Where do you stand on the existence of God?

[Faith No More]

I guess it does.  But I make no knowledge claims about the silly beliefs because they neither warrant nor permit any final judgement. Agnostic atheists aren't spending their days or nights fretting over some tiny percent of uncertainty regarding the existence of gods.  We're all getting about our lives and contemplating those things which strike us as interesting and worthwhile.

Which is kind of my point in my first post. Functionally, agnostics are no different than gnostics. They've simply decide to keep open the possibility that a god exists out of intellectual integrity and the claim that they can't know for certain a god does not exist. I think the failure over several millennia to produce even one shred of evidence for god doesn't warrant holding onto such uncertainty. The claim itself and its history of failure dictates that it should be fully dismissed, and holding onto uncertainty is not actually where intellectual integrity leads us.

[Whateverist]

I guess it does.  But I make no knowledge claims about the silly beliefs because they neither warrant nor permit any final judgement. Agnostic atheists aren't spending their days or nights fretting over some tiny percent of uncertainty regarding the existence of gods.  We're all getting about our lives and contemplating those things which strike us as interesting and worthwhile.

Which is kind of my point in my first post.  Functionally, agnostics are no different than gnostics.  They've simply decide to keep open the possibility that a god exists out of intellectual integrity and the claim that they can't know for certain a god does not exist.  I think the failure over several millennia to produce even one shred of evidence for god doesn't warrant holding onto such uncertainty.  The claim itself and its history of failure dictates that it should be fully dismissed, and holding onto uncertainty is not actually where intellectual integrity leads us.

Ahh but there is plenty of evidence that god belief does exist and has for a very, very long time.  If it should turn out that god belief was a side effect of self awareness, I think that needs to be understood.  But not just to dismiss it as a literal belief.  (That shouldn't even be in contention at this late date.)  What about the way the mind works supports that belief and almost universally generates it?  

As for confronting those who still hold on to god belief in a literal way, I guess I'm just not very confrontational.

[The Grand Nudger]

I feel sorry for the theists that they should feel compelled to profess certainty.  There is no reason a theist can't also avail themselves of the intellectual integrity afforded by agnosticism.

The same could be said for some who hold the atheist perspective.  Gnostic atheism is just as logically indefensible as gnostic theism.

Hardly, lol.  Notify me when characters from books begin to fly out from between the covers which bind them. It's silliness of the highest possible order, and nothing that lends the air of uncertainty. We're told, by believers, that god is really real. When we call bullshit, this ground leveling nonsense is the call to retreat, a consolation prize for those who are plainly and clearly incapable of backing up a claim that they had no interest in pursuing in the first place.

Thousands of years of claims and excuses and earnest testimonials......and yet....there god is...still stuck in the book, still not leaping out. The closest you can get is "well, we're no worse than those guys", and you manage to fuck that up as surely as you've managed to fuck up the mountain of claims behind it? A reasonable person might begin to suspect that they were wrong, but we're not talking about reasonable people here, are we?

To make a -very- long story short, those who argue in favor of fairies have no purchase in a discussion of what is or is not logically defensible. The only thing they've put the effort into achieving is their positions exclusion from the running for the category of logical...and far be it from me to withhold credit where it's due, or deny another the fruit of their labor.

For those who hinge their agnosticism on their inability to know everything, there is no requirement of complete knowledge - that would be illogical. There is -no- statement of certainty which hinges or satisfies such an absurd demand. The god proposition doesn't even rise to that occasion, in any case...as you don't need to know everything in order to comment upon the gods of men with equal certainty as you comment on the rising of the sun, or your own first name.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Cancer is either entirely found in nature, or it came about through the free will of people themselves - polluting the air, adding chemicals to our foods, not taking care of our planet, etc.

Either way, I don't see it as God working like a wizard with a magic wand, inflicting people with it for some kind of purpose. I see it as Him allowing the natural course of things to happen, just as He did so when we evolved. And I explained in my other post why I do not believe this makes him an evil being.

Yes, of course you don't hold him to blame. But according to your creation story, he made it. Making something that awful, and then letting nature takes its course, is at very best amoral, and not good.

You're welcome to your own opinion. I heartily disagree. If I created a new supervirus and released it into the wider world knowing that people were going to die, would you excuse my behavior by saying that I'm just letting nature take its course? Of course you wouldn't. You'd excoriate me for the evil action I had taken knowing that it would kill people ... and you'd be right.

You just carve out a little "but not God" exception and go on about your day.

[Clueless Morgan]

Cancer is either entirely found in nature

Don't you believe that your god created nature?

or it came about through the free will of people themselves

So blame the victim.

[IATIA]

Basically it is Pandora's box. Substitute the tree for the box and Jesus for hope and we have the same story, as usual. Myth after myth after myth. They just change with the cultures.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think it's amusing, CL, that you think cancer comes about through free will.  Perhaps you should share that knowledge with medical professionals, rather than us? Back here, on earth, however...doesn't it seem a bit cruel and silly to blame absolutely every nasty thing on a bunch of jumped up apes? Surely we're not responsible for everything...there must be something........lol. Look to your own life, are you even capable of being responsible for everything...even when you want to be? Can we exert that kind of control, in your experience, as a human being?

[Catholic_Lady]

There is no scientific discovery that disproves God, in my eyes. And I believe in science. I don't see any conflict between science and my faith.

Likewise, there's no scientific discovery that proves a god, either, so using that statement to help justify a theistic position is an argument from ignorance.

Oh I know. That's not what I was doing. I was merely telling c172 that for me, there is no conflict between science and my faith because neither disproves the other. I don't feel they are at odds. That's all I meant.

[Catholic_Lady]

There is no scientific discovery that disproves God, in my eyes. And I believe in science. I don't see any conflict between science and my faith.

Likewise, there's no scientific discovery that proves a god, either, so using that statement to help justify a theistic position is an argument from ignorance.

In my mind it is fundamentally problematic that so many things that have been claimed to be the will of a god or the hand of a god acting in this world have been shown to have natural causes.  And appealing to a god who works through nature is problematic as well because then you have (1) a god who decides that of all the possible universes it could have created, the one in which people die by being buried alive in landslides and in misery as they waste away from cancer and disease is the one to choose, and (2) you end up with a god who is indistinguishable from nature which leads to the question of "how do you even know this god exists in the first place?"  Occam's razor would cut that god right out of the picture; there's no need to invoke a god when you can appeal to nature itself.

Which ultimately comes back to the problem of the omnis that Simon Moon was talking about back in post 47 (before I sidetracked things... ):

Inserting the word "natural", where does your god fit in the following by Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent natural evil, but not able? 
Then he is not omnipotent. 
Is he able, but not willing? 
Then he is malevolent. 
Is he both able and willing? 
Then whence cometh natural  evil? 
Is he neither able nor willing? 
Then why call him God?

So, Cathy, do you believe that god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?

Yes mam, I do.

[Anomalocaris]

Hello heathens. Which option most accurately applies to your views?

(Basically it goes from most certain there is no God, to least certain. I am curious to see the answers!)

The issue is both clearer and more nuanced than the choices.