Depending on my mood, I’m ambivalent, uncertain, or just all-out flipfloppity. 
I believe we’re still in a world that functions as though a god exists, so yes. It doesn’t MATTER if God exists because He doesn’t manifest Himself in burning bushes and such. The world operates without His input.
There’s also the question of if God can take our free will. If He can’t, he’s not all-powerful. If he can, how do we know we really have it? :o
:dubious: Say what? The world functions as if it doesn’t have a god.
You edited your post to say you’re a theist two minutes after calling yourself an atheist. That’s one Hell of a mood swing.
Come again?
I am talking about (the majority of) people in the world. Is that better?
How is god defined anyway? Why is Gabriel not a god? Can any immortal creature just announce goddom? Can a god denounce goddom and say “I’m just a regular angel from now on”?
I did not.
Let’s try this again:
A schizophrenic ‘hears voices’. He has hallucinations. Are there really ‘people’ talking to him? Is he ‘hearing’ what we consider to be ‘sound’?
No. But he functions as though this were the case, so the details aren’t really that important when you’re looking at the outcomes. And for the schizophrenic, he really is hearing voices - it doesn’t matter if the ‘sound’ is literal or hallucinatory.
Likewise, God is a human invention, but as long as “God” exists in our mindset, he/she/it is in existence. Like I said: it’s sort of like math (or numbers), language, or concepts of democracy and ethics. God exists because people make it so, not because God is an actual tangible thing. If you look at science and research about the earliest man, a belief in God/afterlife/something other than our immediate needs (eg, rituals) is what makes us ‘human’. I think if you have a sense of self, you have a sense of god. It’s natural.
Werd.
Sure you did. You even admitted it in post #21.
You said:
“I just…don’t…care enough to define my ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ atheism much more than a ‘meh’.”
You’re calling yourself an atheist.
“I guess you could say I believe that God exists because the world functions as though He does.”
You’re calling yourself a theist.
If you say so. I guess spaceships not only didn’t take down the WTC, they did because some people believe so.
If you believe gods are human inventions, you’re an atheist. Unless you believe that believing something causes something to * actually* exist, but if you do, I don’t see why you would have called yourself an atheist to begin with.
Sure they can. We call them “atheists”.
You think atheists are without bias regarding the OP’s questions?
We used to have that: it’s called paganism. Christianity supplanted it. As I posted elsewhere last June, part of Christianity’s success is grounded on its intolerance. Following Gibbon, Bertrand Russell discusses this:
A religion whose beliefs crowd out other competing religions has selective advantage.
ETA: I’m not trying to be a wise guy here. There are solid historical reasons for the success of the Abrahamic religions. The persistence of Hinduism is admittedly a puzzle.
You said that you believe that God exists because the world functions as though He does. When Der Trihs said it doesn’t function as if there’s a god, you said you’re talking about the majority of people in the world. You’re not making a whole lot of sense in this thread.
A monotheist doesn’t believe he chose a single God. He believes that there is a single God and he chose to acknowledge that.
The analogy from the OP is flawed, because the fact that you’re at a comic book convention begs the question. Obviously anyone who’s telling you they have the only superhero comic book is wrong. You can clearly see there are others. But in theological matters, the evidence is not so objective.
[QUOTE]
I see the disrupt in communication here. I was using the term atheist because I was called one via post #16.
Like I said:
Either. Both. Neither. Whatever. No idea.
I don’t think…that’s a fair comparison. I think I compared “God” to “intangible human ideas”.
I think I covered that. I’m not much for either label. Perhaps it’s better to say, “God is a human construct”? Kind of like number concepts, love, democracy, gender, and a host of things we use to define ourselves and the natural world?
I think an unbiased person can only become an atheist. Trying to pretend that a lack of bias automatically means you pick the middle ground, no matter how one-sided the balance of evidence, is just golden mean bullshit.
That said, ITR’s comment is a reasonable one: the question only makes sense to someone who believes the Bible is a work of fiction, so asking the question of someone who believes it’s fact isn’t going to get you a meaningful answer.
CitizenPained:
Certainly he can. Note the “hardening of heart” that the Bible says G-d did to Pharaoh and Sihon. Free will is something he chooses to allow us not something he must allow us.
The concept of free will is described in many Jewish philosophy and kabalah books as G-d “withdrawing himself” from the “area” where he allows human beings to exercise free will.
How do we know we have free will? How would we know if we didn’t? How do we know the world isn’t all just shadows on a cave wall? The philosophical debate over whether our perceptions can be taken as reality has been going on since what, the ancient Greeks? Bottom line is, our mind (and to a lesser degree, our senses) is the best tool we have for determining what’s real and what isn’t, and in practicality, we need to act as if it is. The part of our minds that goes through a process of willful decision making is no different in that regard.
Strictly speaking, neither Christianity its related Judaic and Islamic brethren deny other beings may exist. What we do say is that they are, like man, either in the right relationship with God or the wrong one. In neither case do/should we worship them. However, while some of these beings may be vastly more powerful than humans, they are also restrained by the will of God from afecting us except in limited ways.
In any case, they aren’t all that different from us in concept: limited beings subordinate to the power of God. But some of them might still be godlike in comparison to man, just as a man could be godlike in comparison to an animal or insect or bacterium.
No, you weren’t.
That’s plain silly.
Is this not being for either label thing new? Things you’ve said on this board:
You haven’t once called yourself a theist, until this thread where you claim to be both, neither and have no idea.
Where you’re going wrong is in thinking of God as like a protagonist in a comic book, when really God is analogous to the comic book artist him/herself.