you were born without theism, and therefore were literally by definition atheist. and who are you to tell these folks what they believe? people define themselves, yunno, you dont define them. i am telling what we atheists believe. we dont believe in god. we dont have faith. that makes us atheists. the fact that we cannot prove god doesnt exist is of no real consequence. the atheist is asserting nothing, claiming no knowledge. he is simply rejecting myths. part of the wiki explains the issue: "Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."[43] Consequently, some popular atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions by the probability assigned to the statement "God exists".[44]" thats the point. we are aware that we cannot prove mathematically and logically that god doesnt exist. and that makes it is technically possible. fine. again, you cannot prove i am not god. but i am damn sure you dont believe i am. i am positive you would not say you are an agnostic with respect to whether i am god. that literally involves some faith on your part because you really cant know for certain that i am not god. that is such a minor thing as to not be worth mentioning.
For a real probability example, you could look at the probability that someone raised in a given faith stays in that faith.
Amazing. This guy still talks about the unquantifiable in terms of probabilities. Please just accept that your beliefs are simply beliefs, as Supa and I have done. It is not necessary for you to scientifically validate faith and it just makes you look foolish. None of these historical figures existence is questioned. Historical evidence does not exist for Jesus or God. It's a faith thing, amigo. I haven't attacked your beliefs, only your attempts to pronounce them scientifically valid and with historical evidence, neither of which are supportable.
You keep attempting to redefine an accepted term. No one is going to buy it. It's just atheists attempting to appear to be open-minded while they call everyone who disagrees "stupid". None of the prominent agnostics in the world accept your peculiar definition of agnosticism as being synonymous with atheism, by the way. Nor the dictionaries, Nor the encyclopedias.
Everyone has the right to believe what they want, be it, atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever. I choose to believe in Christianity, because that is my choice. I also choose to believe that science plays a significant role in explaining how things have come to be. I don’t, personally claim to know for certain one way or the other, as I think most of us would admit. I believe that even science chooses to act in a way that doesn’t dispel the possible existence of a supreme being of some sort. As mentioned earlier there is just no way of knowing for certain, and the explanation for how our universe came to be is just not totally known. Things didn’t just happen in a happenstance way. The planets didn’t just align themselves out of chance. The earth wasn’t chosen to be the planet to inhabit life just because. The sun wasn’t just chosen to be the center of our solar system, just because that is where it should be. Planets that act as junk collectors to prevent space junk and asteroids from hitting the earth, weren’t just put there out of chance. There is a reason and a logic behind it all. How, who, what or why isn’t something that I or anyone else on here has the answer, for 100% certain fact. Fact is though that it was all done with a purpose. Did God do it, did his hand place everything in a certain manner so that the universe would work the way it does, maybe, or did, as some choose to believe, it all just fall into place during the “Big Bang”. Don’t know, but to me it just makes more since that it was done by something with a purpose, and I choose to believe that something was God.
yes, i am trying to redefine it, to make people better understand. it is called progress. that is because many of them are cowards or they do not understand what atheists are. again, there is one rational position. the question of god is unanswered, but there is no evidence. so atheism is the only position. if you think that logic makes you agnostic, then you must also be agnostic to every unknown thing on earth, which is obviously absurd.
some places already seem to understand. Atheism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of any deities (God or gods).[1][2] It is the opposite of theism, which is the belief that there is at least one deity. A person who has no belief in deities is called an atheist. Atheism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Well . . . they very well might have. You just acknowledged that it is not totally known. But these are all well-understood natural systems that are ordered by physics. There is no "choice" to be observed here, that is a belief. What? Every object in space with sufficient mass to enable gravity is a junk collector. That is a belief, amigo, not a fact. It makes little sense to me, but I have no problem with you having supernatural beliefs, we all do. Please do not expect others to accept these beliefs as facts. That is my main point in this thread, I have no disrespect for anybody's beliefs, but I will defend science from those who disrespect facts.
