I’m more firmly between 6 and 7 than most. I’m a firm non-believer in all of the gods posited so far by mankind – most of them are not even coherent concepts. However, there is a non-zero but minuscule possiblity that other gods without current believers might exist.
Call me a 7.5 or an 8. God as typically defined is logically impossible and contradicts the world as we see it; it cannot be true. If some superbeing showed up and claimed to be God I’d be quite certain it was lying or I was hallucinating.Once you change the definition enough so it becomes possible you aren’t describing a “God” that people actually believe in. I’d sooner believe in Zeus than God; the claims made of such older gods are less extravagant.
4 - Stong agnostic. I don’t know, and neither do you. 
I voted a 2, though it often wavers up and down. That is, I have few doubts that he exists and his existence is completely consistent with my experiences and ponderings and there are certain aspects of considerations of his non-existence that are, as far as I can tell, inconsistent with them. However, belief isn’t as simple as a matter of determining a logical conclusion because humans are not purely intellectual beings. There are times where I am filled with joy or despair and logic does little to temper my instantaneous belief, but my vote is for what I’d say is probably roughly the average.
I said 7, but yeah, it’s not that I am certain God doesn’t exist, it’s more that I consider the very concept of God to be incoherent.
5.74.
But I voted 6.
Well, since all the non-believers are sharing why they don’t, I’ll share why I chose ‘cautiously optimistic’ (AKA 3).
Consciousness. It implies to me something more than matter or energy. Our bodies are millions of individual cells, none of which can ‘visit’ the other, and yet we have consciousness. They can send electrical and chemical messages to each other, but they can’t go to each other’s ‘houses,’ if you will. Our bodies could best be organizationally described as confederacies. There’s no center for consciousness to ‘reside.’
Even limiting consciousness to the nervous system, you’re still talking millions of cells. With enough technology, any one of those cells could be kept alive outside your body, and I think we’d agree it was not conscious. There’s no single cell that gives us awareness; it exists among the cells, which are not truly together. And yet it does exist. It can’t be an illusion, because an illusion requires an observer. If you’re fooling somebody, there’s somebody there to fool.
So why does that imply a ‘god’? Well, it doesn’t imply eternal life - I don’t have any hope (if that’s even the right term - eternity can be a frightening concept, too)of that. It doesn’t imply an entity in a form we’d recognize, a ceiling cat or whatever. But it does imply that we are more than meat bags with infused energy.
You can’t make a cadaver conscious by giving it energy. I can’t think of a way of explaining it without granting that there are more things than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Call it a god, if you like.
- I’ve been wrong about enough in my life to realize I could be wrong about this.
But I doubt it.
More or less what I would have said. I’m also a 2. That is, I recognize the logic of the atheist worldview but I cannot reconcile it to my own personal experience of the numinous.
I find this interesting about the poll numbers so far. Although obviously the 6/7 results are much higher than the 1/2 results, the ratio of the “100% sure” answers to “pretty sure” answers are about the same on both ends of the spectrum.
- It’s impossible that there is a god.
6.9
I cannot strictly rule out the possibility of such a being, but I have no evidence to support it either. Therefore I operate as if there is no god.
I’m probably a 5.74, but voted 5. I may be counting concepts of God that don’t conform to the common form of a deity. Still I see no logical reason to even consider God to exist except to avoid being arrogant, but I see no logical reason for lots of things in the universe and the universe itself, so I keep the door very slightly open.
I know this is not a debate, and I don’t mean to argue, nor pick on you, nor single you out, but I’ve heard the two points you expressed all my life and I still don’t get it.
1.** You believe because not believing in anything is depressing** - You believe in yourself, don’t you, your abilities, the people you interact with? You believe the world you’re experiencing exists, that your cell phone functions, that eating food sustains your life, don’t you? So you do believe in things, real, tangible things. Why do you need a belief in the supernatural to stave off your depression?
- For proof or vindication of your beliefs, all it takes is for you to read about near death experiences - I’m sorry, but reading about near-death experiences is not proof of anything, other than the writers ability to delude or prey upon the reader’s fears and hopes, or to express their own delusions. I can write a book about near death experiences that I’ve never actually had. Would my lies vindicate your beliefs? Why, or why not? You may respond, “well, maybe some of them are fabrications, but certainly not all of them; some must be real accounts.” Why? What brings you to this conclusion? Is it precisely because their claims cannot be verified that you believe them?
Again, please pardon my questions and any perceived incendiary tone. I’m genuinely curious.
One tricky issue here is that the notion of god can be vague.
Theists like to switch between two gods all the time in argument. They like to open with “Here’s my god, here’s his holy book, here’s what he wants us to do, here’s how he cures people that are sick and pray, here’s how he brings in hurricanes to punish us for accepting homosexuals”, etc.
And then if you point out the logical inconsistencies in that god, or the evidence that the supposed faith healing doesn’t work, or the historical record which contradicts the holy book, and therefore pronounce that god not to exist, they suddenly switch.
Now suddenly god is this amorphous, vague concept that doesn’t actually need to interact with anything and hence is completely undetectable and meaningless. But then they’ll say “you can’t disprove this vague, invisible, inactive god doesn’t exist! You can’t prove a negative! HAHA GOTCHA ARROGANT ATHEISTS!” and then suddenly they switch back to “this is god, and this is his holy book, and…”
You can have differing degrees of confidence for differing ideas for gods. If there’s a religion that posits a god that makes it rain literal goats every day, and has since the dawn of time - you could say “well, I’ve never seen any goats raining, so obvious this god doesn’t exist” - except in a really technical and pedantic sort of “well, my memories up until now might’ve been implanted by aliens who removed the memory of all of the goats raining from me, so it’s possible that this god really exists” sort of practically meaningless way.
Or you could use some vague “there could be some sort of entity that we’re not aware of that displays certain properties that we might consider god-like” definition, in which case you can be less confident in its non-existance, and yet practically speaking no religious person is never knocking on your door to tell you the good news about the vague, unknown, non-interacting god. That god only exists in philosophical polls like this, or in lame theistic attempts to sidestep criticism.
So… to the notion of some vague, unknown, non-interactive god, it seems unlikely based on what we know of physics and the universe, but I’d probably give it a 6.5. But as our definition of god grows more specific, and as claims of how he interacts with the world become more numerous and detectable, that number approaches 6.999999 repeating never quite hitting 7 for the same technical and yet practically meaningless way that disbelief in Santa never reaches 7.
7.0
So far, every god that’s been presented to me is broke.
A god that can create a universe could support himself, and would not need to panhandle his flock on Sunday mornings. If a self-sufficient god ever shows up, I’ll reconsider.
I’ve always said I was agnostic, but not too long ago a friend suggest that what I really am is an atheist who wants to believe. That probably isn’t a bad way of describing me.
I’m not sure how that translates into a number.
I went with 3 although I’m probably closer to 4. I prefer to believe in a higher power in the absence of any proof just in case it turns out to be true. If I’m wrong and there is no God, it won’t matter; if I’m right and I wind up being judged at the Pearly Gates, it will matter a great deal. Basically, I’m hedging my bets.
I should also note that I have plenty of issues with organized religion which seems inevitably to cause more problems than it solves.
I agree with this. The problem for Jung by the way in the BBC interview where he is asked if he believes in God, from where he is quoted (“I know”) is that he has difficulties with the word “believe” – “Either I know, or I have a hypothesis… I cannot believe so-and-so…” (This is paraphrasing from memory.) Personally I understand this notion, because I have difficulties to understand the word “believe”, and to “believe in God” is close to impossible to relate to – personally I don’t know what “God” is supposed to be. I do not believe in God as described in the Bible for instance, but there seems to be a “will” in my life, several experiences suggesting an “interferer” for lack of better word. To me that is a fact, it is not belief, but is the interferer God – I don’t know because I don’t know what “God” is. I don’t mean to put my arm around Jung and say, hey, we’re two of a kind, but I understand his hesitation, and perhaps unfortunate “I know”; not that I too “know”, because then the vote would be easy, but the unableness to answer the question about believing in God, and ruling out the word belief; though in contrast to Jung, I need to rule out “God” too.
6.99… You should have listed 6.99… as an option, as Dawkins specifically discusses it. The point is that to be completely honest with ourselves we have to question the possibility of truly knowing anything.
I think it is vastly more plausible that there is an elephant down here in my basement office with me, quietly jumping around behind me as I look this way and that. I know of no absolute limits on how small or quiet or nimble or sneaky elephants can possibly be, and I am confident that if I really wanted to make the point, I could in fact get a real live elephant in here. An elephant in my basement is much, much likelier than a God upsetting the reasonableness of the universe. But I have to find fault with Jung for his certainty.
I bet Dawkins himself would say he’s 6.99…