I'm amazed this post has made it to 9 pages. When I first posted it, I figued I'd get maybe 2 pages of responses. I didn't take into account that this would go to discussions of whether God exists or not.
right but you started by saying you saw some merit in deism, and you defined a deist as: "One who believes in the existence of a God or supreme being". which is an unsupportable belief based on faith. i always like to argue that people should sort of begin their philosophies with a list of thing they can know and understand and go from there, not a premise of faith nonsense.
martin, you are an atheist right? It amazes me that Athiests easily accept that there cannot be a god, but refuse to admit that there could be a god. That means that you too, have faith - just in something different. Is that not just as easily unsupportable & debatable? To me, the only thing I can say is that I don't know the answer & neither does anyone else (as far as I'm concerned).
right but i have said a hundred times here that i do not deny the existence of god. this is exactly the opposite of everything i have ever said. i have no faith in anything. you couldnt miss my point any more perfectly. even in this thread i have already had to repeat this: the christian god could exist, just the same as the flying spaghetti monster could exist. anything you think of could exist. and people who assert that they know the story are the ones making stuff up. i make up nothing. i deal with with reality. in fact my very first words in the first post in response to your starting this thread were:
Well, your last quote you mentioned from earlier in this thread pretty much answered any of my questions then. I didn't go back & read the whole thing & couldn't remember if you defined yourself as a true athiest or not.
to assume what you did, you must have thought i was a ****ing moron. an atheist doesnt necessarily deny that god exists. they just dont actively believe something based on faith. atheism is the only rational philosophy with regard to religion, everything else is 100% made up and worthless. if you are non atheist, you are to some extent, a lunatic.
Agnostic..? True athiesm is the belief that there is no god. Atheism in this form could be just as wrong as any religion. So, the only rational philosophy with regard to religion is to admit you don't know the answer & you can merely guess one answer or the other. I think we agree on everything, except your definition of Atheism.
well, i guess that means it is dictionary time then: atheism: "Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods." or obviously literally, "without theism" since they used the word "or" instead of "and", i would argue that i fit the definition, since i dont believe in god, a 100% made up concept. disbelief is not the same as denial of existence. i dont believe you own a giraffe. but i could be wrong. i dont deny for sure that you own a giraffe, because you might. but if i came to your house i wouldnt bring any giraffe treats.
