(December 10, 2013 at 6:27 am)max-greece Wrote: Not sure I agree with this:
Theist - someone who believes there is a God.
Atheist - someone who does not believe there is a God.
Agnostic - holds neither opinion - usually on the basis of insufficient evidence either way.
Belief does not work that way.
Belief is the psychological state in which one holds a premise or proposition to be true.
There is no 'in between' position. If one does not hold the premise that a god exists to be true, they are an atheist. One does not have to hold an active belief that gods don't exist to be an atheist.
Disbelieving the claim that a god exists, does not mean that one believes the inverse claim by default. Only one prong of a dilemma can be assessed at a time.
Quote:I believe there is a God, but I may be wrong - still theist.
I do not believe there is a God but I may be wrong - still atheist.
IMHO and all that.
Your first statement above more or less describes an agnostic theist. Your second describes an agnostic atheist.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
