(January 22, 2016 at 9:11 pm)Exian Wrote:(January 22, 2016 at 8:55 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: I don't understand the question.
Haha Yeah, it wasn't very direct. The god of the gaps is usually the cry when god is plugged into an unknown, as it should be. However; I have a hard time faulting a person who conducts some sort of search to reach a conclusion or inform their beliefs, and upon finding that there is no such answer, they conclude that there might as well be some sort of maker. And I think there is a distinction to made between doing that and being, say, a Christian and automatically attributing every unknown to god. I certainly have more respect for the former. And I have the same respect for that as I do for someone who in the same situation concludes that there definitely is no god; it's the same thing really.
I guess the question is: Thoughts?
Problems begin with how we define atheism. Atheism of Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, and other popular world deities doesn't rule out the deists' assertion that a different and unknown deity exists, but it does challenge any assertions that there is one with "how do you know that" and "I don't know (albeit I really, really doubt it when I rate on the Dawkins scale 6.99999...)" Therefore, I believe it's a perfectly honest position to take as a non-absolute atheist (anywhere < Dawkins Scale 7.0), but at best it's somewhat wishful to make even the deists' assertion that there must be any sort of deity (supernatural). At worst, deists gravitate toward the palm readers, astrologers and psychics, often following in their footsteps to exploit the gullible.
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