Atheist, married to another, who together succeeded in raising 3 more. Go team!
(My dislike for and disbelief in gods and believers is such that I would have preferred the options of “nontheist” or “Humanist.”)
Agreed again. I clicked “atheist” because that’s how I would answer if asked in a conversation.
Oh, very well…rolls Atheist Manifesto into whackin’ tube
I put regular atheist. I do have a chip on my shoulder after being raised in the Bible Belt, but I try not to act up too much.
I think “Ethical Humanism” describes my beliefs pretty well, and I am able to express those beliefs through the way we practice Judaism. I am interested in learning more about Ethical Humanist Societies, though.
That mostly works for me, too. One god, many gods, god in everything, god in nothing, I just don’t know. “Agnostic” comes the closest to expressing my beliefs in one word.
Agnostic theist. Probably leaning more towards the agnostic than the theist. For me, though, the entire thing is really academic. Any actions I take are rooted firmly in my own ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong, and I don’t use any kind of higher power belief to justify them. It’s all utilitarian, baby.
I’m a nonbeliever, but I think this poll has a hint of the dismissive about it vis-a-vis theists. Two and a half categories for believers and three and a half for nonbelievers, which is a much narrower spectrum.
I would have gone with apatheistic agnostic, but it’s not an option, so I picked deist.
I didn’t vote, because I’m not sure where or if my beliefs lie within the choices. I DO NOT believe in religion! I keep my personal faith or lack thereof personal.
I’m an atheist. But I’m about 15 pounds overweight, so I’m not a firm atheist.
I’m very devout, but prefer to preach the Gospels by living them, rather than by shoving them in people’s faces and being an ass. I would not consider myself either evangelical or fundamentalist.
Since that’s not the scale I would use [WARNING LARGE PIC], and there’s no “none of the above” option, I cannot vote.
I have the same problem as some other believers in this thread: I’m pretty devout, but I’m not a fundamentalist or evangelical. I belong to a mainline church that I attend, uh, religously, and in fact I’m a lay leader within my denomination. So I guess I’ll choose the first option but I object to the broadness of the category.
I voted Deist, though I probably shade more towards Agnostic. I’m willing to concede that there are areas of inquiry which cannot be explored fully by rational inquiry. Take for example the origin of consciousness and self-awareness in life forms. We can never say definitively when this happened, because any estimate we attempt projects our own knowledge and opinions on the thing we are trying to observe. They say the Devil is in the details, but I think it’s God that permeates these details. I’d say the same about questions like what existed before the Big Bang? When the baby Universe was only the size of an atom, in what space did that Universe exist? Was it a predecessor Universe that ran according to utterly different physical laws?
I don’t think professedly devout people like to agree with this, but I think there’s a vast area of intersection between deism and agnosticism, for the simple reason that faith, by definition, is the belief in things that cannot be proved. After all, doubt is a recurring theme in the Christian Gospels themselves. By professing faith, you acknowledge an unprovable premise, inevitably acknowledging the possibility of its being false.
Firm Atheist, I may be vocal about it online, but in public, I don’t bring it up unless someone asks, and I leave it at “I’m an Atheist”, as long as they don’t get confrontational, I have no need to get obnoxious or in-their-face about it, if they do get in my face about it, the gloves come off, metaphorically speaking
Over the years I’ve gone from Buddhist/Atheist to just plain Stone Cold Atheist. I’m much more vocal about this in real life and I’d probably consider myself anti-theist.
I chose agnostic, but only because I don’t think I fall into any of the other categories. I don’t find it that much of a stretch to believe that something created the universe. (I am told this is the ‘clock maker’ belief. “There is a clock, therefore a clock maker.”)
Do I believe in heaven, or hell? Do I believe that said creator of the universe actually cares about our beliefs and traditions? No, I really don’t. I don’t think that religion matters. I don’t need a religion to be a moral person. And no belief system is going to change how or who I am.
That said, I mostly try to stay away from religious discussions. I think it’s fun to debate and theorize, but once someone takes it too seriously, it stops being fun. I tire of conversations that turn into “I need to convert you, you heathen!”
I picked that one because it includes “moderate.” I’m not mainstream anymore. I used to call myself a fundamentalist, but that is apparently not the term used outside of what I believe.
And, yes, I’ve been having a bit of an anger problem lately, and I hereby apologize for that. What actually made me notice was when I was ashamed to identify myself as a Christian.
Well, since the OP didn’t give any guidance about Buddhists, I went with the dump category of agnostic. At least I’ll be able to hang out with Cat Whisperer in the afterlife.*
- Does that make it heaven?
I picked Mainstream.
I go to an Episcopal church every week. But, I’m not a fundamentalist. The priest has a degree in physics and there is no anti-science nonsense.
Another Episcopalian checking in. I go to church perhaps 46 out of 52 weeks in the year and went to Maundy Thursday service, which would make me devout. However, Anglican theology going back to the later 1500s has a strong intellectual component thanks to Richard Hooker, so I don’t mindlessly regurgitate Scripture the way some might think I would. My pursuit of scientific knowledge and authored publications are also not influenced by my religious beliefs which would seemingly exclude me from the fundamentalist category. So, an unsatisfying mainstream it is.
Vlad/Igor, MS in Biochemistry and a cradle Episcopalian.