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Originally Posted by bas_I_am
Despite peoples inability to agree on their understanding of certain words, that does not change the concrete meaning of words.
Theist=one who believes there is a God
Atheist=one who believes there is no God
Gnostic=one who believes it is possible to know God
Agnostic=one who believes it is impossible to know God
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I'm not sure those are as concrete as you're asserting. For example, I'm an atheist, and I don't feel your definition describes me accurately. Saying that I "believe there is no God" implies an active belief system about it, when in reality, I just don't think God exists. As Deckard pointed out above, it's the difference between "a lack of belief in god, and belief in a lack of god". For me, it's a lack of belief in god - not just the Christian god, but any god at all. And my lack of belief is based on my rudimentary understanding of human history, and our invention of gods and religion concurrent with the evolution of our intellect. It's no coincidence that many religious people fear and decry science, as science has systematically given evidence-based answers to questions that religion and gods have historically been invented to address. Personally, I'll take conclusions based on the scientific process over conclusions based on mythology and faith any day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bas_I_am
On another note. . . why do talks about God always digress into arguments (for lack of a better word) about the human failings of religion? Can't spirituality be seperated from religion?
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From my perspective, this happens for exactly the reasons I mentioned above. Human failings are inseparable from gods because gods are mythological beings that have been invented by humans. I know many Christians would likely argue that I'm putting the cart before the horse by making an assertion that assumes "God" is man-made. But in the same breath, those Christians would also likely agree that Zeus, Ra, Kukulcan, and any other god from any other religion throughout history that isn't their Christian God
is man-made. From my atheistic perspective though, why would the Christian God be any different? Especially when we know that Christian mythology is derived and adapted from past polytheistic religions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bas_I_am
In the realm of physics, experts are coming to the determination that their are dimensions of reality beyond our human experience. To be atheist, is to deny the possibility that these dimensions are devoid of intelligence. To quote D. Adams, "I see no evidence. . . therfore I am a radical athiest." Has he had access to all the evidence to make a solid decision?
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What you omit from this assertion is that fact that there's more to evidence-based conclusions than just a black and white "no evidence means I conclude it doesn't exist" mentality. Basically, you have to include
likelihood in your considerations of atheist thought here.
For the sake of discussion, I'll assume you've accidentally used a double negative in your comment that "To be atheist, is to deny the possibility that these dimensions are devoid of intelligence". As an atheist, I fully acknowledge that dimensions beyond our perception, as well as theorized alternate universes and such (if they even exist) could all contain forms of life and intelligence that we've never even dreamed of. In fact, it's quite likely that they do based on what we know - even though there's no direct evidence of it yet. Because what we know is that here on Earth, life is tenacious. It persists through mass extinctions, it thrives in the most extreme of environments, it recovers from seemingly insurmountable setbacks. If anything, the evidence all points to the likelihood that life could be quite common in the universe and beyond, relatively speaking.
But that's a separate issue from not believing in a god. While we know that life in general is tenacious and pervasive based on a variety of evidence, we have no such comparable evidence of any god - only faith. So from a scientific perspective (which a large portion of atheists share), life in unknown places has a fair likelihood of existing, while gods do not.