Where do you stand on the existence of God?

[Catholic_Lady]

But I have had doubts before.

Why did you doubt?  Did you just feel less certain or was there a formal, argumentative reason (for instance, Problem of Evil)?

Actually, the "problem of evil" has never for one second made me question God because I believe in free will. There was never a formal argumentative reason, except for maybe "why doesn't He show Himself to everyone all the time?" I've mainly just questioned it because I had never seen it so I toyed with the possibility that it could all be made up. I was never an atheist, not even an agnostic, but I'd definitely had times/phases where I wondered if it really is all true.

[Catholic_Lady]

On a more serious note, I'm quite sure that gods do exist - in cultures spread out almost everywhere.  But they aren't literal thingies 'out there'.  They are the creations of the human mind .. just as are the characters we take ourselves to be.  We didn't put our selves together deliberately and we didn't do it on a whim.  But our minds did it just as our organisms knew how to put our bodies together in the womb.  Now my mind has withdrawn the god-creation .. at least from the notice of its me-creation.  As far as I know, it doesn't seem to exist any more.  But what do I know?  My mind is a big and ancient place, a mansion with many rooms.

Very interesting perspective.

[Catholic_Lady]

I don't believe that gods exist. If one does, it's in the most abstract sense. Not some theistic god that badly wants to have a relationship with me, but refuses to actually initiate that relationship. Making it as difficult as possible to believe he exists or want to have a relationship with him.

Assuming it's a "him" and not a "her" or an "it."

Technically, it's an IT.

[The Grand Nudger]

There is no god, I'm certain....and if I can't be certain of that then I can't be certain of anything, the term certainty would be entirely meaningless.

@ CL...you had a moment of clarity eh? What happened....

[z7z]

Man created God in his own image. If you firmly believe in God, you are naive.

[SofaKingHigh]

I do enjoy being called a heathen, sounds naughty, a little rebellious, I like it. So much better than infidel.

[Catholic_Lady]

What was Dawkins himself? Does anyone know?

Was? He is still alive...

He classifies himself as a 6.9, as do I.

Cathy, can you please tell us where you would be on Dawkins' scale?

I'm not sure why I used past tense, since I know he's alive lol.

[Redbeard The Pink]

I'm one of those people that's probably most accurately defined as an "ignostic atheist."


What that means (as I understand it), is that I positively believe that gods don't exist, and my reasoning for such is the way the term "god" is currently defined.


When you're talking about god, you're talking about one or both of two very specific things:


"God" refers to any one of a looooooong list of characters appearing in the writings of religious humans, or it refers to the ultra-vague "higher power" that most apologists are actually hiding behind and trying to paint up as their individual "gods" by the first definition.


Under the first definition, all of man's conceived gods fail because of either contradictory traits and/or being said to have a location that we can actually go check, and science can generally explain the origins of each character, how they were influenced by other characters, and why they were written the way the are. The only place left for these things to hide is in the "personal revelation tainted by imperfect human perception, and you can't prove it wasn't" box.


Under the second definition, god fails by virtue of being too vague to mean anything and too elusive to be discussed in anything but the completely hypothetical sense. The "higher power" that apologists insist on is literally nothing more than a linguistic device that has been deliberately, painstakingly, and unabashedly contrived to hide under a pile of logical fallacies, the foundation of which is argument from ignorance and misplaced burden of proof. I find it absurd that anybody could lay out such an obviously dishonest contrivance, designed to evade both empiricism and logical questioning, and then point to it and say "Look! You can't prove such a thing doesn't exist!"


Such a thing as what? You haven't described anything. How could anyone prove the existence of an entity that has no definite traits, can be attributed no definite actions, and cannot be observed or measured in any way? "You can't say Gaud doesn't exist because science maybe hasn't discovered the existence of, like, a thing or something."


So yes, there are atheists who insist we can't positively claim gods don't exist because we can't know anything for certain, nothing can be proven not to exist, and science could always find "god" out there in something we haven't found yet.


By the aforementioned definitions of "god," that is just not going to happen. If we ever do find something out in the Universe that science decides to term "god," the definition of that word will suddenly get MUCH more specific, to such a degree that it wouldn't resemble anything the word currently describes. If we find "god," it won't be a god by any current uses of the word because those are either definite fictions or too vague to mean anything at all (and therefore can't be proven or disproven by virtue of being abstractly defined).

[Esquilax]

I'mma go with apatheist, in practice at least: in my real life I don't give a shit whether god exists or not. If there's evidence I'll believe, but I'll formulate my religious beliefs about that deity based on its character, not its existence. What I do give a shit about are bad arguments and hideous overreach, and there's plenty of that in the religious ideologue and theocrat circles for me to step in on.

Actually, the "problem of evil" has never for one second made me question God because I believe in free will.

It always weirds me out to see people using free will as an escape from the problem of evil, because it doesn't work for a reason so obvious that I have trouble believing that anyone hasn't seen it yet: it's morally good to curtail free will from those that are using it for evil ends. If I see a robbery in progress and I stop it, I've done a morally good act, so how is it that something that's morally good if a human does it becomes less so when god does it? Hell, the whole purpose of the police force is to curtail free will where necessary, and nobody would argue that a properly functioning police force is a bad thing. Inaction for free will's sake is not a justification.

Moreover, god can, by definition, intervene to stop evil without doing a thing to curtail free will anyway; free will consists of one being free to attempt to do something, it's not a guarantee of success. My free will hasn't been curtailed just because I'm unsuccessful at certain things. Therefore, god could arrange so that evil can be attempted, but not successful, without interfering in free will at all.

[Clueless Morgan]

Yeah, I definitely meant for the "do not know, but live as if there is no God" option to be between a 5 and a 4, but I can see how it can be interpreted differently. Everything else is right on, except maybe the "weak 6" would be between a 6 and a 5... lol. Ahh, this is getting complicated lol.

Therein lies the problem with language: interpretation.

To me, "I don't know but I live my life without that assumption" can definitely fall firmly in a 6, or can apply to a 5 or a high 4, it just all depends on how one interprets "I don't know."  It can be an informed "I don't know" based on the evaluation of evidence so far, or it can be an "I can't even form an opinion on the matter" sort of "I don't know."

So in Dawkins Scale speak you'd be a 1 or 2?  Or maybe a 1.0000000001

Haha, well I think he was a little loaded in the way he wrote #1. I dunno. It's not that I have never questioned, or that I never weigh possibilities in my head, it's that at this point I always come to the firm conclusion that there is a God. The way he wrote it made it sound like the person never actually thinks about it. But yes, I feel as certain that God is real as I am certain that my husband loves me. And that feels 100% certain.

I don't think it's any more loaded than saying "I am 100% sure that there is no god" which is how he defines a 7.  You could invert them and use "I am 100% sure that there is a god" as the definition of a 1 and "I do not question that there is no god, I know no gods exist" as the definition of a 7 and I don't think that changes the veracity of either position.

I always come to the firm conclusion that there is a God.

What makes you come to that conclusion?