What is Your Approach?

[ITChick]

Meh. I can't believe that we are still arguing "what definition of atheist is correct" when there is a much bigger picture to consider

You can call me a satanist (despite the fact that I do not believe in satan), an evilutionist (that term would be correct except for its spelling), and/or anything you want.

It still doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence for god. And if there were, I would have to go with the flying spaghetti monster (I do love my beer!)

Edit: Locke, I am not ignoring you on the other post, I'm just still deciding what to respond

[Faith No More]

Well, it's important to define terms before leaping into a debate.

[ITChick]

Well, it's important to define terms before leaping into a debate.

That is true. It is especially true in that stupid Ray Comfort movie (evolution vs god). Wtf is a kind!?

But (my opinion, and this is only my opinion) is that we are close enough that it doesn't really matter (or add anything to the discussion).

[Locke]

Meh. I can't believe that we are still arguing "what definition of atheist is correct" when there is a much bigger picture to consider

You can call me a satanist (despite the fact that I do not believe in satan), an evilutionist (that term would be correct except for its spelling), and/or anything you want.

It still doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence for god. And if there were, I would have to go with the flying spaghetti monster (I do love my beer!)

Well, there's no hard evidence for gravity either, yet we all believe in it (I'm assuming). As Faith No More stated, "Faith is a conclusion derived from evidence that does not conclusively support it."
Therefore, until proven otherwise, we assert that gravity must be real. As it is with every scientific law - they are not laws, so much as theories proven thus far.

Yeah, I believe in God, in fact I believe Jesus is the Son of God, and both Lord and Savior. By the definition of faith stated above, I have faith in that, because I have found evidence to validate the Bible as correct to its original text, and I have found evidence to support that it is historically accurate.

Now.. If someone walked up to me and just told me Jesus is the Son of God, I would tell them to shove off. Someone earlier in this thread (I forget who, and on my phone I can't go back and quote >.<) said I'm holding back on exposing my beliefs (/paraphrase). Well.. Not really, I just didn't come here to shove them down anyones throat.
Logically, it makes no sense to start by proving Christianity is right, then moving to why other religions are wrong, and then finally why people who don't agree are stupid.. To be honest that entire approach is stupid.
It makes more sense to start by asking if God is real.

I have full confidence in what I believe, but I also realize that if that belief is true, then it will be able to stand up to great scrutiny.. So here I am, because I'd rather be proven wrong than believe a lie.

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Edit: Locke, I am not ignoring you on the other post, I'm just still deciding what to respond

No problem, take your time. My phones gonna die anyway I probly won't be responding for quite a few hours.

PS: I forgot to mention, my schedule is very busy so while I am willing to check out evidence, as well as explain myself thoroughly, keep in mind it takes precious time

[Faith No More]

Oh, there's plenty of hard evidence for gravity. It may not be something we can see and touch, but that doesn't stop us from being able to observe it.

If you do not believe me, take a case of watermelons up to the twentieth floor of a building and drop them out the window one by one.

[The Reality Salesman01]

And just to be a complete picker of nits...

If you are talking to me, and you are understanding my Atheism as one that believes God does not exist, you would also need to clarify which God I don't believe exists.

Because I don't know everything (Agnostic) I couldn't possibly rule out any and every possibility. What I can do, is reject the Gods that are presented to me, should they fail to be rationally supported.

Really try to get this next part...

If I'm Hindu, and I ask you: Do you believe in God?

You would need me to clarify. Right?

I present to you my idea of God.

You tell me that you don't have a belief in that God, you believe in a different one, but you'd both be theists, as you both hold a belief in at least one God. You couldn't KNOW that mine is wrong and yours is right (agnostic), or you'd be able to provide evidence for yours being more true than Shiva (gnostic).

From our perspective, we don't have any more proof of your vesion of God, true or false, than you do of His existence, we're Agnostic. We just don't have a preferred alternative like the Hindus. We don't believe in any Gods (Atheists), and because we are human beings, limited to our own faculties of understanding (Agnostic), we think it wise not to make claims about things we can't show are NOT true for certain (i.e. No gods exist).

Some people just conjure up a version of God that they're willing to believe in, and then start attributing to it, EVERYTHING. That's another route you can take if you like. Worked for Descartes. Right Frodo?

[Angrboda]

I don't think he's biased.. He just doesn't know what he's talking about. For example, he claims any uneducated person made a copy of the original, and the third copy would be a copy of that.. But they actually had scribes who copied manuscripts for a living in Jewish culture. When these scribes converted to Christianity, they would copy the original manuscripts. They would continue to use the original to make copies until the original fell apart from this type of use (ehixh generally took several generations). You then have what are called 'families' of manuscripts. Each 2nd generation copy would be copied from these, and all errors would then be confined to the descendents of an individual family, then tested against members of other families to ensure, up to present day, about 98% consistency in Scripture, of which the other 2% is noted in the bottom of every Bible printed today and, as you will find, accounts for absolutely no justifiable reason to discredit the Bible's message.

In the earlier ages of the Church, biblical manuscripts were produced by individual Christians who wished to provide for themselves or for local congregations copies of one or more books of the New Testament. Because the number of Christians increased rapidly during the first centuries, many additional copies of the Scriptures were sought by new converts and new churches. As a result, the speed of production sometimes outran the accuracy of execution. Furthermore, in preparing translations or versions for persons who knew no Greek, it occurred more than once (as Augustine complained) that "anyone who happened to gain possession of a Greek manuscript and who imagined that he had some facility in both Latin and Greek, however slight that might be, dared to make a translation" (De doctrina christiana, II.xi.16).

When, however, in the fourth century Christianity received official sanction from the state, it became more usual for commercial book manufacturers, or scriptoria, to produce copies of the books of the New Testament. Sitting in the workroom of a scriptorium, several trained scribes, Christian and non-Christian, each equipped with parchment, pens, and ink, would write a copy of the book being reproduced as the reader, or lector, slowly read aloud the text of the exemplar. In this way, as many copies could be produced simultaneously as scribes were working in the scriptorium. It is easy to understand how in such a method of reproduction errors of transcription would almost inevitably occur. Sometimes the scribe would be momentarily inattentive or, because of a cough or other noise, would not clearly hear the lector. Furthermore, when the lector read aloud a word that could be spelled in different ways (e.g., in English, the words great and grate or there and their), the scribe would have to determine which word belonged in that particular context, and sometimes he wrote down the wrong word. (For examples of such mistakes, see pp. 254-5.)

In order to ensure greater accuracy, books produced in scriptoria were commonly checked over by a corrector (…) specially trained to rectify mistakes in copying. His annotations in the manuscript can usually be detected today from differences in styles of handwriting or tints of ink....

— The Text Of The New Testament, 4th ed., Metzger and Ehrman

[Captain Colostomy]

Oh, there's plenty of hard evidence for gravity. It may not be something we can see and touch, but that doesn't stop us from being able to observe it.

If you do not believe me, take a case of watermelons up to the twentieth floor of a building and drop them out the window one by one.

Heh. When I read Locke's gravity statement, my jaw dropped. A convenient proof.

[The Reality Salesman01]

I don't know how many times this video has been posted on here, but I'm starting to think it should be a required prerequisite for all theists upon being granted membership to AF.

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So here I am, because I'd rather be proven wrong than believe a lie.

We'll see...

It took us this long to nail down Atheism and Agnostic

We still have all of these to go...

Burden of Proof

Circular Logic/Begging the question

Fact

Creation Ex Nihilo

Theory

Possibility/Plausibility/Probability/Potentiality (Seem to be the 4 most confusing P-words for Theists in general)

Evolution

Time

Evidence

Opinion

Rational

Relativity

Free Will

Morality

Subjective

Objective

Fact

Absolute

Logic

[Whateverist]

So I think I understand the necessity for the extra categories, I just want to clarify and make sure I've got it right (I want to have an active understanding of it):

Gnostic Theists - Believe in God and have knowledge (or claim to have knowledge) to back it up

Agnostic Theists - Believe in God without any knowledge of God

Gnostic Agnostics - Believe God cannot be proven, and have knowledge (or claim to have knowledge) to back it up

Agnostic Agnostics - Just have no idea

Gnostic Atheists - Believe God does not exist, and have knowledge (or claim to have knowledge) to back it up

Agnostic Atheists - Believe God does not exist, without any knowledge of God

I'm not used to considering your two middle categories but a gnostic agnostic is coherent. That would be someone who is convinced that knowledge is not possible .. in this case as regards gods.

An agnostic agnostic is also comprehensible as someone who states that they personally haven't any knowledge of gods without claiming to know if anyone else could have that knowledge.

Interesting. Thanks for the new idea.