(April 17, 2017 at 8:03 am)SnowLucario Wrote: If you can't honestly say you believe in Gods, you're an atheist. I called myself agnostic for nearly a year before I realized that it just wasn't the way it was. If you think you have an intellectually superior position, you're wrong.
I think it depends on what you mean by "believe". So far, I haven't come across any rational arguments that undeniably prove the existence of God (I doubt many theists would even claim that much), but neither have I encountered the contrary - arguments which absolutely disprove him.
(Btw I know that lots of atheists would argue that the onus is on theists to prove it etc etc but I'm not trying to get into all of that now, just stating my experience that I haven't found any absolute arguments either way yet)
So if by "believe" you mean "have an absolute argument which is beyond all doubt" then I think I would hardly believe in anything at all!
I personally would interpret "believe" as a mixture of feeling in your gut that it is true as well as having some reasons why this belief is compatible with your other beliefs. And obviously there is a lot of complicated interaction between those.
My issue is that I feel in my gut that logic is paramount, but I also have this feeling that there is something out there which is difficult to explain. Meanwhile, my head is trying to figure out if any of that makes sense at all.
Does that second gut feeling qualify as belief according to you? If it does then I guess I do believe in God, by that definition. But by my own definition of belief I do not believe in God.
Neither do I (in my sense of belief) believe that I am an atheist, because that belief does not meet my above criteria.
