Originally posted by no1marauder
Halitose's statement was: Weak-agnosticism: The belief that in the light of current evidence it can neither be confirmed or denied that a God or gods exist.
I see nothing "untenable" about this position using the terms "confirmed" or "denied" in their everyday meanings. Nor do I see anything "irrational" in the position that god(s) migh ...[text shortened]... s true, just that it may be true. Explain why you think that is "untenable" or "irrational".
Okay, here goes:
I look at weak-agnosticism as a fork in the road. It is not, in my view a position that can be retained, but a process which one should move from, towards either a theistic belief of some sort, or an atheistic one. So, in as much as it is perhaps tenable within itself, when applied to life or any other event over time, it is weakened. I admit I had not sufficiently thought about this prior to your post. However, this is how I view weak-agnosticism with that in mind.
If we take the core of Hal's definition to mean that the weak-agnostic is unable to say for sure that god exists or not, then he retains the 'possibility' of existence as true. If he maintains the possibility as true, I suggest he must accept that he has a belief in god, but has yet to define what that belief is or is yet to verify the belief against some notion of proof. You may disagree with this assumption, and essentially it is what my arguement is based on. I still think that to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural is to believe that it exists, but that it has either yet to be proven, or that the evidence does not yet outweigh that against it. I concede that I am talking from an atheistic standpoint.
On the other hand, if we take it to mean that the decision cannot be taken on whether or not there is a possiblity of god's existence because there is no compelling evidence, then I suggest that the agnostic's normative state should move to one of denial, until such time as evidence instils a belief in the possibilty of god's existence in him. He effectively moves towards weak-atheism.
Underpinning my stance is my opinion that there is a normative state in which any form of belief cannot be held, until that belief can be proven (or at least shown to be a reasonable possibilty). As such, to me the notion of even the 'possibilty' of god's existence rest not on
some evidence, but on reasonable evidence. To claim that it is possible that god exists, one should first assess whether that possibilty is a reasonable one. I do not believe it is and as such anyone that asserts the possiblity of god is holding a belief in his existence, thus the weak-agnostic becomes the theist.