Ok, you are just confused
But if you dont believe in any deities or gods, then doesnt that make you an atheist?
No, there's a thing called agnostic, atheism Isn't just a disbelief but a belief that no God could possibly exist.
does God exist in space?
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No, there's a thing called agnostic, atheism Isn't just a disbelief but a belief that no God could possibly exist.
But if you dont believe in any deities or gods, then doesnt that make you an atheist?
No, my stance on the existence or non-existence of a God makes me Agnostic, or more specifically Ignostic......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
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I don't have any beliefs regarding God either way. I'm certainly not confused, I know exactly what I accept and what I do not.
What a person accepts as evidence is entirely subjective, what a believer accepts as evidence of his belief may not be what you would, however it is still evidence.
But you are right, there is no reason to disprove someones claim of God.
However, if you then go and make a counter claim such as "you're a retard, God doesn't exist" then the owness is on you to clarify those claims with evidence of your own. A theist may not accept that evidence, as you would not accept theirs, however you must supply it nonetheless.
They do give evidence of their supremacy, each religion and their scripture and doctrine are designed specifically for that task, otherwise they are just an unfounded statement like your magic whatsamajig.
That is for the individual to decide for themselves using the scriptures and tenets of their given religion.
Do you see what I'm saying here, An atheist doesn't need to prove why he doesn't believe in God, he simply doesn't accept the theological evidence put forward in scripture, but an atheist who then states that a theist is wrong and that his God doesn't exist then must prove why the theist is wrong in his own belief in God.
The converse is also true, however theists prove their beliefs using a faith argument, and this causes some consternation as Atheists refuse to accept that, preferring them to use Science. Unfortunately science doesn't support either atheists or theists and is entirely agnostic on the subject as there is currently no experiment available to test either theory.
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Man of Honour
God is everywhere according to Christian doctrine.
When I was younger I used to look down the toilet and snigger.
When I was younger I used to look down the toilet and snigger.
Soldato
Caporegime
Agree, but please do not quote his comments.
What an utterly pathetic post.
What an utterly pathetic post.
Soldato
I'm a total Athiest. But if god does exist I kinda like the image potrayed in this work...
I met god on a train
Tis a good read. If you enjoy it, this piece is by the same author...
Ressurection
I met god on a train
Tis a good read. If you enjoy it, this piece is by the same author...
Ressurection
To me the gods have been "disproven", by simply following the historical timeline. When man was simple and lived hand to mouth in the stoneage, gods and magic were everywhere. The wind, the fire, birth, death, pretty well everything was governed by the spirits. As time progressed and we gradually started to form the first civilizations, most tribal societies replaced shamanism with more specific gods. Follow it further and pantheism was replaced by monotheism in many places.
For all the bad that monotheism brought to this world (holy wars amongst other things), it did bring a lot of good. It gave common ground and similiar rules for whole groups of people to live by. It provided moral rules to live by in an age when barbarism was the norm rather than the exception. To me the montheistic religions have allowed the societies that embraced them to progress successfully into the modern age we are in now. Cultures that didn't embrace it or were latecomers have lagged behind.
Now if one considers science in the mix, it can be seen that the mystic was slowly replaced by the scientific throughout the ages. I value monotheism is it allowed science to form. Societies could work together under the same basic rules and make progess. Fractured tribalism doesn't allow for any large scale co-operation. That said science has progressed to the point of answering pretty well every question that has been ever posed. It has supplanted religion at every step of the way, and modern societies are now in the process of throwing off these final chains of superstition.
History has shown us the path of a world filled with magic, to a world governed by logic and science. The utlimate proof is that at every single step of the way science supplanted mystic belief and that at no point did the mystic ever provide a truth over science. The path is very linear. In more simple terms god(s) became a less and less likely statistical probability until the chances have faded into the almost non-existant.
For all the bad that monotheism brought to this world (holy wars amongst other things), it did bring a lot of good. It gave common ground and similiar rules for whole groups of people to live by. It provided moral rules to live by in an age when barbarism was the norm rather than the exception. To me the montheistic religions have allowed the societies that embraced them to progress successfully into the modern age we are in now. Cultures that didn't embrace it or were latecomers have lagged behind.
Now if one considers science in the mix, it can be seen that the mystic was slowly replaced by the scientific throughout the ages. I value monotheism is it allowed science to form. Societies could work together under the same basic rules and make progess. Fractured tribalism doesn't allow for any large scale co-operation. That said science has progressed to the point of answering pretty well every question that has been ever posed. It has supplanted religion at every step of the way, and modern societies are now in the process of throwing off these final chains of superstition.
History has shown us the path of a world filled with magic, to a world governed by logic and science. The utlimate proof is that at every single step of the way science supplanted mystic belief and that at no point did the mystic ever provide a truth over science. The path is very linear. In more simple terms god(s) became a less and less likely statistical probability until the chances have faded into the almost non-existant.
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Soldato
Watch this.
Or better yet watch the whole series.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=foundational+falsehoods+of+creationism&aq=0
Nuff said.
Or better yet watch the whole series.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=foundational+falsehoods+of+creationism&aq=0
Nuff said.
Soldato
Caporegime
The question of where God exists is a reasonable one. There's no need to insult him for asking that.
Man of Honour
Most excellent!
Fantastic read and mirrors somewhat my own view on things.
Soldato
Thanks for sharing "I met god on a train" was a great read 
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The earth isn't a circle though, it's a sphere. So he was wrong as well.
The Earth is an oblate spheroid.
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Man of Honour
While the effort to change the definition to that has had a lot of success, many people (including the people who write the OED and most good dictionaries) don't agree with the change.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-definitions.html
Atheism is simply a lack of theism. That's all the 'a' means.
Agnosticism is a much wider idea, not limited to religion. In the words of the person who first used the word:
The two are not mutually exclusive. I'm an agnostic atheist. When it comes to the existence of any god or gods, I have no evidence proving their existence or lack of it and so I don't claim to know the truth (agnostic) and I don't believe (atheist).
Most good dictionaries?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/atheist
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism
http://www.websters-online-dictiona...&cof=FORID:9&ie=UTF-8&q=atheist&sa=Search#922
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/atheist
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheism
All seem to give the same definition and that includes the belief that God or a supreme being doesn't exist. That is not Agnosticism, agnostics don't make that distinction, they are simply sceptical.
You're an atheistic agnostic
How you define yourself, and you have every right to call yourself an Agnostic Atheist it is a valid description, is largely irrelevant to how others define themselves however.But seriously, what you are saying is disingenuous, mainly because those who call themselves Atheists in the sense that they simply disbelieve are negative atheists, they do not make claims of falsehood they simply do not believe.
The majority of well known atheists fall into the Positive school of thought, where they hold the belief that God doesn't exist and denies that existence as factual.
An agnostic on the other hand merely thinks the question is unanswerable in any meaningful way and simply refrains from commitment either way.
The word (A)theist comes from the Greek 'Atheos' which means Godless or 'without' (A) plus 'a God' (Theos), so the 'a' in atheist isn't simply an addendum to the word theist. Atheist pre-dates theist anyway and the derivation is Theist from Atheist, so you are wrong on that point.
Common usage of the word Atheist since the latter half of the 20th century refers predominantly to the Positive or Strong definition of the word, so AcidHell2 is largely correct in his assertion.
I personally refer to myself as agnostic, however more specifically I am Ignostic but most people don't recognise the term so I stick with the former in general usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
Also I'd like to point out that everyone is atheist about something, be it Strong Atheists about God or a Christian being atheist about Zeus and Odin, to the Muslim being atheist about Brahma.
Wiki References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_and_explicit_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism
In short, Agnosticism is not some kind of weakened atheism. Agnosticism is not atheism or theism. It is radical scepticism, doubt in the possibility of certainty, opposition to the unwarranted certainties that atheism and theism offer.
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