201–210 of 368 posts
I think I'm willing to entertain the idea of God on a philosophical level, but not on a practical day to day life level.
I find it strange to separate philosophy from practicality. If your philosophy does not have practical implications, you're doing it wrong.
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I personally cannot imagine a creation made by pure hazard to be this beautiful. I know that beauty is subjective. But i find that nature is so wonderfully created that -- for me -- it's hard to believe that there is no artist behind it. Like, when i see a nice piece of code, i know that there is a really good programmer behind it. :-)
I think that if I were all-powerful and all-knowing I could have done a much better job with it.
My belief in God is at the same level as my belief in a multiverse of which we are just one universe amongst infinite. - It would be great if this were true (Yay afterlife/alternate worlds!) - No one can provide any convincing evidence for existence. - It is impossible to prove nonexistence. - The truth of this matter has absolutely no influence on my life. i.e. focus on other things should take priority before focus…
Must there be a God for there to be an afterlife?
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I wouldn't agree with this assessment. Atheism is not a knowledge claim; it's just disbelief in God. Similarly, I don't believe in intelligent life on other worlds, but that isn't a knowledge claim — there's just no good reason to believe in it. Agnosticism, however, is a knowledge claim: It's the claim that God is is unknowable.
I have to respectfully disagree. I think you have your definitions mixed up. Agnosticism is 'There may be a god, but I don't care enough to claim one way or the other', I think the 'fence sitting' argument is good. Atheism is: 'There is no god' ie, Richard Dawkins Atheism is a stronger claim than Agnosticism.
I am not an adherent of any organized religion, but this question is puzzling: Where did stuff come from? There are two possibilities, either 1] it was put there, or 2] it was just there to begin with. God is an easy solution, but then where did he come from? Same problem. Maybe there are other possibilities that our brains just aren't able to process at this stage in our evolution. Anyway, before anyone says "the bi…
Voila. You nailed it.
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We have very different ideas of 'adequate' then. For example, I'll take modern medicine over faith healing any day.
That's a false dichotomy for the vast majority of religious people. There are very few people that believe exclusively in faith healing and don't accept modern medicine.
Either science is bunk and god answers prayer, or science works and you can use medicine. Of course, the decisions to go to church as use medicine and largely automatic and irrational / social for many.
It seems disingenuous to mix Agnosicism with Atheism. Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)
Except that I'm not sure that true atheists, as distinct from agnostics, actually exist. Challenge any atheist and they'll admit that the existence of one or more deities is possible , but very unlikely. The real distinction is between "teapot agnostics", who think gods are incredibly unlikely, and "proper" agnostics, who actually think it's reasonably probable. Many teapot agnostics will call themselves atheists jus…
After all, atheism is commonly just a rejection ("a-") of theism. Adeism, if you will, would be the belief there is absolutely no god. Just like deism weakly claims there is a god but we aren't sure what it's like, but theism tells us everything about this god.
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I find it strange to separate philosophy from practicality. If your philosophy does not have practical implications, you're doing it wrong.
I'm also not a pagan nor a Christian, but I celebrate their Christmas holiday.
It seems disingenuous to mix Agnosicism with Atheism. Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)
Atheism and agnosticism are orthogonal: 1. If you believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are a theist agnostic. (This is not that silly. Many people believe things they do not claim to know. For instance, you can believe that P != NP while acknowledging the question as unproven and unknown.) 2. If you don't believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are an atheist agnostic. 3. If you cla…
1. Deism
2. Atheism
3. Theism
4. Strong atheism