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[Il Palazzo]

Dude, what's with the double and triple posts, with all that redundant quotes? There's an edit button, you know.

Back to the discussion.
You shan't make the unicorn argument silly just by calling it so.
It's exactly the same case as with an omnipotent, undetectable god. The unicorn is there and it's undetectable. It's irrational to have a hard stance on it's nonexistence, therefore you're being religious if you assume that there isn't one in your garden, and another one in your refridgerator.
Now do the iteration ad infinitum, with all sorts of undetectable beings, and you're suddenly irrationally believing in nonexistence of infinite number of deities/creatures/thingies.

[Glowcat]

Double rage-post much? Try adding some substance to your attacks, it bites more.

Wow, I wasn't aware that mr Huxley had an invisible dragon in his garage.  When you add invisible dragons to an argument it immediately enters into the meaningless realm for me.  Perhaps you could go back and create a meaningful argument, then we could give it another go?

Because I was really referring to a specific example instead of a method of acquiring knowledge... 

Huxley was rather adamant that his position wasn't a creed such as how you're trying to paint it, but rather a method of knowing.

EDIT: And because I might as well rebuke both posts

I'm glad you have finally agreed to the fact that Agnostics, Atheists, and Irreligious persons are not related in any way.

I was referring to irreligious as a lack of feeling towards any religion, instead of being related to the concept of deities. This is, after all, an Atheism thread, is it not?
What you seem to be going for is apathetic agnosticism.

@Il Palazzo: Not you, silly!

[Il Palazzo]

Ouch. Accused of unsubstantiated personal attacks. Gonna go and cry in some corner now.

ninja edit: Accused of being silly. I'm gonna go and cry in some corner now.;(

[Farmerbob]

Dude, what's with the double and triple posts, with all that redundant quotes? There's an edit button, you know.

Back to the discussion.
You shan't make the unicorn argument silly just by calling it so.
It's exactly the same case as with an omnipotent, undetectable god. The unicorn is there and it's undetectable. It's irrational to have a hard stance on it's nonexistence, therefore you're being religious if you assume that there isn't one in your garden, and another one in your refridgerator.
Now do the iteration ad infinitum, with all sorts of undetectable beings, and you're suddenly irrationally believing in nonexistence of infinite number of deities/creatures/thingies.

Unless it has meaning, it's meaningless.  I think we can agree on that.

Is the unicorn omnipotent?  Is it omnicient?  Does it have millions of people that do believe it exists?  Is there an organized resistance to it's existence?  An invisible unicorn that had millions of followers would likely have aunicornists devoted to convincing people that it doesn't exist, even if they have no proof.

However as far as I'm aware there is no million-person-strong unicorn worship movement.  Without some sort of impact on the world greater than your personal imagination, calling a disbelief of it a religion is silly.  The word you are looking for to describe your disbelief in invisible unicorns is skepticism.

Skepticism is commonly confused with Agnosticism, but it is a much broader term which would cover invisible unicorns, etc.

[Il Palazzo]

I'm lost. What are you saying then?
That being skeptical of the existence of PU turns into a religion(aPUism) as soon as PU gains organized body of followers?

[ECrownofFire]

Dude, what's with the double and triple posts, with all that redundant quotes? There's an edit button, you know.

Back to the discussion.
You shan't make the unicorn argument silly just by calling it so.
It's exactly the same case as with an omnipotent, undetectable god. The unicorn is there and it's undetectable. It's irrational to have a hard stance on it's nonexistence, therefore you're being religious if you assume that there isn't one in your garden, and another one in your refridgerator.
Now do the iteration ad infinitum, with all sorts of undetectable beings, and you're suddenly irrationally believing in nonexistence of infinite number of deities/creatures/thingies.

Unless it has meaning, it's meaningless.  I think we can agree on that.

Is the unicorn omnipotent?  Is it omnicient?  Does it have millions of people that do believe it exists?  Is there an organized resistance to it's existence?  An invisible unicorn that had millions of followers would likely have aunicornists devoted to convincing people that it doesn't exist, even if they have no proof.

However as far as I'm aware there is no million-person-strong unicorn worship movement.  Without some sort of impact on the world greater than your personal imagination, calling a disbelief of it a religion is silly.  The word you are looking for to describe your disbelief in invisible unicorns is skepticism.

Skepticism is commonly confused with Agnosticism, but it is a much broader term which would cover invisible unicorns, etc.

Wait, so a religious belief system has to be organized or it's not a religion? What the fuck are you going on about?

[Glowcat]

I can't believe my argument with Farmerbob is centered around my broader usage of 'Atheist' and Huxley's Agnosticism compared to his strict and practically non-existent variant usage of Atheism. Wait, actually I can, as semantics is the devil.

And then he turns around and uses a very very broad usage of religion. So... I still cry foul.

[Farmerbob]

Irreligious people simply do not care about religion at all.

An apathetic agnostic is an agnostic who believes that if there is a deity, it's not terribly interested in us.  I do agree that of all the different things we have discussed, Irreligion and apathetic agnosticism is probably the closest to a match.

There's a big difference between the two though.  The apathetic agnostic has a flaw in that they believe they can know the extent of a (potential) deity's interest in the universe.  They assume what they cannot know.  This is probably the biggest difference between the irreligious and the apathetic agnostics.

Irreligious persons simply don't care.  Apathetic agnostics care, but have determined that chances are it wouldn't matter one way or the other, so they don't care much.  Apathetic agnostics are likely to participate to some degree in religious discussion, an irreligious person would almost certainly not.

I'm sure there are people who flipflop back and forth between what we would call these two conditions.  Trying to create a new word to describe every single possible analogue state of condition of belief would be absurd though.  There are some specific states that do need their own words though.  Agnosticism, Atheism, Theism, and Irreligion are certainly needed.  The various subgroupings of these groups and others like them cross each other from time to time, just like descriptions of any other social phenomenae.  How many different words for friend do you have?  How fluid are those definitions?  Do people ever change from what you consider one type of friend to another?

[Farmerbob]

Wait, so a religious belief system has to be organized or it's not a religion? What the fuck are you going on about?

No, but would anyone over the age of 12 choose to create an aunicorn religion because their sister says they have a invisible unicorn?

There's a certain level of organization necessary before a religion rises out of random background noise.

[Glowcat]

Trying to create a new word to describe every single possible analogue state of condition of belief would be absurd though.  There are some specific states that do need their own words though.  Agnosticism, Atheism, Theism, and Irreligion are certainly needed.  The various subgroupings of these groups and others like them cross each other from time to time, just like descriptions of any other social phenomenae.  How many different words for friend do you have?  How fluid are those definitions?  Do people ever change from what you consider one type of friend to another?

Language always changes definitions, though I find your version lacking in usefulness as it isn't particularly relevant to the modern world where most nonbelievers would fall under your umbrella of agnosticism. 'Strong Atheist' is usually used to describe the position of 100% certainty there is no form of deity, and the closest real example of that I've seen is from Ignosticism which takes issue with the idea behind divinity itself (or related concepts such as infinite power outside of a causal universe) as not being meaningful.

As these discussions usually focus on whether one believes in a deity of some form or not, I find it better to set the basic view points as Atheist vs. Theist and then delve into the nuances from there.

[optimumtact]

@FarmerBob

That organization doesn't always spring from the religion itself though, Religious beliefs can co opt other types of organization and use them to spread their message.

[Shade-o]

This is some weird stuff right here in this thread.

[fqllve]

The thing I don't get is... who actively asserts a deity doesn't exist? The only people who do that are people who think the concept of a deity is fictional. That it was introduced as a literary device, really, so who's going to take that seriously? Of course they don't exist. I've never heard anyone make a faith statement about the nonexistence of deities. That'd be ridiculous.

"My not-angels announced to me the not-coming of the not-lord, and let us bath in the glory of the void that is his non-presence."

[optimumtact]

It appears they are all arguing about the semantics of whether or not Atheism is a religion, which of course depends on what you define religion as.

[Shade-o]

Wait, so a religious belief system has to be organized or it's not a religion? What the fuck are you going on about?

No, but would anyone over the age of 12 choose to create an aunicorn religion because their sister says they have a invisible unicorn?

There's a certain level of organization necessary before a religion rises out of random background noise.

This seems to be implying that a religion has to be held by a large organisation in order to be... a religion. Now I will admit that I have been barely paying attention, since this thread see-saws wildly between quantum mechanics and dictionary definitions (we're near that end), but I do remember that Zim had a very personal religion that only applied to them, and Blue Dragon Person also had a very personal religion that only applied to them but was also Wicca.

It seems rude to discount a person's core beliefs purely on the basis of it not having a massive market share with a legion of bureaucrats behind it. I might point out that most religions actually start out with individuals or very small groups, and there are several notable prophets who were in fact one person and not several million people when they discovered their religion.

Belief is belief, whether it is held by a hermit or a nation. It could be irrational, inconclusive, contradictory, self-destructive or any other adjective but if a person's brain is locked on it as the answer, then that's their bloody religion regardless of whether it's popular or not.

I would also like to reiterate that I have been barely paying attention, so this may not actually be relevant at all.