enigmagic

Also from the same site: Curiously enough, without digging around a great deal I came upon this, which seems to disagree. While this isn't exactly canonical proof, it does suggest a division in terminology, which is what I was arguing in the first place. Call yourself what you want, it still doesn't matter--as you said, only the beliefs truly matter. Language is the best thing we have, and using the argument that it is inprecise is self-defeating. I wasn't trying to catagorize your beliefs at all, I was trying to ascertain how you would catagorize common beliefs obviously not in the scope of personal view.

Well, I wouldn't exactly say I think they cannot co-exist peacefully, but nonetheless I'll attempt an answer from the perspective of someone who notices that they are not doing a very good job of it presently. The difference between science and religion is pretty cut and dry if you codify it in the Kantian sense. Religion is based on a priori reasoning, that is to say inductive whereas science is, or is supposed to be entirely a posteriori. Difficulties come into play when you attempt to decide where the original deduction came from, rather than the role of science in general. Science's purpose is progress, deductive progress, rather than moral or spiritual progress. And to assess pajarito's questions concerning the categorical imperative is that it always presupposes that the general public can reason reliably, and thus is generally a weak argument for ethical absolutism. Consider this: have you ever heard from your parents or, even, told your children that you'll "love them no matter what they do"? This simple comment, said to a malleable child immediately ingrains the concept of ethical relativism being a correct mode of though. Essentially all this tells the child is that his parents will generally forgive anything and to have free will over any moral decision he wants to make. -TomAiello: I'm interested to know where your personal definitions of agnosticism and atheism came from, seeing as they're a near verbatim switch. I don't think anyone is trying to pigeonhole you by noticing you have a rather contrary classification of the terms. Correct me if I'm wrong, but pigeonholing implies a certain level of simplification in classification. eg. I call a red breasted thrush "just a bird" I'd be pigeonholing it, non? However if I called a red breasted thrush a green tailed hummingbird I'd just be mixed up... N.B. - For a long time I believed your definitions were the widely accepted ones, atheism as total doubt and agnosticism being a sort of pseudo-Deism. I still believe what I did, I just call it agnosticism now, because that's the more pervasive word for what I believe.

No evidence, and thus we apply the principle of parsimony, "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything" and discern what? ... Unlikely at best. Another stirring revelation care of William of Ockham.