end of agnostic.com?

[anon_atheist_stuff]

Hi

It appears that agnostic.com is unreachable for some days or weeks now, nor does the app work any more.  I don’t know if others are seeing that as well.  IIRC, humanist.com is a sister site, and that appears to be down too.  Just noting.  I do see a note here on atheist zone as to atheist nexus going down years ago.

[Unseen]

Well, if they died from inattention, I contributed to it. Frankly, I can’t say I ever heard of the site, so I am not grieving for them.

[PopeBeanie]

Unseen wrote:

[..] I am not grieving for them.

I haven’t heard of them either, but got interested. The security certificates for each site expired 27 days ago, according to my chromebook. The commonest reason for an expired certificate is that the website owner hasn’t paid to renew it. If it expired that long ago, I imagine the owner’s either broke, has lost interest in those websites, or maybe something else happened to the owner or the website.

Have there been any requests recently for donations?

Without a certificate the sites can no longer provide “https” access, but may provide a less secure “http” access. (The “s” stands for “secure”.) Most browsers won’t easily open a website via http, in order to protect you the user in case (e.g.) the site has been hacked and is now a risk to browser safety. I didn’t browse either site via http, and I don’t recommend trying.

I mentioned I learned about the certificate expiration via my chromebook, because I wasn’t able find the same info via Chrome in Windows, or in google searches. Before a certificate expires, it’s easy to discover its upcoming expiration date, but expiration dates of already-expired certificates are not necessarily public information. So it seems that, since Chromebooks use a google-designed operating system, Google must maintain its own database of certificate details along with all details it can track of all websites. Just not via a non-Chromebook browser.

How’s that for a geeky response? But wait, there’s more…

You can still see google search results for those websites, like in the following examples:

site:agnostic.com
site:agnostic.com about

For fun, try
site:atheistzone.com unseen popebeanie

Including two terms in the search limits results to those that include both terms. But still, that search clearly provides only a small percentage of all possible “unseen and popebeanie” results. I don’t know why, yet. 🙂

[Simon Paynton]

Everything passes.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Maybe all the agnostics copped on that being an agnostic means they are actually atheists. There is no middle ground. You are a believer in a god(s) or you are not. You don’t need belief if you have knowledge.  Right?

[Unseen]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Maybe all the agnostics copped on that being an agnostic means they are actually atheists. There is no middle ground. You are a believer in a god(s) or you are not. You don’t need belief if you have knowledge. Right?

That’s my view. You believe or you disbelieve. Pretending there’s a middle ground is a cop out unless you’re a proponent of fuzzy logic.

[PopeBeanie]

I believe in fuzzy logic, among other forms of reasoning. While I’m not a proponent of it, or agnostic about it.

[RichRaelian]

Hi! I will miss going to that site everyday even when its unreachable as it seems to be now.

[Unseen]

PopeBeanie wrote:

I believe in fuzzy logic, among other forms of reasoning. While I’m not a proponent of it, or agnostic about it.

I was joking but as far as I know, fuzzy logic has nothing to say about religious belief. It’s intended to handle partial truths. I hope you’ll see that “God is partially true” is patent nonsense. If there’s a deity, there’s a deity. If there isn’t, there isn’t. Partial deities are nonsensical and are even less imaginable than actual deities.

There is no need for an agnostic position. Agnosticism is a form of not believing or disbelief. Hopefully, whether one is an atheist or a disbeliever, one’s mind is open to change based on convincing argument or evidence.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Unseen.

[jakelafort]

What about a quantum god?

Agnosticism is pussy shit.

[anon_atheist_stuff]

Hi –

Regarding a lot of folks here knowing of them, or much of them:
I’d say, without really knowing for sure, they had more hits and active posts than atheistzone.  I am not saying they were “better”, but just establishing they seemed pretty “successful”.  If the site owner had wanted to build it up further, rather than letting it die, I’m guessing they could have done so.  I do think over the years they had a sort of issue with quality of discussion and I ended up having atheistzone recommended to me by someone at agnostic.com, a few years ago.

Regarding their domain name:
Yes, it bothered me too, and others, but most of the folks there seemed to be atheists (as I am) and just put up with the two site names (agnostic.com and humanist.com) depending on where they were coming from.  There also seemed to be the usual small percentage of bad actors, whether theists on a mission to pretend to be atheists and infiltrate, or small numbers of other types of deliberately false folks (IMO).

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I reckon visitors to this site might wonder why many of our posts here are not about atheism. We cover politics, science, AI, News media, etc. The number of theists that visit for a debate has dropped significantly as have the number of theists that come here in ‘bad faith’ or are on a mission from their god. I think I will post something to entice them soon 🙂

[jakelafort]

The issues of theism are dreadfully boring. After a time it is beating a dead turtle. And once you get through the carapace it is not a pretty site.

[anon_atheist_stuff]

jakelafort wrote:“…The issues of theism are dreadfully boring. …”

Yeah, I’m pretty much there.    I think most of the folks with whom I discussed this and that at agnostic.com were also.

[PopeBeanie]

Unseen wrote:

fuzzy logic has nothing to say about religious belief. It’s intended to handle partial truths

I knew that and also thought maybe you were joking, and Reg too. So I poked a little after wondering if the “partial truth” here was in what people say when they state what they believe. It makes total sense for me for some atheists and agnostics to reconsider their belief once in a while, as it also makes sense for some theists to have doubts. In the end, the nitpicking of terms seems too often to be a way to use terms as ad hom.

jakelafort wrote:

Agnosticism is pussy shit.

I’m agnostic about a lot of things. It’s agnosticism wrt religion that seems to incur the more emotional reactions, or value judgements.

[Author]

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