Meh its alright ive had people pushing me in and out of agnosticism and atheism most of my non religious life. I really dont fit either vary well without some tweaking.

[QUOTE=Sommerset;24220953]Athiesm in general does not posit that God does not exist, only that one does not believe this is the case, nothing is positively stated.QUOTE]

Let me clarify what you mean to make sure i have it right. "Atheism does not affirm God's non-existence, it merely states one's BELIEF that God does not exist." but my question is: what is the difference? on what basis would you believe something that is not necessarily supported by the theory to which you subscribe for the very purpose of supporting your belief? to me that is cyclically illogical. when dealing with abstract questions like this, a belief backed by logical reasoning is the best we can do, so if you don't believe that god exists, you are effectively saying that god does not exist. yes?

. I do not believe a god exists, based on what I view as the lack of evidence for such a thing. However, I would never state outright that I know a god doesn't exist, because I don't.

...so going back to my original point that started this dialogue, that is exactly why you are actually an agnostic, and not an atheist in my opinion. i realize you said that atheist refers only to belief, and not reality, but my point is that your belief is all that matters. however, since you don't know whether or not god exists, you cannot believe for certain that god does not exist. thus atheism is impossible, and (other than theism obviously) agnosticism is the only alternative.

I thought we went through this already. Agnosticism is not an alternative to theism. I cannot believe for certain? I'm not even sure that sentence makes sense.

It states the absence of belief that God does exist, not the presence of belief that God doesn't exist.

i still don't follow how agnosticism is not an alternative to theism. theism and atheism are obviously opposites, but since atheism must be replaced by agnosticism in my opinion, agnosticism assumes the role as sole alternative to theism. and no, you cannot believe for certain that god does not exist, because you cannot know for certain. conversely, the logic i provided at the very beginning of my argument supports my position as a Theist, so i can safely say that i believe god exists, because i know god exists, because god must exist as an axiom. i'm aware that it sounds arrogant to say that "i know" this, but because god's non-existence makes less sense, i conclude that god MUST exist as the only alternative. as the saying goes, when you eliminate every impossibility, what is left, no matter how improbable or counter-intuitive, must be true.

If you asked me whether or not I believe in God and I told you I'm agnostic, have I answered the question? You have already stated that you thought the term "agnosticism" referred specifically to god, as many people do. Now we've established that it doesn't. I dont know what the issue is.

Your reasoning that god exists is essentially William Lane Craigs, as I understand it. There can't be an infinite regress, so there must be a god. My question is, why can't there be an infinite regress? SImply because its inconceivable to us? I also think your setting up something of a false dichotomy. Either infinite regress OR creator? Why are those the only two options?

However, I give you credit for at least making this being non-descript as opposed to his wild leap that it must be the christian God.

Archimedes11 - define starism as the belief that there are an odd number of stars. A-starism is someone who is not a starist.

Are you a starist? (Do you believe there are an odd number of stars?) Do you see that you can deny this without believing there are an even number?

An atheist is someone who lacks belief in God - they do not necessarily believe there is no God (there might be).

Either I'm getting weak (which very well might be), or your philosophy is getting super strong. Can I borrow this? Better yet, can we sticky it somewhere? I don't think I've seen or heard a better descriptive thinking definition before. Starism. A-starist. I like it! It works so much better than a-fairyist or a-teapotist, because it requires you to think through an actual scenario.

Have you heard the raining in France one?

OriginalPosition used this example well(although he didn't use the term "a-starist") in that secondchance thread, "Serious Question,..." to explain Gunth about the difference between not believing in the existence of something and believing in the non existence of that thing.

Thanks. I'll take a look at that thread. I haven't been following this forum like I used to. It seems I have more to learn than contribute now (I'm sure it was that way before too, but enjoy reading you guys more now).

No. I just searched and google didn't turn up anything. ???

thank you for that credit haha. i pride myself on being what i like to call a "non-dogmatic theist". to address your question about the infinite regress, i'll start by saying that i think it's a reasonable assumption that our universe at least is governed by the law of cause and effect. For every result or effect, there must be a cause that is more "real" (if you will) than the effect it created. in other words, matter, energy, and what we conceive as reality in general cannot come from anything that is less complicated than itself (and no, i'm not disputing how evolution works or anything like that. i believe in evolution. besides, richard dawkins puts to rest the common misconceptions about evolution in the God Delusion). so, this is how this chain of events leading up to the creation of the universe is hypothetically seen as necessary without the presence of the divine. but following the logic just outlined infinitely backwards in time, the complexity of the events would have to become infinite as well. now, i'm not necessarily saying that's impossible, but i am saying that if we are going to believe in an infinitely complex event, we might as well call it God (that, after all, could be seen as the definition of God). this also shows why my definition of God is more similar to what eastern religious traditions call the Tao: simply a word to describe Ultimate Reality without all the pejorative tones that drip off the commonly imagined God of Western Monotheisms. God in this sense is immanent rather than transcendent.

Misplaced credit, I'm afraid - it isn't original. It also doesn't seem to have worked.

Same idea, I suspect.

I believe it's raining in France. Why are you an a-rainist? Let's see your so-called evidence that it's not raining in France.

Ha I realize that came off kinda douchey.. I think 'appreciate' may be more appropriate in that context then ''give you credit' was.

What do you mean exactly when you say matter cannot come from anything less complicated than itself? How do you know this? I would also ask why it necessarily follows that this chain of infinite regress must also be infinitely complex, it seems like you need to assume a lot to get to where you need to go, which is fine, but i'm not sure how it proves anything.

Also, where exactly does the theist part come in? As I understand it, theism is a belief that a god intercedes, and that some form of revelation takes place? Would this be consistent with what you believe? I only ask because what you are describing sounds a lot more like deism to me. Why does this God/energy you describe, care, to put it another way? Moreover, how do we get from a nondescript first cause to a theistic interpretation of this first cause?

Thanks. I did figure that out. -lol. I still particularly like the starist/a-starist for some reason. Probably because it involves numbers and one or the other is so obviously correct. Same with # of grains of sand, marbles in a jar, etc. Even or odd has to be correct at any given time. Same with god. One must be true, yet it is certainly reasonable not to form a belief about either and plead ignorance.

i guess my assumption is that something cannot come from nothing, or that matter and energy (which obviously comprises everything in our physical universe) cannot simply "pop" into existence. Now, you ask how I know this, and I must concede that I don't know. But that makes sense, doesn't it? It seems illogical for something to "create itself" i guess you could say, and that is my reason for thinking this way. Fair enough? I do appreciate peoples' opinions on this thinking because it makes sense to me, but dialogue is important nevertheless.

To address the infinite regress issue once again, it seems to me that it would by necessity become infinitely complex due to the simple nature of an exponential curve in tandem with my thinking in the paragraph above. please note that I realize an exponential curve theoretically never ends since you can always divide by a larger and larger number (i'll assume those reading this understand this concept) but will only ever approach zero without actually reaching it. still, in practice I don't think that allows one to conclude that a causal chain can continue backwards in time forever (but then again, I don't know enough about theortical speculation on this topic to be decisive. i suspect there are few people who can speculate authoritatively here).

you make a good point in that none of this does prove anything (so allow me to alter my stance somewhat i guess), but it does provide me with what I view as sound logic that suggests God's existence, and I hope others can work with me on this point. i suppose i've just always viewed it as "proof" to some degree because I don't really see a hole in this logic, and it makes more sense than any other argument i've ever heard at either end of this timeless debate. but again, critique and dialogue is important as thats the point of this forum!

On a side note i'll add that I've always asked myself "would it really be possible for human beings to be capable of questioning the purpose of our existence, our mortality, and conceive the thought of the divine if our existence had no ultimate purpose?" that really seems like it would be inefficient. we have no ultimate purpose on Earth- we simply live to perpetuate our species' existence (which is congruent with the theory of evolution) but that seems ultimately pointless.
I don't want anyone to mistake this paragraph for having being considered as much as the main topic, but it is another part of what goes on in my brain. i don't wanna open a new can of worms either haha, but im sure it will happen anyway

To me, inventing God to answer the origin of universe is as illogical as it gets. I feel like it doesn't answer any questions. If you're going to bring in God, you still have "where did God come from?" which is as important a question as "where did the universe come from?"

first of all, refer to my earliest posts for that full explanation. i have no problem with saying that the idea of God is an illogical idea, because it is. the problem is that the alternatives (if there are any) are even more illogical as just discussed. and again, like i said at the beginning of my posts, "where did God come from" is not a fair question because it ignores the definition of God as an entity that necessarily always existed. God would not be God if God did not fit that description. I am now bordering on Rene Descartes' Ontological Argument, which can be disproven by asking if one could "define" into existence an entity simply by saying that it, by definition, exists. Obviously one cannot. The difference I see is that we are talking about an entity that necessarily exists because without it the cosmos would not exist- a trait that is not shared by something we could simply dream-up for the purpose of a mental experiment. Any entity we could dream-up for the sake of argument could not have the existence of the universe depending on that entity's existence.

In sum, the fact remains that the cosmos exists, and when faced with the question of how it got there, the existence of God makes sense, but only relatively. I guess you could say it's the "lesser of two (or however many)....illogical options," thereby making it the most logical.

if you think both options are illogical, maybe you shouldn't adhere to either. it's better to just say "we just don't know enough yet". maybe there are other options our brains haven't considered yet that are actually logical. by accepting one of these illogical options, you're closing your brain(and possibly your kids and so on) from exploring those other options.

Why not?

No one is really a Atheist, that is bull for sudo-intellectuals, the only real question should be is where is God not what is God.

is God your good luck charm, if so then were did God go when u lose?

"there is no God but Allah" unless your Catholic, Protestant or Jewish.