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Well, thanks for explaining, but if anything it suggests that your theism is of the more agnostic 'sortagod' variety than the Bible - based churchgoing variety, and I reckon its never too late to post an 'I have become agnostic.' thread.
If not that's fine and I note with pleasure the ever more perceptive posts you provide and I can be broad -minded about your jaundiced view of atheism.
Well in a sense I suppose I could see saying I'm agnostic. Traditionally I tend to think most people are kind of on an "Agnostic spectrum" with few being solid strong-atheist or strong-theist.
Still I'd say I'm pretty strongly on the theist side of the spectrum these days while maybe being a tad more agnostic about God as defined by any religious text. I've never been a "Bible-Believing Evangelical Protestant" and in some ways I think I have more in common with Zoroastrians, Sikhs, or Taoists than I do them.
Although I'd also say that on Metaphysical-Naturalism I'm not really agnostic or just barely so. I'm fairly certain there is some kind of supernatural. Or transcendent or whatever one prefers to call it. Since most atheists I find are also Metaphysical-Naturalists this might explain some of my reactions. On agnostics it's more mixed. Many of them also seem to be M-N, but a fair amount aren't so I might respond differently to that.
I have had a very happy life, so how are you better off than me if god doesn't exist?
I think some of you are used to everyone being a proselyte for something. I'm not telling you to believe in God. I have some thinking on why I feel it's better, but it's a free country so go figure out things for yourself. I really don't want to press on anyone and if it seemed I was I'll back off. I'm largely thinking of me and my mind.
All that said I'd admit the "happy" term was maybe something I shouldn't have used. I think I'd be perfectly happy if I didn't believe in God because the times in my life where I leaned that way I was still happy. In fact I had somewhat less anxiety. It might have been better to use a term like "Joy" or "Fulfillment." I can't see myself ever being fulfilled, satisfied, etc without God. I can see myself as "happy" in the sense that I'd still enjoy the physical and intellectual pleasures unrelated to religion. I'd still like pizza, jazz, science fiction, playing Internet checkers, and learning stuff. I'd just have a whole emotional dimension of myself cut-off.
That might seem weird as I acknowledged I'd still be better off for it even if there is no God. Well if all this were in my imagination, which I'm not saying is likely, what a wonderful thing this imagination gave me. Entire dimensions of speculation, emotional experience, etc I would have lacked without it. A whole world of saint stories, music, art, etc. And also life itself because my parents Catholic faith is part of why I'm here at all. If it's all imaginary friends, which I don't think, I'm better for them. And if someone told me that their relationship with a Space Teapot lead them to read to the elderly, buy wheelchairs for Third World people, and kept them from loneliness I might think "How Bizarre" but also maybe "That's kind-of sweet."
I saw the spectrum. If you are a 6 then you are technically an agnostic and not a strong atheist which is a 7. I have no issues with being a 6. I am in that category as well.
However, I have no issue with leaving a tiny window open for theism because it allows me to complete my humanity. I can fully enjoy the Ave Maria of Bach or Schubert by being a 6, but perhaps I would reject the music if I was a 7.
I think you did not read that scale too carefully! A 6 is hardly a strong agnostic! That's way down @ about 4 or 5. "6" is, and I quote: "A De facto atheist. Very low probability, but just short of zero. as in: "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
As a 6.8 or 6.9, (I waver on that edge depending on my level of Class 3 pain meds... ) I can assure you that their is no specific Abrahamic God, but there may be some other highly evolved alien types, perhaps based on silicon, non-DNA, or some other wild but technically possible options. Just no Divine Christian God. Absolutely. That part's been tested, re-tested, re-re-re-^6th power, tested, and finally, completely rejected, since He won't even peek out from behind that curtain. [I suppose they did say to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" right?]
My personal tiny window of possibilites is of course science-limited, since, as I said, all the necessary claimed proofs of the Abrahamic-God version are faulty when carefully examined. Hey; after all, they were designed and imaginatively invented by scientifically illiterate, and frankly, scientifically bereft, goatherds with the ability to hardly even write! Not the stuff necessary to produce good observable evidence, right? In fact, quite easily disproven. So we'd necessarily have to move on (and notably, with much inherent confidence) to the far more probable FSM!
I have seen all those European cathedrals including Notre Dame. I was in awe in front of the tomb of Galileo in Florence. I had a mystical experience in Westminster Abbey when I saw the tomb of Isaac Newton. That 0.1% of agnosticism allowed me to have a more satisfying religious experience, ha, ha.
When I hear the Bach Gounoud Ave Maria in a wedding that Catholic upbringing makes the experience much more rewarding.
Mostly, with church architecture, I'd be looking at the huge engineering risk-taking and of course, the amazing artistic expression in those structures, no doubt driven by the original designers' religious convictions (and probably a generous consulting &/or contractor's fee, as provided by the church but via those poor and suffering & tithing masses! But hey... let's not dwell on such minor details, right?)
I assume you've listened to Pavarotti doing "nessun dorma"? Talk about tears in the eyes (Oh, sorry: we atheists are unbearably spiritless, cold and unmovable hulks of pure cold Spock-like logic, right?)
Or, The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, written by Tchaikovsky in 1878; one of the best known of all violin concertos. It is also considered to be perhaps the most technically difficult work for violin. Some glib critic claimed that "finally we have music which stinks in the ear!"
Hey; whuddid he know, huh?
I occasionally have just such stuff in running on Pandora and other sites in the background while I "go for broke" here on City-Data, flailing away at the wildly intransigent Christians so well represented here.
Try this: open your mind to being a true level 7 Atheist, Julian! It'll set you free! Trust me!
There seems to be a persistent desire and distant drumbeat by theists to make atheism out to be a belief or "religion", even though it lacks ALL of the necessary key elements of such. I wonder why?
Is it not obvious old boy?? It's so that they can say that we are a daft as they are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Julian658
This is not just a non- belief in God but a willful denial of his existence. Agnosticism is where one admits that they do not know if God exists, not having the proof or that there is a personal God who has always existed.
Strange how you have no problem whatsoever in believing in a 'God' that has always existed but when it is suggested to you that the universe might always have existed....your head explodes!!
Is it not obvious old boy?? It's so that they can say that we are a daft as they are.
Strange how you have no problem whatsoever in believing in a 'God' that has always existed but when it is suggested to you that the universe might always have existed....your head explodes!!
Yup; I DO understand that, and it's a classic and predictable backfire, just like an old Austin Healy 3000 (with SU throttles no less!) on the quick down-throttle position! BANG!
Why? Well, it's actually a tacit admission by those IDTrs* of the utter foolishness of their unthinking devotion to their religion, all in complete intellectual opposition to what they really know, in their heart of hearts, is all true. As in: their belief system is all a massive fairy-tale, and they knows it!
Meantime, we of the Open-Minded Institute, (OMI, or "Oh My!") carry on always a-lernin' and a-tinkerin' with the eventual truth(z) of our origins, deeper understandings of how we all got to be so durned diverse and all.... (see: evilution), and those fun geology lessons too, like The Grand Canyon.
Like, for instance, SeekerSA's various and irrefutible geological SA facts; continent-long rifts, gorges, slowly advancing macro-falls and such. All of it a mere ≈ 5600 yrs old, huh? (snort, guffawww, choke, wid-dah milk spurting outa my nose. And so on.)
*Intransigent Dogmo-Theists. Self-explanatory to even the mildly literate, one would surely hope...)
BTW, we do have our tactical solutions should there really be a God-check at "The Gates"...
I know I'm not part of any cult, not having religion in my life has freed me ...I don't need a bunch of rules to tell me what's right or wrong, a reward for everything I do right, a threat hanging over my head for when I do wrong, ....I am an individual, responsible for my own actions. save your labels...
I know I'm not part of any cult, not having religion in my life has freed me ...I don't need a bunch of rules to tell me what's right or wrong, a reward for everything I do right, a threat hanging over my head for when I do wrong, ....I am an individual, responsible for my own actions. save your labels...
I congratulate you for not being a cultist Atheist.
However, other Atheists write creeds, have websites, TV shows, and are very militant about going to court if they see a nativity downtown. They can be as intolerant as the Evangelicals. See the thread about how Atheist behave in Europe. There seems to be a huge difference when compared to the more militant American Atheists.
I congratulate you for not being a cultist Atheist.
However, other Atheists write creeds, have websites, TV shows, and are very militant about going to court if they see a nativity downtown. They can be as intolerant as the Evangelicals. See the thread about how Atheist behave in Europe. There seems to be a huge difference when compared to the more militant American Atheists.
There are many more theists with websites and blogs than atheists. The few atheists that have websites and see themselves as spokespeople for us heathen are as deluded as the woo woos.
There are of course some atheist sites that present info in a pragmatic fashion and suggest rational/logic thought and challenge the "status quo" of what the woos think is the norm.
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That is illogical!
