I don't choose to believe there is no theistic god. I find it IMPOSSIBLE to choose otherwise.

I struggle to define a lack of belief as a belief system.

correction.

Atheism denies the existence of a higher power.

Agnosticism does not come down on either side.

BIG difference - Atheists are NOT Agnostics, and Agnostics are NOT Atheists.

But if God showed her face tommorrow, and it looked like this:



I suspect many Christians would still be Christians - because it's not about THE truth, it's about YOUR truth. (The generic "your", not you specifically bignej)

The point that I was trying to make is - from a personal level - "I" can't determine who should go to hell and who should not. Personally, I would reserve the place for mass murderers and the like.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine who is very religious and Coptic Orthodox (I'm Jewish...not religious at all, I follow the holiday traditions really because it makes my parents happy, but I do believe that there is some sort of higher power out there).

He asks me, "What will you do if you're wrong about your beliefs?" I basically say there is nothing I can do about it, as I'm not planning on changing how I live my life, because my beliefs come from my personal thoughts, experiences, family/friend influences, etc.

I asked him the same question: "What if you're wrong?"

Him: "I'm not wrong."

With that, I smiled, walked out of the room, and have never discussed religion with him again.

All I know is, god must hate rock and roll.

Dead: John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, the guys from Lynard Skynard, Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc...yet, we are stuck with the Simpson girls, Hanson, Michael Bolton, so many other crappy people now that I don't even know their names.

Just not fair I tell ya.

Believers find it impossible NOT to believe. same same.

its a belief. Wether you're actively choosing it or not. When given the option of going through 2 doors, one thats labels "God exists" the other "God Doesn't Exist" I'd expect you to choose the latter.

If you're saying that you are not choosing TO believe there is no god, then I'd say you're an agnostic, you simply don't Know one way or the other. As soon as you state there cannot be a god or there is not a "god" then you're stepping into the realm of choice. and as such -- belief.

To borrow a quote ...

"Everyone on the planet has aleady decided not to believe in many different Gods, Aetheists just go one God further than non-aetheists"

Not really. I do like the image of a vengeful and wrathful God that destroys cities, kicks ass, and takes names.

Also, the New Testament isn't exactly the most accurate document out there. The police try to interview people involved in a crime as soon as possible so they can get all the details they can remember before they forget. Best case scenario, the New Testament was written 30-40 years after Jesus Christ died. I'm not putting too much stock in how accurate the stories are.
God does hand out cash. He gives you a blank check for happiness for all eternity and all you have to do is sell your immortal soul to him. Not that I blame anyone for doing it, really. The sales pitch is incomparable and there are worse deities to sell your soul to.

Isn't asking God to be a perception of a worthy God in order for us to believe in him something reasonable? I mean, if you truly don't think he's a worthy God, why would you believe in him?

I did not know that Lisa and Maggie had a band. From what I remember, Lisa plays the Sax and Maggie doesn't even talk yet.

Excellent quote Marc.

Imagine how the Romans with their many gods felt about those pesky christians and their ONE god. How dare they think that there can only be one god?

Perfect quote for this

Haha! I didn't think of them. That's pretty funny. I was actually thinking of Jessica and her little sister, Ashley.

Calling yourself an agnostic is just a p*ssy way of saying your an atheist. You don't believe but you kind of do? Please. Believers believe in something regardless of facts. Non-believers (by definition atheist) believe what the facts tell them. Its not a "belief" system at all.

I think of Jessica and her little sister Ashley a lot too.

Call me a sinner.

It's not that simple in my opinion. The fact that there are so many religions that all believe they are the only religion makes it impossible for me to even be agnostic. I don't see any reason to believe one religion over the others when they are all (the big ones, at least) mutually exclusive, and have the exact same basis in faith rather than fact, with their own believers equally convinced they are correct and that it's unthinkable that they are wrong, or that the other religions are right. When it comes to organised religion, I am an atheist.

However, I'm open to the idea that there might be some kind of higher power that might fit the category of what we call a "god". I guess I'm agnostic in that sense, but I don't really think that, if it existed, this power would, a) resemble any of the gods in our religions, or b) give a shit about the human beings on Earth, let alone demand that they worship it.

It's not that simple.

Of course, in the eyes of the Christian/Jewish/Islamic god, it matters not. An agnostic is no better than an atheist, so maybe you are better off hedging your bets by choosing one side of the fence over the other. ;)

Are you all agnostic to the tooth fairy? I mean you never know.

That's different, because when you're a parent you know how the tooth turns in to money - because you do it.

The faith argument is both the weakest and strongest argument that there is. It's a complete lack of evidence, but that same lack of evidence makes it impossible to deny. The fact that the same method can be used to prove that absolutely anything MIGHT exist doesn't seem to hurt the argument at all.

I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read this.

I'm just pissed the "I Have Been Shaved" parody thread has yet to materialize.

but there might be a tooth fairy somewhere just not in your house.

Atheists denial that that god exists is not absolute and would change in the face of contrary evidence. This a huge difference to how believers act in the face of contradictory evidence.

Isn't an agnostic denying to believe in God by not agreeing that he exists? How is that different that some of these definitions of atheists?

Agnostics possess the open-minded quality of Atheists without the arrogance of declaring that god doesn't exist.

No. All an agnostic is saying is that he or she doesn't know. Maybe one of the religions is correct. That's it. They aren't denying that God/s exist.

I don't consider it arrogance. Is someone arrogant for not believing in Zeus?

dola

Although I'm more than willing to concede that there are an awful lot of "militant atheists" that well deserve the "arrogant" label. I'd consider those folks more anti-religion than atheist.

This is very true. I think this stems more from the fight fire with fire way of thinking.

No. Not that that has anything to do with the discussion.

I think it does. If you have given it some thought and decided that gods are man-made, I think that still makes you far less arrogant than the majority of believers - Logan's friend for example.

"According to the Bible"

According to a book written hundreds, if not thousands of years after the "facts" it tries to pass on. Try passing whispering a sentence from one person to another through a line of 20 people to see just how badly it gets altered by the end. Now do that for 1000 years and let's see just how far from the original it is.

"God gave the world to humanity"

Strong statement there with no evidence to base it on.

"Humanity screwed up by sinning"

The "original sin" was eating a fucking piece of fruit. Not killing someone, not tortuing someone, but eating a damn piece of fruit. Does this strike anyone as petty? This god is petty enough to set this rule. This god is supposed to be all-knowing so therefore he knew how this was going to turn out before it even began so what is the point?

"we are all born with it (sin)"

So much for allowing each person the true individual choice. By this logic everyone who has decended from a person who may have commited an act worthy of the death penalty should also be killed? This perfect god seems to use logic which is far from perfect.

"Sin is an affront to god's logic and is punishable by death"

It is punishable by death? Isn't one of the ten commandments "Thou shalt not kill"? Does this mean that god is breaking his own commandment? Doesn't this make god less than perfect?

"god sent his son to die for us"

Another act that makes no sense. There is no need for this act. If god is the one determining if we are "worthy" he can just as easily determine this without the drama queen act of the crusifiction. He sent his son to die, this also seems to go agains the whole though shalt not kill thing. Sending someone into a known fate equates to performing the act yourself. Unless you think god does not see it as a sin if you know that person A will kill person B when he sees him and you knowingly point person B to a location where person A is waiting. It kind of sounds like my kids telling me "but I didn't do it".



Sorry, but way too many holes in this logic. All we can do is live life the best way possible and whatever happens will happen.

For me, it puts you on exactly the same level.

It would be just about the same as believing in the tooth fairy, except it may warrant a call to homeland security. :devil:

The big difference for me is that if one of the gods of one of the religions proved its existence to me, I'd have no choose but to "believe" in it, because I know it exists.

The same is not true for believers.

Not seeing much difference from my perspective. You have both made leaps of faith in arriving at your conviction.

I bet Front Office Cricket Central in New Dehli is having the same back and forth about being Hindus. Doesn't it scare Christians that you are a Christian pretty much because you were born in a Christian country. Doesn't that show you how illogical religion is?

I am sure there will be some poster born in China that is Christian or some Jewish poster that became Chrisitan, but let's face the hard facts here. Your parents were Christians and so are you. Had your parents been Muslim you probably would be that. Had you been born in some African country you would worship some God that Christians probably shake their heads at here. As been mentioned before if your were thousands of years before here you would be following Thor, Zeus, Athena, etc.

It's scary that such an easily proven point seems to be left out of the discussion and is almost certianly the reason why a lot of Americans are Christian. Even scarier is no matter who ends up being right (Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists) almost 75% of the world is wrong. I will put my bets on the atheists as they are the only ones that seem to apply any logic to the discussion. Everyone else is just scared that when they die that is it. We are no different than deer, bees, wolves, bacteria, trees, dogs... we die and that's it.

Certianly doesn't feel that way to me. As I said above, a ton of mutually exclusive religions to choose from, all with the exact same facts to back them up. It didn't take much of a leap of faith for me to reach my conviction.

Duh, we're right, of course. ;)

Certainly nothing arrogant about coming to the only logical conclusion. Bravo!

Good, we're in agreement then. ;)

Not at all imho - agnostics say they don't know whether there is a God or not.

To be quite honest I think in their heart of heart all people whether describing themselves as religious or aetheist have moments where they are unsure, agnostics are just honest enough to admit they don't know 100%.

Admitting you don't know something is often a sign of security and strength of character - its also far better imho than those who don't truly believe in something but pretend.

Actually one of the things which intruiges me is that Christianity has very limited roots in the areas where it was born, instead having the bulk of its believers far from the middle east.

Anyone who's a Christian scholar want to try and explain this oddity?

Strange though because similar arguements can be used for many Christian aspects - I know Christian parents who try hard to ensure that prayers their children have said come true because that will help strengthen their faith.

Similarly I've seen people (cough) speaking in tongues who are obviously just playing a role, I've been at demonstrations of the holy spirit which were based in basic tricks of balance and disorientation.

This doesn't discredit Christianity, just shows that there are fakes out there.

Just because as a parent you put the money under the pillow - how can you prove thats the case in every instance ;)

Being an agnostic is hedging your bet. Believe in something at least. I don't see it as a sign of security and strength of character. I look at it as being undecided and going with the winner.

I'm not a religious scholar, but I suspect that Christianity would have stayed niche in Judea--as it would have been perceived as another Jewish cult.

Freed from that context, the message of Christianity had a greater chance of acceptance as a religion in its own right. Certainly a minor reason for its spread, but one of the reasons.

There are other examples of religions gaining acceptance to a greater degree in regions other than the homeland. Buddhism is one example--it is Indian in origin, but has very few adherents in India relative to other parts of Asia.

Each to their own, I think admitting you don't know something is something which requires strength of character - partially because a lot of people think like you do.

If you KNOW you're going to be pushed by people into one camp or another yet realise you don't believe either arguement is convincing enough to sway you completely then it takes a special sort of person to remain true to themselves and admit that they'd prefer not to please anyone and continue to wait on the evidence.

I see this more as a scientific approach to religion to be honest, getting all the facts in before deciding if a theory holds water ... will these people ever know for sure, probably not ... but nothing wrong with them admitting it imho.

I think it has something to do with the Civ IV culture boundary and inadequate culture/religious spending by the Civ that discovered Christianity. Their focus on the tech tree and related civics was more towards the scientist as opposed to culture/religion.

Thanks for the post, very valid ideas and thats a good point about Buddhism, I have to admit I don't know enough about that religion to have realised that myself.

Isn't it a prove fact that the smarter people are the less they believe in organized religion anyway...?

A lot of it depends on the ruling class. Rome adopted Christianity as it's state religion, and if that hadn't happened, who knows what would have happened to Christianity.

Buddhism is a very interesting example. I've read an awful lot on Buddhism while learning about Chinese and, in particular, Japanese history. In Japan especially the rise of Buddhism took a similar form to that of Christianity in rome - the ruling noble class adopted it, largely because at that time Japan looked to China as the cultural capital of the world (probably fairly so, too), and at that point in her history, Japan imported a hell of a lot of Chinese culture - religion, art, music, etc.

What is most interesting of all, IMO at least, is how Japan incorporated Buddhism in with it's own native religion - what the Japanese now call Shinto. The two stood side-by-side and were by no means mutually exclusive. It was far later that Japan split Buddhism and Shinto in to two seperate religions, as part of the government's desire to restore Japanese tradition (ie. non-Chinese influenced tradition).

Bravo, sir.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours" -- Steven F. Roberts

Please don't devolve this conversation just because you have trouble understanding the English language. "To deny" is not the same as "I don't know". I don't know doesn't mean kind of, it doesn't mean yes, and it doesn't mean no.