This Atheist-for-40+ years takes exception to the statement that atheism can mean either:
Does not believe in God -or-
Does not believe Gods exist.
The first is simply how a strong theistic person (who cannot conceive of a Godless universe would state the Atheist viewpoint: Does not believe in (any) God. Maybe the Abrahamic Religions have it right, maybe the Hindus have it right and there are 330 Gods, Goddesses, Incarnation and Avatars - but there is SOME God - and the Atheist doesn’t believe in it/them.
That’s right - we don’t believe. To say we “don’t believe in God” is insulting in the extreme - it says “there is a God, and he is too stupid to realize it”.
It is really simple:
We believe it is absolutely impossible for such an entity to exist.
Where did the universe come from if it was not created by a god?
The same place the god came from.
Looking at the universe and wondering where it came from is universal; saying “God made it” simply moves the question back one (unnecessary) step - from “where did the universe come from?” to “where did God come from?”.
The Mormons have a really strange answer to that question. Most people would not care to hear it - humans can become Gods, each with his own Universe to play with.
Recap: there are no, and there can be no entities such as are described as “God” or “Gods”.
I disagree. IMO it says I do not believe in the concept called God(which obviously exists), which is to me the same as saying I do not believe God exists.
I’ll sit with you! I’m surprised there aren’t many, many more votes for “spiritual, but not religious”.
There is no god according to what definition? This is always the tricky part. I can prove that God exists simply by defining “God” as the entity that prevails where the laws of nature no longer apply and science is powerless, because such points clearly exist – e.g.- the singularity at the Big Bang. I can certainly understand skepticism about the God of established religions, and that’s no doubt what most atheists are thinking of. But I voted for “spiritual, but not religious” because otherwise one seems to be implicitly ascribing to science an all-encompassing omnipotence to explain all phenomena that it does not have and never will.
As for all the arguing over categories - this is the internet, this is what we spend most of our time doing here (that and looking for porn and cat pictures).
Its interesting because I know several other Jews who are similar to what you describe. I would hazard that there is a sizable percentage of my congregation (Presbyterian) who are cultural Christians but if pressed privately would not express a belief in miracles, divinity, etc. I wonder if one of the shifts in modern religion will be more “Christian” atheists?
ETA - I chose devout theist: I am a Deacon, regular attended, I find the values of my church to be very important, and I believe in a higher power. At the same time, I do not believe the Bible is a literal document, and I don’t consider it to be a fact based history book.
Agnostic, although when engaged in religious debate I probably sound atheist. Raised casually Buddhist, and still casually Buddhist, but I treat it more as a philosophy than as a religion. Also, it’s a good answer when asked about religion because, at least here, not many people know anything about Buddhism so they just nod and smile.
Well, that definition - “where the laws of nature longer apply and science is powerless” - also applies to entities that are the product of human cognition, like culture, storytelling, art and societies. Which is where I suspect religion had its origin.
For myself, I chose “strong atheist”, since I interpreted that to mean “strongly committed to that conviction/very interested in the topic”, as opposed to “whatevs…?” Philosophically, I’m actually a weak atheist - I don’t believe God exists, rather than believing that God does not exist.
This poll would work better as multi-choice, rather than single-choice.
I marked “devout theist” for this poll, since I have strong religious beliefs. But I am also agnostic, in the sense that I do not think God is empirically knowable. I also have some animist quirks I picked up from who knows where.
The choices of strong/weak atheist didn’t match up to my expectations, so I was tempted (but not by any devil) to select the “you jerk” since the OP obviously missed my personal belief:
Pedantic atheist.
I believe that either there are no gods or any sort of supernatural power in the universe. It was a tough decision if I go with my heart and pick strong atheist in the spirit of the poll, or “you jerk” for not including pedantic atheist.
In the end, I’m a little more casual about being pedantic, so I went with strong atheist.
