hopefully it will probably be without me. Tlhslobus (talk) 11:50, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Two items possibly needing relatively urgent fixing

At least in my humble opinion, there remain several unsatisfactory (inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, etc) aspects to this article, which I may or may not eventually get round to trying to fix myself (if I have the time and am sufficiently interested, etc). As already discussed at greater length in the previous section, it is quite likely that the ones that I may want to see fixed first are those errors (or inaccuracies, etc) that I think are liable to cause unnecessary offence (rather than the seemingly less urgent ones that seem unlikely to cause offence). At present I have noticed two of these, which I'm mentioning (both here and already in the previous section) in case somebody else wants to fix them. One is the frequent unqualified repetition as if it were fact that Atheism means believing there are no Gods, whereas many (and perhaps most) Atheists would say that is only one kind of Atheism (usually called Strong or Hard Atheism) - I know from experience (and you can also see clear evidence of it elsewhere on this Talk page) that this kind of unqualified assertion can offend Atheists (especially 'Weak' or 'Soft' Atheists), that the unqualified assertion is basically wrong, but that fixing it satisfactorily and accurately (with the backing of 'reliable sources') is liable to be quite difficult. The other is the bit about 'Agnostic Atheism', which is liable to offend many Agnostics who see it as describing their position, but who reject the label of Atheist (one of whom would perhaps have been T.H.Huxley himself, judging by what he has to say about Atheism). The fix may well be to clearly spell out that this is a classification invented by atheists and frequently rejected by agnostics (always assuming that it actually is all that - its sole supporting quote is one book by one atheist who, for all I know, may well not be a 'reliable' source), but finding reliable sources for any of that may not be easy.Tlhslobus (talk) 04:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The Duty to Information - New notions to agnosticism - Slipstream

I believe that this article has the duty to inform its readers that the Agnostics, theoretically, at least, by a kind of "Slipstream Argument", necessarily enters the religious people as group and that Agnosticism as such, whether theoretically or not, is diminishing in both force of message and numbers. This may alter the (voluntary/uncoerced) view of any reader, and therefore the duty. You? 109.189.211.11 (talk) 10:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)