As to assigning beliefs, I was trying to point out that we both may have the same beliefs with different labels. That you reject the label (when it certainly appears to me it could encompass agnosticism), to me, makes your argument one with the English language. Huxley seems to say that Freethinker is the one term he does not quibble with. I think there are many who would say that is (for them) damn close to a synonym for atheist. The terms are often used interchangably.

When I hear the adamant rejection of a term and the to my ears venomous fit it inspired I wonder where the reaction comes from. I do also wonder how far the “open-mindedness” that I think you pride yourself on by the label agnostic goes.

My choice of the term atheist is that I do not believe in God for the same reason as Michael so eloquently stated. In my case, I would believe if there were proof. So you might consider me an agnostic. I would not have the same reaction that you did if you called me that. I would just point out why I didn’t think that fit me. As I mentioned earlier, there are lots of things you can’t “know” Loch Ness, Yeti, faeries etc. I do agree with the claim of Truzzi by way of Carl Sagan Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Doesn’t mean that proof is impossible.

My personal rejection of the term agnosticism is that in the end, I think it describes nothing. I still have no idea what you “believe” or what prompted your outbursts. If you are an agnostic believer, your diatribe at Michael that started all this might be understandable. If you are an agnostic “unbeliever” (don’t want to go anywhere near the A word) then your reaction seems outside of any rational proportion and more an emotional outburst that you keep thinking I am guilty of. I really wanted to understand where it came from. At the end of the day, I might not agree with you just as you likely don’t agree with me but I would have a better idea of where you are coming from.

In the past, I have even found that people who I had previously not been able to even understand how they could possibly believe some of the things they believed, made sense of their core beliefs and we were able to communicate once we understood each other’s frame of reference.

Perhaps the filters we have put up for each others views have made it impossible to discern the messages.

For instance, you might look at the fact that the things I attack Republicans on I also attack Democrats on might just mean I believe them instead of your trying to twist them into a partisan attack. Exiled to his credit seems to be consistent in that regard. Apologists for a party are generally IMO not very honest since they grade on a very slippery scale and takes stands that they know to be untrue.

As to the one would think comment, obviously we are both failing at that criteria so perhaps we are both to blame there.

Yeah, I never really get too excited one way or another by labels. Weak atheist, strong agnostic, exceedingly attenuated Jew, complete a-hole . . . It’s all good.

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis,”–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.

So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of “agnostic.” It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic” of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.

Or as I put it:

a position that requires no beliefs at all other than the knowledge certain of the bounds of my own knowledge and ignorance.

One would think such a succint description leaves little need or call for any extensive elucidation, yet you say you you merely wanted to inquire as to my beliefs. The venom of your replies, aimed personally rather than generally, does not comport with your claims of benign curiousity, nor does the rudeness of sneaking up on trying to assign beliefs to someone who places little or no value on the unevidenced.

Michael, given your statements, I withdraw the usage of the word “dogmatic.” If you want to call yourself an atheist on the basis of belief or non-belief, fine with me. We can leave it to the neo-sectarian dogmatists to argue over the difference between “weak atheism” and “agnosticism.” Dogmatic atheism is “strong” atheism, which requires a positive assertion of knowledge in what is epistemologically an area of unprovable belief.

I am an atheist as regards all undemonstrated phenomena, of which the judeo-Christian god is just one.

I don’t “believe” there’s no god, I just don’t see any evidence that there is one.

I call myself an atheist rather than agnostic because I think that if the phenomenon labeled “God” did in fact exist it would throw off a huge amount of observable evidence.

It becomes a question of degree: I’m agnostic as to whatever quark is currently being searched out because I doubt I’d notice any quark evidence if it hit me in the head, and descriptions of said particle suggest that I shouldn’t be able to see said particle.

I’m atheist when it comes to the ocean that occupies the center of Texas. Because I think it’s something I’d have noticed. The lack of evidence of its existence is sufficient to allow me to push it into the “doesn’t exist” category.

I am open to being proved wrong. But for ease of reference, no, there is no God. I think I’d have noticed.

I was merely trying to find out what you believe.

Categorical error, and I sincerely doubt the veracity of the statement in light of your reactions to the answers supplied to your inquiries. Unless you truly are incapable of understanding the difference between beliefs and knowledge.

If you have taken your meds after that last outburst.

What do you mean by agnostic? Is it only logically consistent for that one subject? How friggin convenient!

And since their meaning, whether you accept it or not is possibly your belief under a different title that you want to choose, what about the word has got your knickers so atwitter. Most people likely choose the definition of things they most feel comfortable with but words do have meanings. I think of the Oxford English Dictionary as the standard. It says atheism-Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a god. This seems completely in line with what they said. Here’s what the OED says about agnostic A. sb. One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing. Again I think in line with what they said.

As for me, I wouldn’t want you if there was a membership committee and could care less if you were one. I was merely trying to find out what you believe. Perhaps another wasted effort. (I had even let go of your prattling on the other topic because I thought there was some hope you’d give more than a single dimension to yourself.) Sorry I wasted my time I guess you weren’t worth the effort. Not everything is an attempt to tick people off and you never answered about the faeires :-0

I think it’s a completely pathetic attempt on the part of some atheists utilizing a poorly constructed and illogical rhetorical polemic in order to claim doctrinal agnosticism as actually being atheism in order to expand the claimed scope of atheism for their own purposes.

I think they make the a case. that you are, in fact, most likely an atheist.

They only case they make is that they’d like to claim me as one. In that regard, they may go **** themselves with large pointy-barbed objects previously dipped in lemon juice and popcorn salt. Their polemic is about as convincing as a Baptist fundie lay preacher trying to convince Roman Catholics that they’re really Baptists after all. I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic.

Well, gee, if “Dr. Zero” said it it must be true whatever official Army histories and decades of civilian scholarship have to say.

It is not helpful for those who favor a strong defense — and I am one of those — to tell ourselves fairy tales. We lost in Vietnam. We lost for military and geopolitical reasons. We lost for the same reason any war is won or lost: we had insufficient power applied to the problem. In this case the insufficiency of power is a function of the overall geopolitical situation — Soviet and Chinese nukes for one — and of geography — Vietnam shares a border with China and happens to be mostly jungle — and of distance — it was their home and a 10,000 mile flight for us, and various other elements.

We are a superpower, we are not God Almighty. There are things even we can’t do. One of those things is defeat a motivated, experienced, easily re-armed enemy in jungle terrain when we are forced to fight an essentially defensive war for which there isn’t even a rational explanation.

Cronkite had dick to do with losing Vietnam. He had a lot to do with some people facing reality.

(Captcha: “nighter broadcasts.” Hmmm.)

I think that is one of those age old distinctions. Agnostic or atheist. I think agnostic is a squishy term since if you take it because you think you can’t know for certain then you must, to be logically consistent, be an agnostic towards Leprechauns, Fairies, Zeus and all other Gods that have ever been worshiped. You also have to be an agnostic towards the Flying Teapot. All theists are most likely really agnostics if they are honest about their own God belief and not what they profess which is (often) Certainty of their own God and atheism towards every God but the one they are generally born into a belief of.

I think there are certain areas where a leap of faith – based on evidence – lead you not to believe in things because there is no logical rationale for belief in them.

Curious what you think of this distinction http://www.rationalresponders.com/am_i_agnostic_or_atheist

You can’t, for instance, logically know there is a creator in my opinion. That is gnosticism. Agnosticism means you believe you can’t know. You can believe there is a God. That is theism. If you don’t believe, you are an atheist.

I think they make the a case. that you are, in fact, most likely an atheist.

I get that it feels more polite to say you don’t know and it seems consistent but it would be so for everything wouldn’t it? How do I for instance “know” you can’t turn lead into gold? Perhaps you feel no need to show me that you can (but you do it all the time;-)). Could you ever claim that anything did not exist? I find it curious to say I don’t believe is considered offensive while I am certain of my God and an atheist toward every other God—and by the way, you will be damned for all eternity for not believing my way is considered a position with no inconsistency issues and not at all offensive by believers.

The problem with quibbling over definitions is that we both could think the same thing unless you still are open to yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster and faeries and the like. At some point that consistency starts to sound silly though IMO. You might even believe in witchcraft for instance. :-)

[Cronkite's] most unhealthy achievement was finding the limits of American will, ending an era of confidence that began with victory over the Axis in World War II. Some would say that confidence needed to be shattered. If you have a Ouija board, I can put you in touch with a couple of million dead Cambodians who might beg to differ.

I’m an agnostic myself, a position that requires no beliefs at all other than the knowledge certain of the bounds of my own knowledge and ignorance. I know I don’t know, and I know that the categorically unprovable can’t disproven either.

Michael’s libel meets the five-part public-figure test for libel, BTW. But I suspect he’s already figuring out what kind of conditional settlement he can make, and on what terms. ;-)

Saigon fell in 1975 and loudmouthed rightwing jagoffs ran around screaming that the Communists were on a roll, the end was nigh, blah blah blah.

Then, surprise! Four years later China and Vietnam have a war. Gee, not in the wingnut playbook, that.

And 14 years after we left Vietnam, supposedly running in shame before our soon-to-be communist overlords, the USSR fell down and went boom.

Conservatives were wrong about Vietnam. Liberals were right.

America completely obliterated the Viet Cong during the Tet offensive. We suffered heavy casualties to do so, but we inflicted much more, and by any objective military or strategic standpoint, the Tet offensive was a miserable failure for the communists.

Cronkite kept America in the dark about that. Instead, he only reported the horrible sacrifices made by American soldiers, and inserted his personal, politically motivated opinion that the war was “unwinnable” as a news item during a network news program.

Yes, Sherman was trying to get frightening images out — through the communications media of his day. What do you think the march through Georgia (actually SC took more of a hit) was all about? It was a deliberate strategy to make clear to civilians that they had skin in the game, like it or not, and to crush their hopes of eventual victory.

The N. Vietnamese did not discover propaganda.

And of course you carefully avoided the two other examples I gave: the Algerians and the Mau Mau. The Algerians in particular used fairly horrific acts of terror in order to destroy support for the war in France proper.

But again, that’s almost beside the point since your parroting of the “home front lost the war” bullshit — identical in many ways to the German “stab in the back” propaganda after WW1 — is nonsense. Rather than quote Giap why not look at Army histories of the war: they’re much more honest than rightwing hacks are.

Cronkite spoke in 1968. In 1969, while the war was still going very strong, while we still had half a million men there, my father, a career army officer told me flat out we were not going to win. Not because of some mythical stab in the back but because, at the end of the day, the Vietnamese had home field advantage and our strategy was stupid. Pretty much what the Army histories say.

You might take note of the fact that after Cronkite, Nixon was elected. He increased pressure on the north with heavier bombing and attacked NVA sanctuaries over the border in Laos and Cambodia.

Nevertheless we lost. Not because of Cronkite. But because we were forced to fight a half-assed war because of Soviet and Chinese issues, on the home turf of a highly experienced and determined enemy.

The period of time that passed between Cronkite and the start of the Paris talk is about equal to the entire length of US involvement in WW2. During that time we won all sorts of victories. We successfully executed the startegy of the Nixon administration: Vietnamization.

We poured hundreds of billions of dollars, 10 years and 60,000 American lives into that stupid, pointless war. We didn’t lose because of asymmetrical warfare or propaganda or the home front or any of your other stupid rightwing crank theories. We lost because there was an open border between Vietnam and China through which endless arms flowed freely, we couldn’t invade, our bombing technology was ineffective, we had numerous other military obligations, we went through several moronic strategies, our allies were corrupt, and the North Vietnamese make damned good soldiers.

As for your libel complaint, that might have worked before you took on your new role as a media pundit :-) You’re a public figure now.