I can find a few mistakes.

First off, a quick nitpick: belief without evidence is called faith.

Also, some quick clarifications to make the rest of what I say make more sense:

In science, a law is formed by observation. For example, we can observe that water falls from the sky, call it rain, and say that there is a Law of Rain. We can observe that it only falls when it is cloudy, but it doesn't ALWAYS fall when it's cloudy, and the law would be changed to "When it is cloudy, it sometimes rains. When it is not cloudy, it never rains."

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observation. Hypotheses are tested with numerous experiments, and if a hypothesis is backed up by a bunch of evidence with no reliable evidence to the contrary, it becomes a theory.

A theory, as I just said, is a hypothesis backed up by a bunch of evidence, with no reliable evidence to the contrary. Theories can never be proven to be 100% true (because of reasons I will explain later), but they can be supported by mountains of evidence, at which point, we generally just assume that they are true because it's easier to say "this is true" as opposed to "there is a ton of evidence supporting this theory" and more people get what you mean. Gravity is a theory. Rain being cause by condensation is a theory. A lot of things generally accepted as truth are technically theories. A theory can never "upgrade" into a law, because a theory is simply an explanation of an observation, not the observation itself.

All of this causes a lot of confusion (and if you're a scientist, irritation), because in normal English, a theory is just an idea.

Okay, so also, absolute knowledge is impossibly to obtain about anything, and anybody who tries is wasting their time. This does not, however, mean that evidence is insignificant. We can say things such as "rain is caused by condensation in the atmosphere" because there is a huge amount of evidence that supports it, and no reliable evidence that supports rain being caused by something other than condensation. But next week, a reliable study could be done that shows rain being created by something else, or somebody could see it raining without it being cloudy, with no other explanation for it. The theory would be thrown out, and a new hypothesis would be formed to account for the new information (this is not as big a deal as it sounds: often, the new hypothesis is just a modified version of the old one).  We don't know, we can't see the future. So while nothing can ever be technically proven to be 100% true, like I said earlier, when something is backed up by a mountain of evidence, it's easier to just say it's true.

I suppose one could argue (as you seem to have) that evidence is meaningless because we don't know if it's absolutely true either, but if we're going to get the philosophical, then we can't know anything at all. All we perceive is just our brain translating series' of electrical impulses, we don't know if the brain does it correctly, or if said impulses are caused by interactions with reality, or something else. Hell, we don't know if we even have brains. We could be in the Matrix, or be the sentient dreams of some guy who has sentient beings in his dreams. There could be no God, one God, or 65,348,190 Gods. The God(s) could've created us, and maybe they were created by other God(s), ad infinitum. We don't know.

All we can do is try to live in our own reality, which is what we perceive. We don't need to worry about what happens in other realities, because we don't live in them. You can claim all you want that evidence is meaningless, but the fact of the mater is, science works. We take our theories and use them to build computers, cars, processed food, satellites, plastic ponies, paper, suitcase factories, pretty much everything. And it all works. When it doesn't, you can take something apart and find the error, which is, the vast majority of the time, a human error, not an error with the original science behind it. So obviously, we are getting at least some stuff right. I honestly don't see why we should be worried about whether or not our perceptions of the universe are true. We study stuff, we use the results to make other stuff, and the other stuff does what we wanted it to do.

In the immortal words of Randall Munroe:

"Science. It works, bitches."

Also, atheism is not a religion because religions are spiritual in nature, and atheists are not necessarily spiritual. Some are, some aren't. The term "Atheism" simply means "a disbelief in a deity or deities." It carries nothing about why one doesn't believe in a deity or deities, or whether or not they believe anything else.

Well I wrote out a decent response but I lost it so I'm just gonna type out a few key things I responded to..

I am saying that we can't know anything and evidence is meaningless in the pursuit of absolute knowledge

When I said evidence is useful in terms of practicality I meant science is useful in that way

Atheism is a religion when religion is defined in a more broader sense as a set of beliefs that are talked about or discussed which is how I defined it.  If you want to define religion as believing in a God and the like then I suppose it isn't a religion

Disbelief is belief.  If I say god exists and you get that concept of God in your head you can either believe that thought is true or false.  If you believe it is false then you are an atheist.  If you don't believe in believing on grounds that you need to believe there is absolute knowledge to believe something is true and you can't know that such absolute knowledge exists then you are agnostic.  As farfetched as that sounds thats the logic im trying to argue with this blog.

Now some atheists will argue that they can be agnostic atheists because "agnosticism deals with knowledge" and "atheism deals with belief" but that is exactly what I'm trying to argue against in this little essay of mine because I don't think it's logically possible to be both

Sorry for the nonenthusiastic response, I spent 20 minutes on a better one and lost it so I'm a little depressed at the moment lol

Ah, I hate it when that happens. My sympathies

I'll answer each paragraph separately.

1. On this note, we're pretty similar, I just say that pursuing absolute knowledge (as you define it) is pointless because it can't be found.

2. Ah, okay. Wasn't sure exactly what you meant, so I just gave my full opinion on that.

3. Religion is inherently spiritual, because that's what it's all about.

If we use these broader definitions, then political parties, unions, even the anime club at my old high school would technically be religions.

4. Not exactly sure what you mean by this. Could you rephrase that?

5. It depends on your definition of agnosticism. I define it as believing that it is impossible to know if there is a higher power. In that sense, you could not be a pure agnostic and a pure atheist at the same time. But agnostic can also be used as an adjective. A lot of agnostics lean one way or the other, so you could be, say, an agnostic atheist, meaning you believe there probably isn't a God, but admit that you can't really know. That's technically where I fall, but it's often easier (and more people understand) if I just say that I'm atheist :/

@@Evilshy, 

3.  Well that's not necessarily true.  With this broad definition I'm using it's ultimately saying that anything you believe to be true without having the absolute knowledge to know if its true is part of your religion.  So you could join your political party or union or anime club simply because you want to and it wouldn't really fall under that category.  Only when you start making claims does it really apply, doing something just because you like it doesn't make any claims.  Your ideas of politics themselves on the other hand would fall under this category when you start making claims like one idea is better than another or gun control is bad or whatever.

4.  I'll try my best to explain.  One might argue that not believing in God is the default position held by humans thus it doesn't take any believing to say God does not exist.  For example someone says "There is God" and someone might say I didn't believe in God before you told me that so I am simply not putting faith into what you say.  This is an incorrect way of looking at it.

Before someone told you there is God you had no concept of God.  It's only after that idea is given to you can you begin to believe in it or not believe in it.  Now that you have the idea of God in your head you can either say "Yes, I accept this as true" to the idea or "No, I accept this as false."  These are the only two beliefs on the issue you can choose from and if you choose not to accept the notion as true then you are an atheist.

There are a couple ways to interpret the word disbelief though.  One is to say the absence of belief and the other is to say the refusal that something is true.  If you refuse that the first belief is true then you must accept the second belief because it is not belief itself you are rejecting but the claim, and because there are only two possible claims to make you must believe the second belief is true. If you say it is the "absence of belief" then this is where this blog comes in

What I'm trying to argue is that there is a third choice, and that is to not believe in believing - which I am inclined to say is agnosticism.  In other words you can either believe in something or believe in nothing; you can't say I don't know if I believe in anything but this is what I believe.  I think the terms agnostic and atheist or theist (or any word that depends on belief for that matter) contradict each other

In short to define disbelief as the absence of belief is agnosticism and the foundation is not on any belief at all.  To define disbelief as the refusal to accept something as true is a belief, thus, atheism is a belief.

None of this is really important or even impacts my own view of the world really, I'm just interested in the logic of it all and I've been kinda bored and lazy the past few days

I think your biggest mistake is that you're trying to use generic (and somewhat superficial) definitions to build up an idea of 'religion' in a way that encompasses atheism.

This sort of approach is going to end up with silly results. Everything from capitalism to your kitchen sink is going to end up as 'religion' if you go down this path, which only adds confusion to the issues.

Instead, you should begin with the clear examples of religion (Hinduism, Christianity, Jainism, etc.) and try to build up an idea of religion around that, which you can then use to judge less certain systems.

Although, if you go down this road, 'atheism' as such probably isn't going to be included as a religion. Atheism isn't really a 'system' or 'set' of beliefs and it lacks everything obvious cases of religion have (belief in the supernatural, primarily).

If you wanted to be picky you could argue that certain instances of atheistic ideologies are 'secular religions' [such as the atheistic Cult of Reason] or 'political religions' [such as atheistic N. Korean Jucheism] but, again, atheism as such really just fails to meet any serious criteria for being a religion.

but if we're going to get the philosophical, then we can't know anything at all. All we perceive is just our brain translating series' of electrical impulses, we don't know if the brain does it correctly, or if said impulses are caused by interactions with reality, or something else. Hell, we don't know if we even have brains. We could be in the Matrix, or be the sentient dreams of some guy who has sentient beings in his dreams. There could be no God, one God, or 65,348,190 Gods. The God(s) could've created us, and maybe they were created by other God(s), ad infinitum. We don't know.

I think that's more hyperbolically skeptical than philosophical!

@@Lady Rarity Pony,

I agree that atheism is not [usually] a religion in the sense that they have churches and things they worship and what not.  The reason I am using very broad definitions is because I don't think there is really a difference between what results are produced from holding two different beliefs, whether those results make you pray or not or go to church or not etc.  The only thing that really matters is that they are both beliefs and the only thing I am really trying to get across by calling atheism a religion is that it takes just as much blind faith to believe there is a God as it does to not believe in one.

I don't think the results are silly either.  I already would call a person's political views part of your religion if you genuinely think them to be right

@@Lady Rarity Pony,

 

it takes just as much blind faith to believe there is a God as it does to not believe in one.

Are you saying blind faith is the only reason to believe in God? :V

Are you saying blind faith is the only reason to believe in God? :V

I say it's the only way you can believe in God.  Evidence or reasons do not provide absolute knowledge, and if you do not have absolute knowledge to know something is true then you must have belief, or faith, or blind faith, or whatever you wanna call it.

I say it's the only way you can believe in God.  Evidence or reasons do not provide absolute knowledge, and if you do not have absolute knowledge to know something is true then you must have belief, or faith, or blind faith, or whatever you wanna call it.

It looks to me like you've gotten yourself stuck in epistemological skepticism!

We may not have "absolute" knowledge in the sense that it's logically impossible for us to be mistaken, but from there it simply does not follow that we have no knowledge of the world, or that we lack good reasons to believe or disbelieve in certain things.

Saying we have reasons and evidence and then saying we must rely on "blind faith" pretty much contradicts itself. We don't rely on "blind faith"; we make inferrences based on what we know. And if you want to get down to the very basics of our knowledge you could say that what we know is ultimately based on self-evident or just blatantly obvious facts.

No where does "blind faith" need to come into the picture.

@@Lady Rarity Pony, Maybe I have, but I don't know the full details of epistemological skepticism so I can't say for sure

We may not have "absolute" knowledge in the sense that it's logically impossible for us to be mistaken, but from there it simply does not follow that we have no knowledge of the world, or that we lack good reasons to believe or disbelieve in certain things.

Doesn't it though?  If we have no absolute knowledge to create a foundation for our "knowledge" then what use is it?  Drop a pencil a thousand times and it may fall a thousand times, is that really a reason to say that it will fall the next time?  In the end this evidence must be taken on blind faith as much as any other belief is.

Saying we have reasons and evidence and then saying we must rely on "blind faith" pretty much contradicts itself. We don't rely on "blind faith"; we make inferrences based on what we know. And if you want to get down to the very basics of our knowledge you could say that what we know is ultimately based on self-evident or just blatantly obvious facts.

I don't think so.  Evidence and Reason are merely consistent observations. From these consistent observations we may form a theory or maybe a law, but still we have no real reason to believe in the theory or law because we have no absolute knowledge that it won't just stop at a whim any moment now.  So in the end these theories and laws are nothing but beliefs, and saying you have evidence for a belief is like saying you have beliefs that support a belief.

And I don't see how thats different from blind faith

-snip-

[Note: I should have corrected your terminology. We may lack 'absolute' certainty in the sense I defined above, but it does not follow that we lack 'knowledge'.

You can 'know' the earth is spherical even though it's logically possible that the earth is flat and we're all just delusional about modern science.]

Well I'd honestly suggest reading up on epistemology, and induction, perhaps.

Most of what you're saying makes it seem like you don't have a good grasp on the issues involved.

And you sure seem to think you have knowledge of the fact that we can't/don't have knowledge, don't you think? :Y

And you sure seem to think you have knowledge of the fact that we can't/don't have knowledge, don't you think? :Y

Ha!  But I'm not your run of the mill agnosticepistomologicalwhatever that believes that we don't or can't have knowledge!  Perhaps we have all the knowledge we just haven't unlocked it yet....

The only thing I know right now at this moment for certain...  Is that right now I don't have the absolute knowledge or absolute certainty to say that I know anything.  And I know that because if I did know then I would know that I do have the absolute knowledge to say that I do know...