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Author | Topic: Neither a theist nor an atheist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
granpa writes:
Depends on how you define "atheist". Literally, it means "not theist", so there is no middle ground.
As a follower of the middle path I consider myself to be neither a theist nor an atheist. granpa writes:
Agnostic doesn't mean you're undecided; it means you don't know. Strictly speaking nobody knows so everybody is agnostic.
No I'm not agnostic either. I'm not undecided. I have decided and I choose neither.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
granpa writes:
So you're an ignostic.
first you have to define God
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
It's interesting that you say an agnostic "believes". What you say is true of a professing agnostic. My point is that neither Faith nor marc9000 nor Phat actually knows what they profess to believe.
An agnostic is someone who believes that the answer to whether or not God exists is not answerable given the information at hand. An agnostic is not the proper term for everyone who has some level of uncertainty about the question.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
And I make a distinction between professed belief and "real" belief, as you may recall from other threads.
And my point is that their belief alone, whether well supported or unfounded, is enough to disqualify them as agnostic.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
I'd go so far as to say there are people who think they're gnostic theists but I don't believe them.
Would you go so far as to say that there are no gnostic theists? Phat writes:
We can "see" what beliefs people profess and we can see how they "act out" their actual beliefs. There likely are people who profess similarly to you and people who act similarly to you. They are not necessarily the same people.
If they plausibly exist, how does their belief differ from mine?
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
I'd replace the cross in that diagram with a big gray square.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
hooah212002 writes:
I don't claim to know what other people know. I just don't believe they know what they think they know. I don't believe in theists in the same way I don't believe in gods.
I am not sure I really follow or necessarily agree with Ringo, but I don't quite know what he is saying to have an opinion. He seems to me to be saying that he knows what other people know or don't know and is making the distinction for them.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
granpa writes:
No. Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no? Have I stopped taking heroin? No. Have I stopped ruling the universe? No.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
I'm agnostic about other people's agnosticism and/or atheism.
ringo writes:
That would make you either agnostic or atheist rather than them. I just don't believe they know what they think they know.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
I'd say, rather, that the strength of your faith correlates to the strength of your belief. If you really, really, really do believe in spooks then you can have a lot of faith in spooks - but if you only kind sorta believe in spooks, you won't put much faith in them. There is no such thing as faith in anything you don't believe is true. For you, faith may be an on/off switch that goes straight from atheism to fanatical Christianity but for others it's more of a spectrum.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
There's a cave-in at the quote mine. Hebrews 10:38 does not say anything about evidence. The Just shall live by faith....not evidence. The sensible shall live by evidence. Where there is no evidence they are permitted to fall back on the inferior faith.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
If you believe in them you can trust them.
You can believe or disbelieve in spooks, you can't have faith in them.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
Allow me to rephrase: If you believe in them, it is possible to trust them. Oh DON"T be stupid. I believe there are evil entities that are not to be trusted. You can not trust what you don't believe in. What you do believe in you can choose to trust or distrust. You choose to trust your God and distrust your Satan. I choose to distrust anybody who has already destroyed the world once. That's the most evil entity I know of. Edited by zombie ringo, : Spellin.
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Phat writes:
So it's okay to destroy the World Trade Center as long as there are 8 survivors? Come on.
That story allowed for 8 survivors. From those 8 we all sprung. Phat writes:
Exactly. You are assuming that He has the right to do whatever He wants. Might makes right. I am mad at that idea.
You are just mad that God assumedly has the right to do whatever He wants. Phat writes:
Yes. The idea that God gave us "free will" but doesn't want us to use it doesn't make any sense.
It seems that your basic argument is that you were given the tools to know right from wrong---either by divine appointment or by evolutionary development and that you want to be responsible (and all of us as well) for the legacy that you leave in this life and that you don't want any bearded super Deity to order you around! (Even if He DID exist) Am I right?
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