I am ignoring your claim on the basis it is unfalsifiable" is different from "I am denying your claim on the basis it is unfalsifiable".
You are correct in the sense that the latter engages actively, but the battle is not "meaningless". If anything, it has been the atheist who has been pounding and pounding criticisms to the belief and point its problems, while the non-atheist and non-theist agnostic refuses to engage in anything really, so worried is he with being so Quantum Mechanical about it.
Perhaps we have different definitions of "ignoring" and "denying". When I say deny, take this example:
- ... And then Jesus walked on water!
- That's rubbish. How the hell you know that.
Notice how that's
not ignoring the issue. That's engaging. But it's also "agnostic", for it places the question in the correct sense:
how do you know that to be true? If the answer to that one is unsatisfactory, I won't engage in philosophical shenanigans, I'll say it's rubbish. It *might* be true, it *could* be true, but then again everything is possible.
The real reasoning that goes through my head is: What is more likely? That someone walked over water or that someone wrote a myth?
One of them does not engage; the other one engages directly in a meaningless battle because it acknowledges, in itself, that there is no win condition.
To engage is to concede? No. Denying unfalsifiable propositions might not be the most rigorous deductive action, but it is, I argue, the best course of action within a larger algorithm of searching for the truth.
The distinction is important because it leads directly to behavior like yours here, where you've engaged in a discussion that is by your own admission probably one of non-opposing viewpoints seeking some kind of victory that can't be won. You want to waste your time and energy in this fight making claims that we should deny things when you have openly admitted you can't prove those claims and provoking people who might otherwise be your allies, because you want to deny rather than ignore.
Provoke a discussion yes, "might otherwise be your allies" I don't get it. Will they turn into Al Quaeda because I am challenging their views?
That's why MP-Ryan has made the claim his position is superior: it does not lead to this kind of nearly-fratricidal bloodshed and the assertion we should do things for which evidence cannot be provided. The more you choose to argue this point, the more he's proving correct.
I fail at seeing what is this thing we "should" do for which evidence "cannot be provided". I also fail to see any "nearly-fraticidal" behavior other than the uncivil behavior happening between other posters in the other thread and your arrival with the guns blazing telling me I'm being more than dishonest.